special culture

Archives 2023

Charli XCX Is Trading the Bratmosphere for Blockbusters

Having reshaped the zeitgeist in her slime-green, that-bitch image (and announced she’ll be kickstarting London Fashion Week with an H&M-sponsored rave), Charli XCX is packing her Parliaments and heading to Hollywood, where she’s joining the cast of Gregg Araki’s contribution to the burgeoning May-December canon, I Want Your Sex.

Penned by Vogue columnist Karley Sciortino (and named after George Michael’s chart-topping 1987 hit), the film will center on Olivia Wilde’s Erika Tracy, a fictional artist with the cultural heft of Marina Abramović, who begins an affair with her much younger employee, Elliot (Cooper Hoffman). (If you’re wondering why you recognize Cooper’s name, he played Gary Valentine opposite Alana Haim in Licorice Pizza—and, yes, he is Philip Seymour Hoffman’s son.) For a while, Elliot is thrilled to be Erika’s “gentle lover with a heart of gold,” but their romance soon veers into Adrian Lyne territory as “Erika takes him on a journey more profound than he ever could have imagined, into a world of sex, obsession, power, betrayal and murder.” Baby, you’ve been so unkind, indeed. No word yet on which sort of role Charli will be playing, but I hope she gets to wear a bodysuit as good as Kathy Jeung’s in George’s softporn ’80s music video.

It’s Faces of Death, though, that will mark Charli’s formal screen debut alongside Barbie Ferreira, Dacre Montgomery, and Josie Totah. Helmed by How to Blow Up a Pipeline’s Daniel Goldhaber, the project is inspired by the wildly controversial 1978 shockumentary of the same name, which opens with an alleged pathologist, Dr. Francis B. Gross (Michael Carr), introducing a series of videos depicting gruesome deaths—some of which were staged, some of which were real. “For the first time in cinema history, the greatest fear of all mankind will be graphically exposed,” boasted the trailer. “Now, a motion picture dares to take you beyond the threshold of the living.” Inevitably, it became a viral hit, with millions of VHS copies sold across the country, making it the defining film of the decade’s “video nasty” craze. Mercifully, Goldhaber has no plans to recreate the mondo movie (whose horrifically graphic imagery saw it banned in dozens of countries, including the UK). Instead, he’s taking a meta approach, with his plot shadowing a content moderator for a YouTube-esque site who stumbles upon a group recreating scenes from the ’70s hit for their followers.

Interestingly, Charli personally reached out to Goldhaber about a role in the movie, and he isn’t the only writer-director she’s approached about a collaboration in recent months. Earlier this (Brat) summer, she also decamped to Poland to shoot yet another film she’s apparently co-written with Slave Play’s Jeremy O Harris. Good thing she already has enough movie-star sunglasses to see her through at least a dozen paparazzi-filled press tours.

Artist Jordan Casteel’s “Best Show Yet” Pairs Her Richly Patterned Paintings With Batsheva Hay’s Madcap Furniture

For artist Jordan Casteel and fashion designer Batsheva Hay, it was love at first sight. While their husbands, both photographers, had been close for years, the two women struck up a friendship of their own during the early days of the pandemic, when the Denver-born, New York–based painter was hunting for her wedding dress. “I knew I didn’t want to wear a white dress. I wanted to wear something fun, playful, and representative of me,” says Casteel. After the artist’s now husband, David Schulze, recommended Hay, known for her flouncy, printed frocks, the designer wound up making Casteel two wedding dresses: one of blue and yellow wax-print fabric and the other of red moiré.

“Batsheva and I are both very interested in color and pattern and the way that our work can activate spaces and bodies. There’s a real playfulness in her clothing that I’m similarly interested in in the context of my work,” says Casteel. Known for portraits and paintings that Hay describes as “earnest, bright, and interesting,” Casteel has a knack for rendering patterns and textures—think heavily impastoed shearling coats and iridescent rubber Wellies you can almost hear squeaking. Like Hay, the artist delights in unexpected color combinations, often replacing her sitters’ natural skin tones with shades of red, green, and purple.

Batsheva Hay and Jordan Casteel at the opening of “Jordan Casteel: Field of view.”

Courtesy Hill Art Foundation. Photo: Liz Ligon

Over the years, Casteel’s practice has expanded to encompass city scenes, landscapes, and still lifes, reflecting her move from Harlem to upstate New York in 2021, though no matter the subject, her brilliant mark making remains incredibly consistent. Through November 23, the Hill Art Foundation in Chelsea is presenting “Jordan Casteel: Field of view,” a solo exhibition featuring 25 works spanning the last decade of her career. Curated by Lauren Haynes, head curator at Governors Island Arts and vice president for arts and culture at the Trust for Governors Island in New York City, the show includes important loans alongside four monumental portraits from the collection of J. Tomilson Hill, the nonprofit organization’s founder. (Two of these portraits are promised gifts to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.)

While the show’s title, “Field of view,” references Casteel’s process of photographing her sitters prior to painting them, it also sets the tone for what is arguably the artist’s most personal show to date. “My mom sent me a text saying, ‘I don’t know about you, but I think this is your best show yet.’ There’s an element of that that I completely agree with,” says Casteel. “This show feels so of me, and the way that I engage with my work on a day-to-day basis. It’s the crux of how I feel when making these paintings and experiencing them when they’re all together. It’s the full embodiment of me in the practice.”

Naomi Campbell’s V&A Exhibit Is a Blockbuster Tribute to a Spectacular—And Singular—Fashion Career

“It wasn’t about me. It was about the clothes.” That’s a statement from Naomi Campbell, which—in light of the subject of the V&A’s latest fashion exhibition—doesn’t exactly follow through. In recent years, the South Kensington museum has enjoyed record-breaking success with retrospectives dedicated to legendary designers (see 2023/2024’s “Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto” and 2019’s “Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams”), but never before has it dedicated an exhibition to a single model, one whose teenage success was so meteoric—and whose image-making is so iconic—she’s referred to by her first name only.

“Naomi: In Fashion” chronicles the astonishing 40-year career of the Streatham-born catwalk star, who spent her early years grooving in music videos for Bob Marley and Culture Club before being spotted in Covent Garden in 1985 at age 15 by the model agent Beth Boldt. Since her first cover shoot in 1987 (the photographer, Patrick Demarchelier; the fashion, exquisitely embellished gold and turquoise Chanel Haute Couture designed by Karl Lagerfeld), Campbell has gone on to grace the cover of Vogue US and British Vogue several times. In August 1988, she was the first Black woman to be shot for the cover of Vogue France; she represented the stratospheric era of the supermodel on the 1991 cover of Time (complete with the cover line “Beauty and the Bucks”), and in 1997 became the first Black model to open a Prada show.

“I can’t imagine debuting my retrospective anywhere else but London—this is where I was born, raised, and discovered—but it is, I’ll admit, more than a little nerve-wracking to think of it as a homecoming,” Campbell wrote in the March 2024 issue of British Vogue.

“It’s hard to think of any other model that warrants their own dedicated museum exhibition,” says Sonnet Stanfill, senior curator, fashion, at the V&A, at a preview of the exhibition, where we are greeted in the ground-floor gallery by a joyful montage of Campbell’s catwalk appearances. Bringing together pieces from the supermodel’s own extensive fashion archive, personal ephemera (including one of her first Concorde tickets, and her profile pages in Elite’s 1997 model directory book), and photography spanning decades, Stanfill has created a multi-sensory sojourn through the milestones of a singular career—one that has seen Campbell form longstanding collaborative relationships with designers including Azzedine Alaïa, Jean Paul Gaultier, and Karl Lagerfeld, photographers from Steven Meisel to Peter Lindbergh, and evolve after a certain George Michael music video from a supermodel with a capital “S” into a social activist and philanthropist, who bonded with Nelson Mandela and founded the Black Girls Coalition in 1989, alongside Bethann Hardison and Iman. As Campbell previously told Vogue: “To stand in front of my wardrobe is a humbling experience; vivid memories replay bygone conversations with the legendary designers who were among my closest friends and collaborators.”

From The Agency and Senna to, Well, the Parade, Here Are 5 Things to Stream This Thanksgiving Break
Rivals Has Inspired Me to Shake Up My Approach to Dating

Don’t get me wrong: Rutshire is hardly a place of resounding romantic success. Everyone is cheating on everyone, or wishing that they were. And there are some vast age gaps that look a little strange through a modern-day lens—yes, I’m talking about the ambivalent relationship between 20-year-old Taggie O’Hara (Bella Maclean) and Rupert, a.k.a. the 40-year-old man her mother fancies and her dad is mates with.

The Darcy Days Are Over: See Renée Zellweger Fall for Leo Woodall in the First Trailer for Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy
21 of the Coziest, Most Autumnal Movies to Watch This Fall

Fall is pretty much here, and while some mark the season with apple-picking, hot cider, and various other hallmarks of #ChristianGirlAutumn, others prefer to spend it exactly the way we spent summer: parked on the couch, watching our favorite cozy movies on repeat. Whether you’re looking to have your faith in love restored by Harrison Ford, or you’re in need of some witticism from Robin Williams that will absolutely make you weep, our list covers fall’s must-see movies.

Crack your windows open for that cool, crisp air and get the tea kettle ready, because below are 20 of the best fall movies—from stories actually set in the fall, to films that just encompass or represent fall in some way—to get you through to December.

Autumn in New York (2000)

I mean…how could I not include this one? Title aside, this Winona Ryder tearjerker features many of the things I most associate with fall, including Central Park, small museums, and a woman dressed up as Emily Dickinson. We love to see it (and cry at it)! —Emma Specter

Coco (2017)

Depression Is a Haunting

There is no one untouched by crises of mental health. And yet, when you or someone you love is struggling, it can often feel like you’re alone in the dark, searching for a light. In honor of World Mental Health Day, we are publishing a series of essays, starting today and running through the weekend, that tackle this topic through a personal lens. We hope these essays offer insight into the many ways that people struggle, and how they can come out the other side with dignity and grace.

My dentist recently told me that my gums were healthy. An unremarkable observation to most people but one that, for me, caused a surge of relief and joy. When I left her office, I wanted to text someone about what she’d said before realizing that even my best friends would only be able to pretend to care all that much about my gums.

Nine years ago, when I was 27, a dentist told me the bone levels on the lower left-hand side of my mouth had already depleted to the levels typical of a 50-year-old, due to chronic inflammation and disease. “Lifestyle factors” were most likely to blame, I was told. The lifestyle in question? Well, it consisted of sick leave from my office job, lying on a mattress on the floor of my rented bedroom in south east London (an flatpack bed frame was still in its unopened box in the corner) for days at a time, occasionally getting up to smoke a badly assembled roll-your-own cigarette or, when it was very bad, to drink my housemate’s wine in the fridge straight from the bottle before passing out in the same dank squalid spot where I’d spent the past week. No, I didn’t brush my teeth often enough. I became severely vitamin D deficient too. It’s still on my medical record. Severe depression, gender identity issues, vitamin D deficiency. It’s giving vampire, as the Tik Tok kids say.

To have survived a major depression is to be forever haunted thereafter. I’m now many years past the last episode but all it takes is a single bad day, perhaps due to hormones, or low mood in the coldest depths of January, for me to fear I am being dragged back by my ankles. Depression reveals one’s own brain to be a double agent, an enemy within. How do you ever fully make peace with it again? Like a marriage after infidelity, the trust may never be restored. Would I survive another round?

A Mentally Ill Sister, and an Impossible Request

There is no one untouched by crises of mental health. And yet, when you or someone you love is going through it, it can often feel like you’re alone in the dark, searching for a light. In honor of World Mental Health Day, we are publishing a series of essays, starting today and running through the weekend, that tackle this topic through a personal lens. We hope these essays offer a little insight into the many ways that people struggle, and how they can come out the other side with dignity and grace.

I’m sitting alone on the couch, held in place by a weighted blanket my husband’s grandmother gave us. The living room is dark except for the light coming from the TV. An episode of X-Files is playing at a low volume.

My sister has been staying with us for a week this time.

Perhaps she comes to me when she’s in trouble because I’m older. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t have to hide who she is when she’s around me. I don’t judge her when she spends long hours asleep. I don’t try to rationalize her paranoia or challenge the delusions that come from a combination of her schizoaffective disorder and drug use. Then again, it could be that my guest bedroom is a lot better than the rooms she’s stayed in at psychiatric hospitals and drug rehab centers.

The bottom of her pajama pants had been folded underneath her feet when she’d shuffled to bed hours earlier. But I suspect she is still awake. Even with 15 feet and a wall between us, I can sense her insomnia like I sense my own. The meds she takes to quiet her mind don’t always work. (Approximately one-third of patients diagnosed with a major depressive disorder are categorized as treatment-resistant, defined in resources offered by Johns Hopkins as “lingering depression symptoms in patients who have taken multiple antidepressants or antidepressant classes.”)

I fill a small glass with tap water and tip-toe to the end of the hallway. I knock lightly on the door. I don’t wait for a response before I push the door in slowly, a manifestation of my role as big sister, always taking charge and professing that I know how to fix things.

Believe Republicans’ Actions—not Their Words—on IVF

Last month, former president and 2024 Republican nominee Donald Trump surprised many by calling for universal coverage of IVF treatment, albeit with no specific plan. The move was likely part of an attempt to win over undecided voters who had been put off by the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.

You might be taken aback to see Trump even vaguely associating himself with the push to help families struggling to conceive. (Trump has proudly claimed credit for installing the Supreme Court justices who formed the majority in the decision that overturned Roe—a move that has had numerous ramifications, not just for abortion but also for fertility treatments like IVF.) Let me assure you that his priority was not, and never has been, the health, safety, or reproductive agency of women. “We want more babies, to put it nicely,” Trump said at an August event in Michigan.

If you need more tangible evidence of the GOP’s stance on reproductive freedoms, look no further than the Senate, where Republicans blocked a Democratic bill to provide a nationwide right to IVF treatments on Tuesday. This marks Senate Democrats’ second attempt at passing the bill, which is known as the Right to IVF Act and was sponsored by Illinois senator Tammy Duckworth (who used the fertility treatment to conceive her children). Republican senators used their own cynical spin to justify their position: “This is simply an attempt by Democrats to try and create a political issue where there isn’t one,” South Dakota senator John Thune told reporters on Tuesday.

Try telling that to the many people whose hope for a child through IVF has been stymied by the chilling effect of the overturning of Roe. Watching Republicans try to score points off IVF discourse while increasingly passing legislation that creates medical obstacles makes me think of that Maya Angelou quote: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” Maybe it’s time for all of us to believe who GOP leaders like Trump have shown us that they are—and focus our energy on electing politicians who actually support IVF as the crucial part of full-scale reproductive autonomy that it objectively is.