17 Thoughts I Had About the New, ‘Woke’ Jaguar Ad (That Doesn’t Feature a Car?)
This week, British luxury-car brand Jaguar managed to incite an internet firestorm for two distinct yet related reasons. First, it unveiled a new logo, which…let’s just say the jury is still out on (the titular jaguar is gone??). Then, to help launch its rebrand, it released a rather mystifying 30-second ad.
I probably shouldn’t be surprised that the likes of Elon Musk have pejoratively called the spot woke, presumably because it…features some people who aren’t white or thin or necessarily cisgender presenting? One thing the ad does not feature, though, is a car, which, to be honest, is kind of refreshing. (We’ve seen plenty of cars!)
Watch the ad for yourself, then find (literally) every thought I had about it below:
- When the elevator doors open to a synchronized beat…you know it’s going down.
2. I need this red turtleneck!
3. And this orange corset, too, while I’m at it!
4. Ooh, these floaty, almost floral layers of fabric are very Simone Rocha.
Two New York Shows Examine the Quiet Profundity of Artist Tina Girouard
In 1978 a vicious studio fire led the artist Tina Girouard to move from New York City, where she had been ensconced in the downtown art scene for a decade, back to Louisiana, the state where she was born in 1946. As devastating as the fire was, her pivot home was not a defeat. Girouard, who died in 2020 at the age of 73, was constantly in a state of return—both physically and in broader, more philosophical ways. Crossing time and geographies was a key preoccupation of her multidisciplinary practice.
“This relationship to place, which is not one of permanence but of coming back and leaving, is so ingrained in Tina’s story,” says Andrea Andersson, the founding director and chief curator at the Rivers Institute, a New Orleans–based arts nonprofit. Rivers worked closely with Girouard’s estate and the Center for Art, Research, and Alliances (CARA) to organize the retrospective “Tina Girouard: Sign-In,” now on view at CARA’s space in New York City after a run at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans.
Installation view of “Tina Girouard: Sign-In” at the Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA), New York, 2024.
Photo: Kris Graves. Tina Girouard Art © The Estate of Tina Girouard / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Can Fandoms Save Democracy? An Interview With the Organizers Behind Swifties for Kamala
If you’ve ever dared to say anything less than kind about Taylor Swift online, you’ve probably already come face-to-face with the brute force of her fandom. Swifties, as they’re known, are as famous for their strategic thinking (see: the downfall of Ticketmaster) as for their overwhelming passion for the object of their pop affections. So perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that a dedicated group of them—known as Swifties for Kamala—are turning their abundant energy to helping elect Kamala Harris as president this November. While the group takes pains to note it isn’t formally associated with Swift, their power is no less formidable: Swifties for Kamala has raised almost $150K in campaign contributions and recently hosted the likes of Carole King and senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey on its first fundraising call.
Vogue recently spoke to two card-carrying members of the Swifties for Kamala movement—first-time campaign volunteer Emerald Medrano and swing-state voter Carly Long—about the political motivation behind their fight, the overlap between Taylor Swift standom and Harris-Walz 2024 campaign values, and the importance of blocking a second Trump presidency. Read the full interview below:
Vogue: What drew you to get involved with the Harris-Walz 2024 campaign?
Emerald Medrano, 22, cofounder and chairman of Swifties for Kamala: In an odd way, my fears have really been what’s inspired me to act in this election. No matter what happens in November, I know I want to look back on this election season with the feeling that I did everything I could to help Kamala become the 47th president of the United States. I don’t want to live with regrets, and I don’t want to live in a country that doesn’t treat all humans with kindness. I know America is ready to be dazzling, and Kamala will let us be bejeweled.
Carly Long, 25, communications director for Swifties for Kamala: When Kamala Harris became the presumptive nominee, I felt a real sense of hope for the election. For once, I wasn’t only voting against something but for something—for someone strong and intelligent, for someone who will fight for the rights and safety of minorities, for someone fun and energetic. Her campaign has given me pride in my candidate, and I want to be part of electing the first woman to lead this country!
Everything You Need to Know About Chappell Roan’s Second Album
Oh, 2024. What a year it’s been. Just when we thought that pop music was beginning to sound a little stale and warmed up, along came Chappell Roan to remind us of the power of a big, bold chorus and some really quite off-the-wall costume changes. Not since Lady Gaga has there been an artist who’s entered megastar status with this much organic rizz in the space of one summer—although you know that already. Which is why there’s been a big question mark hovering over 2025: Is there going to be a follow-up to her debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess? And, if so, what will it look, sound, and feel like?
Obviously we don’t know a huge amount yet. The 26-year-old’s debut only came out toward the end of last year, and it took another half year for the record to properly gain momentum. But there have been a few clues dotted around for those who are really paying attention. Here, we’ve gathered everything we know about Roan’s as-yet-untitled second album thus far.
She’s working with producer Daniel Nigro again
You may not immediately recognize the name, but you’ll certainly have come across the songs that Nigro has worked on. The New York producer and songwriter has his fingerprints on everything from Carly Rae Jepsen’s Emotion (2015) to Caroline Polachek’s Desire I Want to Turn Into You (2023), and both Olivia Rodrigo records Sour (2019) and Guts (2023). He also co-wrote and produced Roan’s debut, so you know the man knows how to help craft a slice of pop perfection. Both Roan and Nigro have confirmed that they are working together again for the second record—which, thank God, because if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, etc.
Five new tracks have been written, including “The Subway”
Back in September, Roan told Rolling Stone that she’d gotten down five or six songs already. “We have a country song. We have a dancey song. We have one that’s really ’80s, and we have one that’s acoustic, and we have one that’s really organic, live-band, ’70s vibe,” she said. “It’s super weird.” And then, earlier this month, in an interview with The New York Times, Nigro shared a similar update. He referenced one “fun, up-tempo country song” which includes “a fiddle. I’ll say that much. It’s a new version of Chappell.” Plus “a couple of ballads and a mid-tempo rock song.”
The Universal Lesson in Chappell Roan’s Audacious Statement
Back in the MTV era, the celebrity experience went something like this: person gets famous, person is hounded by paparazzi, photographs of said person go on sale to the highest tabloid bidder, rinse and repeat. Maybe fans would wait outside hotels and venues for autographs. And maybe there’d be a few stalkers tracking down a house phone number now and then. But mostly being a celebrity was a physical experience, one defined by running from camera flashes and trying not to advertise one’s whereabouts too much.
The ’90s and ’00s were famously not a fun time to be a celeb. But now, it seems, the boundaries between A-listers and fans have been eroded even further. We don’t need paparazzi and tabloids so much when we have our own phones—we can be the paparazzi and the tabloids. And social media means we can find out not only where a celebrity is, but where their family is, too. We can see who they’re friends with, where they’ve been going, and which burger joint they frequent at 3 p.m. when they’re hungover (even if they don’t post, you can bet that somebody near them will have done). Celebrities are under constant surveillance, and if you reach a certain level of fame, your personal life is going to be sacrificed as a result.
This is a life that 26-year-old pop star Chappell Roan isn’t willing to accept for herself. On Friday afternoon she posted on her Instagram: “For the past 10 years I’ve been going non-stop with my project, and it comes to the point that I need to draw lines and set boundaries,” she wrote. “I’ve been in too many non-consensual physical and social interactions, and I just need to lay it out and remind you, women don’t owe you shit.” She then goes on to say that when she is on stage or at a press event she is “at work,” but “[in] any other circumstance, I am not in work mode.” She continues: “Please stop touching me. Please stop being weird to my family and friends… And please: don’t call me Kayleigh.”
Chappell isn’t the first famous person to say some variation of “celebs don’t owe you everything” (in 2016, Justin Bieber stopped doing fan meet-and-greets because he said they made him feel drained and “like a zoo animal”). But she is one of the first to make such an unwavering statement so early on in her career. This time last year, not many people knew the name Chappell Roan. Now, the name’s a household one and you’d recognize her face even out of drag. So she’s nipping the situation in the bud before going any further. In the same way that you might decide, early on, to not reply to work emails out of hours, or to not follow your boss on social media, Chappell is saying that when she is not performing (read: being paid to perform or make a work-related appearance), she needn’t be switched on.
The Cool, Sexy Rabbi Is Hollywood’s New Favorite Trope—But Just How Accurate Is It?
Growing up in a Reform-meets-atheist household where my H&H bagel-slicing skills were deemed far more important than learning my Torah portion for a bat mitzvah that I didn’t want in the first place and my parents didn’t want to pay for, I gleaned most of my knowledge of Jewish faith and tradition not in temple, but in front of the television.
The first TV rabbi that I can remember seeing appeared—like so many good things—in Sex and the City; I watched, rapt, as Charlotte York attempted to convert to Judaisim out of love for her bald, bullish, very Jewish boyfriend Harry Goldenblatt, only to have her local rabbi reject her three times (which is apparently a real thing?) before grudgingly inviting her over for Shabbos dinner with his family. By Season 1 of And Just Like That… two decades later, Charlotte York-Goldenblatt had become a full-on Jewish mother with Hari Nef as her family’s rabbi. (Quite the upgrade!)
Watching Nef—a Jewish actress who first broke out playing a Weimar Germany-era trans woman on Transparent—perform a joyful, extremely chic “they mitzvah” for Charlotte’s nonbinary child Rock felt like the ultimate sign that we, as a faith, had evolved past staid, Fiddler on the Roof-coded depictions of Jewish spiritual leaders onscreen and into a more vibes-based rabbinical era.
There have, of course, been a few hotties along the way: Mandy Patinkin as a dripping wet yeshiva student in Yentl; Ben Stiller as Rabbi Jake Schram in 2000’s Keeping the Faith. But now, a few years after Kathryn Hahn played the beautiful, good-hearted, fuckboy-dating Rabbi Raquel on Transparent (inspiring me to don a modest dress and a tallit one Halloween), we have Adam Brody starring as a rabbi on the new Netflix rom-com series Nobody Wants This. Seeing The O.C.’s Seth Cohen—one of television’s first truly infatuation-worthy, non-assimilated Nice Jewish Boys—take on perhaps the most exalted role in the Jewish spiritual world makes me feel a) quite old and b) glad to see the rabbi enter cool, down-to-earth, romantic-lead territory.
With Their New Album Live Wire, Tom Rasmussen Celebrates the Quieter Moments of Queer Joy
Tom Rasmussen has always worn many hats. (Quite literally, in some cases: the musician first made themself known to the wider world as their former drag alter-ego, Crystal, a Russia-born, Lancashire-raised songstress with a penchant for fascinators.) They’ve written two books, co-composed a musical, and even served as a sex and relationships columnist for Vogue. But the hat they’ve always felt most comfortable wearing—and which they returned to in earnest a few years ago—was pop music. “I think it’s so embarrassing to be like, ‘I’m a storyteller,’ because that’s what annoying people say,” Rasmussen says, with typically self-effacing humor. “But I think that’s what I’ve done across all my work, and it really came to the forefront when I started writing my own music, for myself.”
In 2023, Rasmussen released their debut album, Body Building, on Globe Town Records: a heady, dance-pop rollercoaster of a record whose more euphoric moments were counterbalanced by remarkably vulnerable lyrics charting the peaks and troughs of coming out as nonbinary, and the double-edged sword of visibility. Now, just 18 months later, Rasmussen has returned with its follow-up, Live Wire—and is ready to wear their heart on their sleeve in a different, more hopeful way. “I’m really pro big and beautiful, vast emotions,” Rasmussen says of the more introspective tone of the new record, which delves into the smaller, quieter moments of their life—from casual hook-ups to marriage and their most intimate friendships. “I’m a funny person, but I’m also quite emotional and actually quite sincere.”