Harper's Bazaar UK FEB 16

EDITOR’S PICKS Who knew that a pussy-bow blouse could be so flattering? As a child of the Seventies, I was initially resistant to the return of a look associated with Margaret Thatcher, but am now converted. Banish any thought of Iron Lady-era skirt-suits; I prefer nautical trousers for a touch of Coco Chanel’s signature chic. Welcome to our February issue, which explores the intriguing relationship between fashion, film, fame and feminism, as the awards season gathers pace. Bazaar’s cover star this month, Cate Blanchett (page 86), has already won a clutch of these glittering prizes in previous years, and is tipped for another trophy for her brilliant performance in Carol. But as is often the case with glamorous and successful actresses, Blanchett’s outings on the red carpet can be as strategically important…

Lydia Slater ‘Seeing my old school friend Rachel Weisz being blitzed by the photographers on the red carpet during the London Film Festival was thrilling and horrifying in equal measure,’ says Bazaar ’s incoming deputy editor as she puts the A-list phenomenon under the microscope in ‘Balancing act’ (page 136). A former features editor of Harpers & Queen, she joins from editing The Week: Fashion, which she devised and launched in 2013. What makes you feel like an A-lister? ‘My Stephen Webster jewellery.’ Your top film heroine ‘Hildy Johnson in His Girl Friday – an intoxicating combination of sparkling wit, sartorial elegance and journalistic integrity.’ What do you wish you had more time for? ‘Galloping across Dartmoor.’ Eimear Mc Bride It may have taken nine years to get her debut novel A Girl…

SHIRTING Sometimes the simple things make the biggest statement. So it is with the shirt: always the cornerstone of an intelligent wardrobe, for S/S 16 it’s been turned into a highlight piece in its own right, worn back-to-front to show a glimpse of shoulder, transformed into a breezy dress, or otherwise reworked in simple cotton at MICHAEL KORS with a light-as-air fluidity. SHINE Sequins, crystals, Lurex, lamé, glittering paillettes and an overload of embellishments: there are rich new pickings to be found. Opt for easy summer shimmer, space-age metallics or full-blown Eighties glamour. With liquid silver leggings at ISABEL MARANT, a shiver of fringing at MAX MARA and over-the-top all-over sparkle at LANVIN, these are some of the season’s most gorgeous clothes. THE NEW FEMININITY There’s a delicate balance struck between seduction and elegance this…

The Spanish artist Joan Miró once wrote: ‘When I stand in front of a canvas, I never know what I’m going to do – and nobody is more surprised than I at what comes out.’ A contemporary of Picasso, Miró was a key figure in the Modernist and Surrealist movements, relocating from his native Barcelona to Majorca, where he lived and worked for 27 years until his death in 1983. ‘His studio was a world of colour, paint, brushes and easels,’ says his grandson Punyet Miró. ‘I remember visiting my grandfather as a child, and the intensity of his workplace made a tremendous impression on me.’ Now, Punyet has recreated Miró’s studio for a new exhibition. Around 25 paintings and drawings will appear alongside some of the artist’s personal belongings,…

She’s surrounded by men in pinstripe suits, and you can sense a nasty, latent misogyny There’s something in John le Carré’s writing and the world he creates that is intrinsically British. He’s a great analyst of our national psyche, as much as a master storyteller of espionage thrillers. His 1993 novel The Night Manager has long been among the favourites of Hugh Laurie, who had been trying to get involved in an adaptation for years. In the autumn of 2014, Hugh and I signed up to join the six-part television series for the BBC and AMC: Hugh would play the arms dealer Richard Onslow Roper, described by Le Carré as ‘the worst man in the world’, with myself as Jonathan Pine, a former British soldier, the night manager of the title,…

The painting is magnetic. There’s drama in the pallor of her skin and the curve of her body. Her head is angled away, nose turned up, and it seems like she doesn’t care… but really she does. Her stance is daring you to look at her.’ It is thus that the choreographer Christopher Wheeldon explains the appeal of Madame X, a portrait of the Parisian socialite Virginie Gautreau by John Singer Sargent. Wheeldon first discovered the work, which hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as a 19-year-old, when he left the Royal Ballet to join the New York City Ballet and make his home in Manhattan. The painting was not simply a record of Gautreau’s pale beauty; it triggered her ruin. The 1884 portrait was exhibited in the Paris Salon…