Table of contents for Volume 1, 2024 in W Magazine

Mustafa Yanaz Hairstylist, “Best Performances” (page 88) What is the first film that made a big impression on you? The Lion King. What do you consider to be the most memorable film scene of all time? In The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, when the paralyzed Jean-Dominique Bauby communicates his desire to write a book by blinking his left eyelid to select letters from the alphabet. The scene beautifully captures his determination and strength despite his debilitating condition. Do you have a favorite film quote? “Why so serious?,” from The Dark Knight. Jo Rodgers Writer, “Flash Forward: Torishéju” (page 58) What do you consider to be the film with the best fashion? The costumes in Little Women are enchanting—layers, capes, collars! “March sisters at home” could be my style polestar. Is…

Georgia May Jagger has changed out of the stripy sweater she was wearing when she arrived at a photo studio in north London, and is now in a sheer black dress with spectacular silver disco heels. The British Korean model Sang Woo Kim is topless. And Daniel Lee, the 38-year-old designer who took the helm of Burberry in 2022, shows off his impressive guns with a waistcoat slung over his naked torso. Welcome to the latest stage of the Burberry reboot. Lee’s second show for the brand—which took place last September in a tent in Highbury Fields, a park close to Lee’s house in north London—concluded with a bare-chested male model striding down the runway. So is sex an important ingredient of his vision? “I think sex is important for…

Talking Heads Band Your 1984 film, Stop Making Sense, was recently rereleased by A24. Its raw simplicity stands in contrast to the highly produced stadium tour films of today, and it is still widely regarded as the greatest concert film ever made. Was it your aim to do away with the smoke and mirrors so the audience could focus purely on the music?  David Byrne: The emphasis really goes to the performers when you remove all of that stuff from the show. As an audience member, I’ve discovered that you’re more interested in seeing people than you are in seeing fireworks. Fireworks make you go “ooh” and “aah,” but it’s people—and the interactions between them—that really move you. Do you think that’s why it continues to resonate, particularly with younger…

The annual Best Performances issue is always a highlight for W—a chance for us to pay tribute to the biggest and brightest stars on the planet. It is also, as you can imagine, somewhat of a logistical nightmare: Just try coordinating the schedules of 28 major Oscar contenders, a renowned photographer, and half a dozen hair and makeup artists. It’s an all-consuming effort full of twists and turns, but when the pictures come in, we are always elated and memories of the drama seem to melt away. This year, photographer Juergen Teller and his creative partner (and wife), Dovile Drizyte, called me and said that they wanted to shoot on the most glamorous street in Los Angeles. I’m from L.A., and I couldn’t figure out what they meant. Was it…

Two days before her show in Paris last October, the British-Nigerian-Brazilian designer Torishéju Dumi was sitting in a model casting studio when her mentor, the fashion editor and consultant Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, quietly pulled her out of the room. Karefa-Johnson had news: Naomi Campbell had confirmed that she would open the show for Dumi’s brand, Torishéju; Paloma Elsesser would close it. “Gabriella called in all her friends, called in all her favors,” says Dumi, at her home in east London. “She made it happen.” With 48 hours to go, “everything started to fall into place. When people heard that Naomi was doing it, they were like, ‘Can we do it?’ It was a mad thing.” This was the first time Dumi, 31, had ever cast a show—in fact, the first time…

Fittingly for a hip-hop multi-hyphenate known for his creative sampling, Pharrell Williams remixed the Louis Vuitton codes with abandon in his first outing as men’s creative director of the brand. Chief among these riffs was his artful tweaking of the Damier, the brown and black checkerboard design that has become a ubiquitous Louis Vuitton signifier and a staple of chic wardrobes and airport luggage carousels everywhere. Williams, who launched his clothing lines Billionaire Boys Club and IceCream with A Bathing Ape’s Nigo in the aughts, is a master at manipulating visual cues to influence the culture. The genre bender used the checkerboard motif as a canvas to express his new vision for the house, working alongside digital creator ET Artist to treat the squares like eight-bit Atari graphics. He reimagined…