Vogue

Forged by Fire Heading into 2023, celebrations of the Chinese New Year—also known as the Lunar New Year or the Spring Festival—offered a joyful jumping-off point for “Ring In the New!” (page 82), a fashion story styled by global contributing editor Gabriella Karefa-Johnson and photographed by Theo Liu. In it, the striking shapes and colors of the clothes are set off by the work of Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang, who hosted the shoot at his rambling 28-acre property in Morris County, New Jersey. Born in Quanzhou, a port city on the Taiwan Strait, Cai came of age amid the gunfire and cannon blasts that accompanied the Cultural Revolution—an experience that later informed the large-scale explosion events and inventive use of gunpowder at the heart of his practice. (Remember those mesmerizing fireworks…

At 21, Emma Chamberlain is as “new” Hollywood as they come. For the uninitiated, the digital creator dropped out of her Bay Area high school in 2017 and moved to Los Angeles alone, at 17, to pursue YouTube stardom. She quickly found a 3 million–strong following that propelled her to sign with UTA, take home numerous Streamy Awards (arguably the Oscars of online creation), and become a fixture of Paris Fashion Week. Chamberlain isn’t just on YouTube; many people credit her with creating the ubiquitous editing style that now pervades the platform—quick cuts, text-heavy screens, carefully selected pauses—and that keeps viewers tuned in to the mundanities of her day. The marketing opportunities soon followed, from Chamberlain Coffee, with its Zoomer-friendly vanilla and matcha blends, to endorsement deals with brands including…

PROUNIS While other college students spent their summers goofing off, Jean Prounis, 29, was studying chain making, granulation, and bezel making. “I just fell in love with it,” she says, smiling. “I found it a very meditative process.” For the New York–based Prounis, the muse can alight in strange places: The curved legs of a Greek funerary bench encountered in a museum in Pella, for example, inspired a pair of exquisite earrings of rock crystal and lapis—rendered, like all her work, in 22-karat gold—among her latest creations. (Grace Wales Bonner and Kaia Gerber are fans.) The Roz ring, this author’s favorite, offers a single stone sunk in a hammered frame. “Everything is made with purpose, to be worn with purpose,” Prounis declares. Then again, she admits, “I do like to infuse some laughs.”…

On the corner of 51st and Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, the aroma of charcoal-burnished lamb hangs enticingly in the winter air above Midtown’s halal carts. Alas, I can’t stop for a snack. I have a reservation down the block at Le Bernardin, that temple of pristine French seafood helmed by Eric Ripert. Tonight, however, I’m not going for the delicate skate wing or sea trout. Ripert is the first chef in New York City to be cooking with Nature’s Fynd, which is not seafood at all, but a protein fermented from an extremophilic fungal microbe (Fusarium strain flavolapis or “yellow stone,” nicknamed Fy) discovered by NASA-funded scientists in an acidic hot spring in Yellowstone National Park. “I really think it’s fantastic,” says chef Ripert, as my first course arrives—a tender puck…

In the private basement lounge of Henry Jacques’s recently opened Avenue Montaigne fragrance flagship situated across from the Pont de l’Alma in Paris, Rafael Nadal is being uncharacteristically expressive—a rarity for the often tight-lipped tennis legend. Despite 20 years on the sport’s biggest stages, Nadal has maintained a near-absolute privacy around his personal life, especially his relationship with his wife, María Francisca Perelló. “One of the most important things—and what I consider to be one of my greatest successes—is that María and I have been able to have a really normal life,” says Nadal. The couple met as teenagers in Manacor, Mallorca, and were together for 14 years before they wed in 2019; their first child, a baby boy also named Rafael, arrived last October. “We’re moving to the next…

We all know Ciara from her platinum-selling oeuvre, but there’s another side to her. These days, what really drives her is her work with the Why Not You Foundation, which she runs with her husband, Denver Broncos quarterback Russell Wilson. Sure, she has a new record coming out (on her own label, no less), but it’s the philanthropic achievements she focuses her gratitude on. “Where you come from in life does not determine how far you’ll go,” she says, emphasizing how she pushes herself to dream big. “Every day I ask myself, why not us?” That mantra—why not us?—is the catalyst for Ciara’s work with the foundation. Since Why Not You launched in 2014, it has raised over $10 million for pediatric cancer research and opened a tuition-free charter school, the Why…