W Magazine

Tyler Mitchell Photographer, “Idol Worship” (page 120) What pop culture moment lives rent-free in your head? Watching Get Out in a New York City movie theater on opening weekend. What music are you excited about right now? I’m an old soul these days. I listen to brass bands, jazz flute, and soul. But if I had to pick something contemporary, I think Ice Spice is fun. And I love Rosalía. What does “pop” mean to you? To me, pop is any important cultural event or image that shifts and shapes our current time. Cassidy George Writer, “Karol G” (page 64) and “Raye” (page 75) Who do you consider the most important pop culture icon of our time? Without question, it’s Kim Kardashian. In my life, though, it’s John Waters, the “king of filth.” What does “pop” mean to you? Pop is the prioritization…

There hasn’t been a more highly anticipated or talked-about show in recent memory than The Idol. Two years ago, W did a story on Sam Levinson, following his massive success as the writer and director of Euphoria. Ever since then, we have been eagerly awaiting what he would do next—and we are thrilled that his new project is finally here. Usually, film and television publicists are eager to share with journalists what’s to come, but that wasn’t the case with The Idol. When I asked to get a sneak peek, a heavily password-protected link was sent to me, and I knew that I had become a member of the intimate club that had watched a short preview of the show. That snippet was enough to convince me that the Idol…

For a compact handbag, the Lady Dior packs a lot of history. Created in 1995 and named after Diana, Princess of Wales, it was gifted to her by Bernadette Chirac, the first lady of France at the time. She was so attached to it, in fact, that of all of Diana’s contributions to style, from her FLY VIRGIN ATLANTIC sweatshirt and cycling shorts combo to the off-the-shoulder “revenge dress” she wore after news broke of her husband’s infidelity, this may be her most enduring one. It’s a quintessential example of how a celebrity and a brand can come together to create a best-seller. A Dior offering ever since, the Lady Dior was hiding in plain sight until the most recent season of The Crown, in which it held its own against…

In 1992, Sandra Bernhard showed up as a guest on Late Show with David Letterman in a full Isaac Mizrahi runway ensemble and perfectly coiffed hair fresh from Oribe’s salon chair. Letterman playfully knocked her look as leftovers from The Addams Family, prompting Bernhard to launch into an extravagant explanatory monologue, working the audience into a frenzy and coaxing a bemused grin out of the host. “We’re giving Babe Paley, we’re giving ’60s, we’re giving high glamour…and the audience loves it, they need it, they reach out for it! Sexual tension!” she shouted, before the room erupted in applause. With her flair for titillation, edginess, and playfulness, Bernhard was among the first to meld the worlds of fashion and comedy. Her career, which kicked off in the late 1970s with a…

“I don’t believe in limitations on what a designer can do,” Willy Chavarria says. “There’s a vast flexibility within my work and my future.” The child of a Mexican immigrant father and an Irish mother, Chavarria, 56, was raised in California’s San Joaquin Valley, where he was a keen observer of the subtleties of stylistic expression in his community. “I didn’t even think of it as fashion, but I was obsessed with how people presented themselves,” he says, speaking on the phone from his studio in Brooklyn. “As I got older, I realized that you could connect with cultures and groups of people via the way you dress.” Though he could document local trends in his sketchbook, Chavarria realized that if he wanted to interact with like-minded creatives, he’d have to…

Marie-Madeleine Diouf recalls how it all started: her love affair with indigo. Growing up in Parcelles Assainies, a working-class neighborhood in Dakar, Senegal’s capital, she would gravitate to traditional dance in her after-school programs. That meant raiding her mother’s closet for vintage wraps—and thus indigo fabrics, prized in her family’s Serer culture. “I was 7, 8 years old,” Diouf says, “and ever since then, I’ve seen life in blue.” For 15 years, Diouf worked as a medical administrator. On the side, with a cheap sewing machine, she made clothes that she took on days off to Banjul, the capital of neighboring Gambia, to sell door-to-door. Then, in 2015, she made the jump. Now, as the owner of NuNu Design by DK, she’s one of the bright stars in Dakar’s art and…