Harper's Bazaar February 2021

WHAT DOES IT MEAN to be part of a community? It’s a question that has come up again and again in a year when so many of us have been driven to reconsider how we live alongside, and relate to, one another—and an idea that we explore throughout this issue. Certainly, many of our established notions of community have been tested in the past 12 months by the pandemic; by isolation and inequality; by social, cultural, and political division. But in other ways, those same forces have helped expand our sense of what a community can be and do. Harper’s Bazaar is a community of editors, writers, photographers, stylists, designers, subjects, and readers who come together to collaborate, tell the stories, and exchange the ideas and perspectives that make up…

In early September, I had a conversation with my seven-year-old son where I was trying to explain the importance of wearing a mask. “You do it to keep yourself safe,” I told him, “but also to keep your friends at school and in the park safe.” In some ways, it was an introduction to the essence of community. The idea of community is one that my team and I have been thinking a lot about lately: What does community look like now, when we’ve had to isolate from one another for so many months in order to keep everyone safe? And how do we create and foster community despite that physical separation? We decided to dedicate this issue to the concept of community, which we explore through a variety of…

12th“KAWS: WHAT PARTY” The Brooklyn Museum plays host to the first major New York survey of KAWS’s 25-year career, chronicling his rise from provocative street artist to art-world heavyweight. A selection of drawings, pop-culture-inspired paintings (Elmo and Sponge-Bob SquarePants star), furniture, augmented reality works, graffiti, and covetable collectibles will all be on display. The show will also feature several large-scale sculptures of KAWS’s trademark Companion character. KAWS’s AT THIS TIME, 2013 12thMINARI Set in the 1980s, writer-director Lee Isaac Chung’s Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize–winning drama tells the story of a Korean American family whose resilience is tested when they move to a remote Arkansas farm in pursuit of the American dream. 26thCHERRY In this crime drama from directors Anthony and Joe Russo, Tom Holland plays an Army medic…

RYAN McGINLEY PHOTOGRAPHER “The Arrival of Awkwafina,” page 90 “The intersection where the queer community meets skateboarding culture. I’ve been documenting these two beautiful communities in New York City over the past two decades, and I continue to serve them daily.” E. ALEX JUNG WRITER “The Arrival of Awkwafina,” page 90 “What I remember most acutely is hitting tennis balls on a clay court, orange dirt caked on my socks, and the Han River glinting on the horizon. I’m in Seoul with a gay men’s tennis group and feel a peculiar mix of adrenaline, joy, and freedom.” JENNY ZHANG WRITER “To Sustain a World,” page 126 “Until recently, I thought the only way to be part of a community was to erase parts of myself. What joy it has been…

At 22, King Princess, née Mikaela Straus, has quickly established herself as a singular pop savant thanks to her raw, emotional anthems about queer love that transcend genre and audience. When asked to curate a playlist around this issue’s theme of community, she noted, “I don’t feel I exist in one specific community. Whether you’re gay or straight, regardless of who you are, we can all get down to certain songs, and we can all see the beauty in certain things. That’s really what this playlist is about—friendship and not needing to be the same to be united.” Along with electropop legend Róisín Murphy’s dance track “Murphy’s Law,” King Princess included T. Rex’s “Cosmic Dancer,” about “a character who can’t do anything but be himself”; Florence + the Machine’s “Grace,”…

Stylist’s Tip Dress for your mood with this reversible hat that features ecru stripes on one side and recycled denim on the other.…