Table of contents for April 2024 in Harper's Bazaar

THE POSSIBILITY ISSUE THE WORLD CAN sometimes seem filled with things that are intractable or predetermined: limitations on what we can do or who we can be; obstacles in the way of growth or progress; systems, pressures, and realities that can restrict our field of vision. But finding ways to see beyond all that is part of what makes us both human and extraordinary. It’s something we unlock through creativity, ingenuity, art, and science, but also love, family, friendship, community, activism, and a multitude of other expressions of promise and potential. Believing that there is something more, something better, something brighter on the other side of a hill or a moment is always an article of faith but also a matter of perspective. That sense of possibility can be an…

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For more than four decades, playwright and theater educator Paula Vogel has been challenging audiences to confront issues and impulses we often shy away from. Vogel’s Obie Award–winning 1992 tragicomic play, The Baltimore Waltz, was a meditation on the AIDS crisis at a time when the disease—and the fear, stigmatization, and misinformation that surrounded it—was wreaking devastation. Her 1994 one-act play, Hot ’N’ Throbbing, explored the relationship between pornography and domestic violence, while 1997’s How I Learned to Drive dealt with sexual abuse and misogyny and earned her a Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Vogel made her Broadway debut in 2017 with Indecent, which mused on queer love, antisemitism, and censorship. This month marks her return with the world premiere of Mother Play, produced by Second Stage Theater and directed by…

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What if Lorraine O’Grady—acclaimed artist, glorious wit, and the very best kind of miscreant renegade—turned out to be a knight in shining armor? It’s a question I find myself contemplating as I sit across from her in the café at the Whitney Museum of American Art, just a few blocks from her studio in Manhattan’s West Village. For more than four decades, O’Grady has exercised a kind of valiance as she has sought to create a place for herself within the racism, sexism, and inhospitality of the art world. Beginning in the late 1970s and early ’80s, her conceptual and performance art took aim at the constellation of forces that conspired to marginalize artists of color in mainstream institutions and galleries—and women of color especially. Instead, O’Grady found community with…

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It was at the National Book Awards last fall that I decided I wanted to devote an issue to the idea of possibility. The poet Jericho Brown was onstage to present Rita Dove with a lifetime achievement award. “I imagine I don’t have to tell you what seeing Rita’s face on posters in the schools and libraries where I was reared meant to me and my sense of possibility,” he said. “Possibility is what allows us the nerve to write and to believe that something can be made of our scribbles. Most of us are here in spite of, and sometimes because of, the fact that someone else thought the life we chose, the artist’s life, was not a sustainable life.… I’m here today because I am the descendant of…

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Every day, I wear the same necklace. It’s a gold chain with a charm on it: the letter A in blue enamel for my first child, Adar, who is now almost 7. When I gave birth to my second child this past summer, I went to pick out a matching charm to add to the necklace, an N for Naomi. Something about it felt off, though. In the six years that passed between having my first and second child, I experienced four losses. Some I experienced early in pregnancy, within the first trimester; some happened later. I found out about one loss when I went in for my anatomy scan, which occurs at 20 weeks. When I thought about wearing this necklace every day with these two charms to represent…

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FEATURED TRACKS 1. “OPEN MY HEART” Yolanda Adams 2. “SERENITY” Lihtz 3. “GET BY” Talib Kweli 4. “PROUD MARY” Tina Turner 5. “WE WILL ROCK YOU” Queen 6. “WHERE IS THE LOVE?” Black Eyed Peas 7. “NOTHING BUT LOVE” Lu Kala 8. “BLACKBERRY MOLASSES” Mista 9. “BLACK MAGIC” Styles feat. Angie Stone 10. “GIMME DA LITE” Southside and Lil Yachty 11. “METAMORPHOSIS” Infinity Song 12. “WHOKNOWS” Musiq Soulchild 13. “ANTS TO YOU, GODS TO WHO?” André 3000 14. “WATERFALL (I ADORE YOU)” Yebba 15. “BETTER DAYS” Le’Andria Johnson 16. “ALL MY LIFE (IN THE GHETTO)” Jay Rock feat. Lil Wayne and Will.I.Am 17. “IMPOSSIBLE” Teezo Touchdown Since exploding onto the scene in 2018 with Whack World, an eccentric audiovisual EP that stretched the limits of traditional hip-hop, the 28-year-old rapper has opened for…

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IT WAS AN INDELIBLE IMAGE to mark the end of the spring collections: On the runway at Miu Miu, the last major show of the season, look after look was paired with a big leather top-handle bag loaded to the brim, even spilling over, with stuff. You could make out the straps of a bra or a tank top or a heel. It was packed so full, it could no longer zip shut. As the runway visuals made their way to social media, they were met with knowing recognition from those once again schlepping to work with laptops, gym clothes, and lunches crammed into totes as return-to-office mandates have ramped up. The look seemed to cement another “core,” one of those trends on hyperdrive that Gen Z loves to breathlessly…

The director Wes Anderson has described train travel as an “endangered species … which is nevertheless very suited to our time.” What Anderson is referring to is a current longing for the analog and offline, for experiences that keep us grounded in the present and move at a slower pace. He should know. His 2007 film, The Darjeeling Limited, was memorably set on a luxury train traveling across the Indian countryside, stoking imaginations for years to come. This is what led the hospitality company Belmond to approach him a few years ago to reinvent Cygnus, a 1950s-era carriage for the company’s British Pullman train, which travels through England. It’s as elaborate and vivid as his film sets: walls of glossy marquetry work depicting clouds and waves, seats upholstered with custom…

According to Padma Lakshmi, there are several reasons why she left Top Chef. It is a cold, wintry morning in New York, and I’m sitting across from Lakshmi at the Mercer hotel in SoHo as she explains her thinking. She is dressed casually in jeans and a long-sleeve shirt—but she had arrived bundled in a cropped fuchsia faux-fur Tom Ford jacket, a recent present to herself. We order breakfast. For her, two eggs poached, with a side of avocado and sourdough toast. “It was really taking a toll on me physically to digest that much food in a day,” Lakshmi explains in that unmistakable voice, low and mellifluous, like honey sliding down a spoon. After 19 seasons, she had reached her limit. Each year, she gained 10 to 15 pounds…