Table of contents for September 2024 in Harper's Bazaar

TAKING THE LEAD is never easy. Sometimes it’s a choice or even a pursuit. Often, though, it’s a position and a responsibility that has been thrust upon people as a product of a particular time or circumstance or because of who they are or what they do or represent. To be at the vanguard—of a field, of a movement, of a moment—is about much more than leadership in the traditional sense. It’s about the way certain individuals live or embody something we’ve never seen before. It’s about their willingness to be the first and boldly venture into uncharted waters or the unknown. It’s about their conviction and tenacity in the face of backlash or resistance and their drive and determination to break boundaries and create new paradigms and possibilities. It’s…

WHY DON’T YOU…? LAYER one over a short-sleeve KNIT in a contrasting HUE.…

In 1972, Ralph Lauren showed his first women’s ready-to-wear collection at an intimate gathering inside his Manhattan offices. Taking cues from his wife Ricky’s love of tailoring, the designer presented a wardrobe inspired by menswear that included a sleek tuxedo gown crafted in an elegant column shape. Three years later, that gown would evolve into a tuxedo suit, but one with a distinctly feminine silhouette featuring a double-breasted jacket with a fitted waist and pants cut long and loose for easy movement. Today, Lauren’s Callahan jacket and Barnet pants, shown on his Fall 2024 runway, remain pillars of his sartorial universe. They’re the kind of classics that live with you forever and never lose their charm.…

On a balmy New York evening last spring, Ralph Lauren held his Fall/Holiday 2024 show at his Madison Avenue design studio. Leave it to Ralph to install country-clubby mahogany paneling and handsome leather upholstery in a modern, all-glass Manhattan office building. I was interviewing the legendary Glenn Close backstage, and I mentioned we were marking more than a half century of Ralph Lauren. “This September, I will have been a working actress for 50 years,” she replied wistfully. She put her hands up to make air quotes and smiled. “Thank God!” Then, transforming into Sunset Boulevard’s Norma Desmond, she turned to the production folks filming our chat and asked if they could switch the cameras to highlight her good side (her right) and improve her lighting. “I’m sorry,” she implored,…

Four cities per season. Hundreds of shows per city. Double-digit looks per show. It all amounts to thousands of new runway looks every year. And hundreds more appear on the red carpet and in the streets, where they’re photographed and then broadcast across the world. On social media, millions post their daily dressing rituals, which are then liked and commented on by millions more. We are bombarded with fashion in an endless scroll of outfits. How, then, does a look stand out? What makes it imprint into our collective consciousness and, sometimes, even change the way we dress? For our annual Icons issue, we sought to not only figure that out but also anoint the most iconic looks throughout history. We started with the nipped-waist jacket and full skirt from…

Italy’s capital is a dramatic mash-up of ancient and modern, flawed and reinvented, chaos and control. Winding through the streets, visitors can have the heady experience of turning a corner and feeling like they traveled back in time. “It’s a city with so many historical layers and styles,” says Daria Reina, who, along with her husband, Andrea Ferolla, founded the cult boutique Chez Dede. “You can feel the spirits of the people who came before and left behind their soul.” The couple just opened Superattico Monserrato, a 1,400-square-foot penthouse apartment in the same building as the store. Eclectically appointed with contemporary art, bed linens designed by Reina and Ferolla, vintage Marcel Breuer chairs, and Venini chandeliers, it’s like living in a Chez Dede world. The Superattico is one of several…

DEEP ROOTS Scalp serums can leave behind a sticky residue, but Color Wow Youth Juice Collagen Scalp Treatment ($46) instantly melts into skin. Like a vitamin-packed tonic for your scalp, the powerful formula utilizes an easy-to-absorb collagen-identical peptide to reduce shedding, improve hair strength, and boost scalp hydration in as little as one month. REINVENTED CLASSICS A red lip never goes out of style (especially during the fall and winter), but this season’s hottest color gets a lighter upgrade, courtesy of Byredo Satin Lipstick ($55; SBZ). The new formula comes in 10 easy-to-wear shades—including Fire & Rain, a universal red shown here—featuring rose-flower extract for a smooth glide and sheer finish that’s foolproof. We love a crimson lip with minimal makeup on the rest of the face. COLOR THERAPY Inspired…

Tory Burch and I go way back. Her Reva ballet flats, with the brand’s T logo emblazoned on a medallion affixed to the toe, were a status signifier at my high school, an assignation of class in the mid-aughts. Then, they were everywhere. Five years later, she made an appearance on the fashion show of the moment, Gossip Girl, alongside star Blake Lively, who seemed the perfect avatar for the brand: blond, magnetic, a little preppy, a little boho, the consummate New York Upper East Sider. It was an aesthetic of which Burch herself, who lived at the Pierre Hotel and was a fixture on the benefit circuit, was the perfect embodiment. The look was so Tory, a wardrobe made up of Moroccan-inspired tunics paired with crisp white trousers, graphic-print…

If you were to stop people on the street and ask them to name a supermodel, chances are they’d say Naomi Campbell. Over the course of a boundary-breaking career, she has cemented her place in the collective consciousness as the ne plus ultra of supermodels. It’s no wonder she is currently the subject of an exhibition at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. But don’t mistake it for a retrospective, a sign of someone looking back on a career that was; Naomi is Naomi because she is still walking and working as much as she ever has. For our September Icons issue, Campbell was photographed by Malick Bodian on a rooftop in Paris and styled by our style director at large, Carlos Nazario. Our executive digital director, Lynette Nylander, persevered through…

WHY DON’T YOU…? Play it CASUAL with a pair of SPORTY KICKS.…

When Italian model, philanthropist, and designer Elsa Peretti debuted her first collection for Tiffany & Co. in September 1974, it marked the beginning of a long-standing creative partnership that would produce some of the jeweler’s most sought-after pieces. Influenced by nature and organic forms, Peretti’s designs were imbued with an extraordinary sense of whimsicality: Her signature Bone cuff was fashioned to form to its wearer’s wrist; her Bean designs played with the iconography of the bean as a seed of life; her Open Heart styles were conceived as symbols of love and possibility. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Peretti’s first collection, Tiffany & Co. is releasing a new selection of items inspired by her creations, many of them set with precious stones and rendered in bold new scales.…

There are actors, and then there actors—the type of performers who bring a life and vitality to each and every role, no matter how small or large, and routinely take on gutsy projects that inspire extraordinary devotion and passionate defenses. They make everything they touch better, richer, and more complex. Natasha Lyonne, Carrie Coon, and Elizabeth Olsen all fit the bill; they make the kind of work that sticks with you long after the credits roll. They have a true reverence for filmmaking—and the artistry that goes into it. And this month, they star as sisters in Azazel Jacobs’s His Three Daughters, which premieres September 20 on Netflix. The film follows the trio of estranged sisters, who all converge in New York City to be with their dying father in…

There are NO BOUNDS when it comes to BEAUTY BREAKTHROUGHS, and TECHNOLOGY is the ONE COMMON DENOMINATOR. Let these PRODUCTS, TOOLS, and SOLUTIONS level up your beauty ROUTINE. Our beauty cabinets are now filled with next-level gadgets—and for good reason. “Thanks to technology such as miniaturized devices and artificial intelligence, we can achieve more speed, performance, individualism, and precision than we could with just our fingers alone,” says Guive Balooch, the global managing director of augmented beauty and open innovation at L’Oréal Groupe. We tested hundreds of these tech-forward innovations across hair care, skincare, makeup, and fragrance this year; here are the standouts that are expanding the boundaries of beauty.…

As you enter the exhibition “Naomi: In Fashion” at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, you are greeted by a video montage of Naomi Campbell’s iconic walk down the many runways across her 40-year career: a flirty sashay from baby Naomi at Todd Oldham in the mid ’90s, a moody saunter in a black silk outfit for Isaac Mizrahi from Fall 1997, a dead-serious stomp in a sequined black Saint Laurent tuxedo just a few years ago—all distinctly different, all distinctly Naomi. A solo V&A exhibition on any one person, particularly during his or her lifetime, is rare and sought-after. (Previous honors have been bestowed upon Alexander McQueen, Frida Kahlo, and David Bowie.) I also observe, quietly, two Black girls, perhaps 16 or 17, who are transfixed, staring closely at the…

The clinics did not close one at a time but in droves. Within four months of the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June 2022, dozens had been forced to stop offering abortions and 26 had closed for good. By November 2023, Idaho had lost 22 percent of its practicing obstetricians. Almost one million women and girls live in that state. There are now only around 200 such doctors qualified to care for them. Experts anticipate a grim reconfiguring across the U.S.—a concentration of practitioners who are equipped to treat pregnant people in blue states, an exodus of trained doctors in red ones. For women nationwide managing both wanted and unwanted pregnancies, the effect of Roe’s overturning has been devastating. It stands to get worse. This summer,…

A legendary musician, songwriter, and producer in his own right, Rodgers helped usher in the disco era with his seminal band, Chic, which he cofounded with bassist Bernard Edwards in 1976 amid the club scene in New York. “Here were all these different people—gay, Black, Asian—partying in complete harmony,” Rodgers says. “I wanted to belong to that community.” After releasing a series of smash hits with Chic, including the of-tsampled “Good Times” and “Le Freak,” Rodgers went on to cowrite Sister Sledge’s 1979 breakout hit “We Are Family” and collaborate in all kinds of groundbreaking ways with the likes of Diana Ross (“I’m Coming Out”), David Bowie (“Let’s Dance”), Madonna (“Like a Virgin”), and, more recently, Daft Punk (“Get Lucky”) and Beyoncé (“Cuff It”). For our Icons issue, Rodgers…

WHY DON’T YOU…? Balance the silhouette’s softness with a STRUCTURED EAST-WEST BAG.…

WHY DON’T YOU…? Lean into the BOHO VIBES with an ornate set of CHANDELIER EARRINGS.…

I was seven years old when my family moved to New York from London. It was January of 1992, and my mother had just been named editor in chief of Harper’s Bazaar. She’d been the editor of Vogue in the U.K., where both my parents were from. She loved that job, having started out at the magazine two decades earlier as an assistant. We had family and friends in London. One of my earliest memories involved presenting flowers to Princess Diana. She and our mom had gotten to know each other during her time at Vogue. Looking back now, it all seems a bit surreal. But even as a kid, I had this strong sense that it must have taken a pretty special opportunity for her and our dad to…

A lipstick is the ultimate accessory in the hands of Celine’s artistic, creative, and image director, Hedi Slimane. Celine Beauté debuts this month at select boutiques with Le Rouge Celine, a single bullet lipstick in a fiery red, Rouge Triomphe. Housed in a refillable gold tube that borrows inspiration from both Louis XVI jewelry and art deco, the radiant formula is lightly scented with notes of rose and rice powder, a nod to Slimane’s olfactive signature that runs through all of the house’s fragrance offerings. The body of the lipstick bears the brand’s Triomphe emblem, and the decision to launch with only a single shade of red is a wink to the past. (A red elephant was the brand’s first logo.) For those looking for even more luxury, there are…

WHO DO YOU look up to when you’re the one name-checked as the first, the best, the source of inspiration? That’s the question everyone at the vanguard of things contemplates at one time or another. South Side Chicago native Chaka Khan once sang “I’m Every Woman,” but alas she is not—a fact made abundantly clear by a singular career in music that has spanned five decades. Chelsea Clinton was the first First Child of the internet era, and she has used the platform that has come with growing up in a famous political family to advocate for health equity and reproductive rights, both in the U.S. and abroad. Crazy Rich Asians and In the Heights director Jon M. Chu, who tackles a tale of two witches this fall in the…

LOUNGING AROUND her Manhattan apartment, she chats on the phone while casually getting dressed. She goes out with an artist friend. They drop by his place before swinging by a bodega and stopping to talk to some men on the street on their way to lunch. They sit down at a coffee shop in NoLIta, where she produces a bottle of hot sauce from her bag, which she places on the table next to her cell phone and reaches for between bites to add some heat to a plate of rice and beans. Next, they make their way up to Electric Lady, the Greenwich Village recording studio Jimi Hendrix made famous, so she can lay down some vocals for her forthcoming album. Throughout, she periodically fields calls from her friends…