Table of contents for April 2018 in OUT

ELLEN VON UNWERTH Ellen von Unwerth saw both sides of the coin while shooting our drag queen cover stars (“New York Dolls,” page 62), who showed their true, boyish colors when making a street-food pit stop. “Instead of sophisticatedly posing with their hot dogs,” the photographer says, “they all wolfed them down—despite their polished makeup.” Von Unwerth is a regular contributor to Glamour and Vogue. SHANA NAOMI KROCHMAL To escape the harsh realities of 2018, Krochmal has been diving into fiction. “Mostly in an attempt to stay off the internet and stop feeling so frustrated,” the L.A.-based writer says. For this issue, Krochmal, the editor-in-chief at Entertainment Tonight, interviewed Amy Bloom about her new novel, White Houses, the story of Eleanor Roosevelt and her lesbian lover (“The First Lady’s First…

The leather trench coat reached its apex of cool with the Matrix trilogy, when wearing one signaled that you were either a badass digital messiah or just badass. Then, like any suddenly ubiquitous fashion statement, it became played-out and was laid to rest. But the time for a resurrection has come. This season, designers have reembraced the leather trench in myriad silhouettes and colors for a neo Neo kind of cool. Whether you’re looking for a stylish solution on a rainy April day, hoping to cultivate a noirish sense of mystery, or just trying to backbend your way out of a gunfight in the machine apocalypse, this modern classic has you covered.…

FOR MORE THAN three decades, Lola Flash has used her portraiture to explore the meaning of gender and sexual norms, but some of her earliest work concerned itself with documenting the AIDS crisis in New York City. Born in Montclair, N.J., in 1959, Flash grew up in an era before TV shows like The L Word changed a queer teen’s frame of reference. “I really didn’t know I was gay,” she told the writer Sarah Schulman in 2008. “I just thought I was, like, from Mars or something.” After moving to Provincetown in the late 1980s, Flash found herself in the midst of a plague, and was documenting its ravages through her work as part of Art Positive, an affinity offshoot of ACT UP. “As an activist, and an alumnus…

Alan Cumming did not coin the pithy truism “Mean people suck.” But it is something of a guiding sentiment for the actor, who grew up so tormented by his abusive father that he confessed in his autobiography to having no memories of childhood that were “not clouded by fear or humiliation or pain.” Maybe that’s why he’s so determined that no one feel excluded or marginalized at his buzzy new cabaret-themed bar, Club Cumming, in New York’s East Village. “We’ve got zero tolerance for meanness,” he says. “We don’t want mean, and we don’t create an outlet for it.” Case in point: A night before our meeting, Cumming had thrown a 20th anniversary screening of Spice World that included a costume contest—the kind of arena in which you might expect…

Such an Angel When Andrew Garfield was offered the landmark queer role of Prior in Angels in America, he wasn’t sure if he was even “allowed” to accept it. In our March cover story, the actor discussed these trepidations, saying that, while he’s “open to any impulses,” he currently identifies as straight, and thus may not have been the best choice for Tony Kushner’s AIDS-themed play. (Even though Kushner himself chose Garfield for the revival.) “Not only was he allowed to play it, he was lauded for his performance,” ABC News wrote of the show’s run last year at London’s National Theatre. Many other outlets focused on the way the actor described his orientation. “Andrew Garfield Just Got ‘Candid’ About the Openness of His Sexuality,” read Buzzfeed’s headline. Though he…

AG JEANS The denim brand has designed a limited run of 212 styles of a new jean, paying homage to the city’s most popular area code. New Yorkers (and rabid tourists) should feel right at home in them. $212 YEEZY BOOST 700 WAVE RUNNER In collaboration with Stadium Goods, the new outpost will stock a curated assortment of hyped-up, hard-to-find sneakers. These street-style favorites embrace the chunky “dad” shoe trend with funky colors and the Kanye name. Starting from $1,100 TED BAKER HAIR MUD Nordstrom welcomes Ted Baker stateside with the U.S. debut of the British brand’s grooming line. Combining cumin seed extract and olive fruit oil, this mud softens hair, provides a firm hold, and leaves an unfussy matte finish. $24 TIMBERLAND FOR NORDSTROM Celebrating the 45th anniversary of…

Studio 54 was more than just a nightclub. It was a moment in time, when opulence and stunt-queenery ruled supreme; when Warhol partied with Liza; when lamé was a lifestyle. Just as disco never truly died, 54 lives on this season. So leave subtlety at the door (you think that will get in?) and heat up the dance floor with a pair of gold Cuban heels and a luminescent top from the likes of Asos or Bottega Veneta. Meanwhile, word on the street is Oribe’s got that premium white—we mean pomade, of course.…

RELEASED IN 1952, The Member of the Wedding contains the simplest, greatest expression of gay desire any film ever articulated: “The we of me.” The odd turn of phrase is coined by Frankie Addams, a 12-year-old white girl in the American South during the Jim Crow era. Frankie was conceived by novelist Carson McCullers to represent her own sexual ambiguity. When McCullers adapted her book into a stage play in 1950, the role made actress Julie Harris a theater legend. But the film version of The Member of the Wedding is itself legendary: It is one of the first movies to encapsulate essential gay and American social concerns. Frankie and the other main characters black housekeeper Berenice (played by musical theater star Ethel Waters) and Frankie’s androgynous little cousin…

It may be facile to suggest that artists are peacemakers, but they can perhaps break us free of blinkered and reductive “us vs. them” thinking. Jordan Nassar’s work is rooted in his Palestinian identity, but in subtle and rich ways it also illuminates how identity is built on a constant process of cross-pollination and cultural accumulation. As a Palestinian artist who is married to an Israeli, he has a more nuanced understanding of how distinct communities overlap and synthesize than armchair cynics who see only two peoples anchored in opposition. He likes to illustrate his point with the case of the Israeli singer Zehava Ben. As a Mizrahi Jew—the term for emigrants who arrived in Israel from Arab countries like Iraq, Syria, and Morocco—she sings in an ornamental, melismatic style…

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ARIANA DEBOSE has all the makings of a disco diva—the beauty, the backstory, the insane pipes. Never mind that the 27-year-old was born long after the greatly exaggerated rumors of disco’s death. DeBose is one of three women starring in this spring’s Summer: The Donna Summer Musical, in which she plays the legendary singer, who died in 2012. Along with Storm Lever (“Duckling Donna”) and Tony-winner LaChanze (“Diva Donna”), DeBose (“Disco Donna”) will give Broadway audiences a more comprehensive image of the woman who famously faked an orgasm for 16 minutes on the 1975 hit “Love to Love You Baby.” “It can be rough when people think who you are in your personal life defines who you are as an actor or an artist. They’re not the same.” It’s pouring…

Under the blazing sun, the desert can seem like a lonely, arid wasteland. But it’s also a pretty captivating place—a vast expanse bathed in stillness and mystery. There’s a reason those drag queens in Priscilla felt so saucy and alive as they trekked through the outback. Who knows what secrets lie just beyond the dunes? Once a source of fascination for writers like Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and artists like Georgia O’Keeffe and Donald Judd, the desert has now crept onto the runway, showing up in sandy pinks and tans from Bottega Veneta, Zegna, and Kenneth Cole, and in weathered whites and creams from John Varvatos. These looks are simple, sleek, tailored, and striking—and as hot as the scorched landscape that inspired them.…

Given her dislike of biography, Agnes Martin might be surprised at the resurgence of interest in her life and career, including the celebrated 2016 Guggenheim retrospective that brought her work to another generation of art lovers. Now comes Henry Martin’s Agnes Martin: Pioneer, Painter, Icon (Schaffner Press), which suggests that the artist’s well-documented catatonia, schizophrenia, and shock treatments were induced by the social prohibitions on same-sex love. The new book beautifully illuminates the challenges of lesbian relationships at a time when women could never exist publicly as a unit, and so were prone to breakups. “Mildred. Daphne. Kristina. Betty. Lenore. Chryssa,” writes Martin. “Each relationship was another opportunity for Agnes to start over. Unfortunately, Agnes always fell into the same trap of obsession followed by flight.”…

The city once known for bachelor parties gone wrong is now genteel enough for a downright classy, and very romantic, honeymoon. Amsterdam EVERY CITY reimagines itself, but few shed skins faster than Amsterdam. While the Dutch capital used to be a byword for fast, louche fun—all hash cakes and beefcakes—it has worked hard to rebrand itself in recent years and reclaim its title as one of Europe’s powerhouse cultural epicenters. Even the old emblems of sleaze have morphed. The Blue Boy Club, once a buzzing male bordello, has been reborn as Joya, an urbane Asian restaurant that teasingly plays off the Club’s past, with double-entendre dishes like “heaven on your tongue” (that’s scallops and foie gras). The gentrifying Red Light District is now home to a growing constellation of galleries…

When Milan Kelez was 17, he was painting the sides of buildings in South Beach, Miami. It was a modest job for the young dreamer from Peru, who was stoked about living in the United States but, without a Green Card or student visa, could only do manual labor. The gig is a blip in the life of a steadfast tastemaker whose various pursuits—from art direction to modeling—have taken him around the globe. And yet it forecast what Kelez is doing today: running the Peruvian hot spot Baby Brasa in Manhattan’s West Village and spearheading its art collective, The New Allen, for which he arranges mural paintings on buildings across the city. “I always had street art on my mind,” says Kelez, now 33. “I was a fan of Banksy…

Deer heads, stuffed ducks, and mounted fish might be perfectly at home in a ski lodge or the local Cabela’s, but they don’t belong in your house. Elevate your affinity for nature to the level of art and avoid the questionable ethics of killing for sport with one of Christopher Tennant’s dioramas. Inspired by the historical Victorian dioramas that rose to popularity during the 19th century, Tennant repurposes dead crabs he finds on the beaches of Long Island, birds that die in the Chinese pet trade, and stuffed herons he finds at vintage stores to create striking tableaux. “You’re trying to capture a moment and add as much drama as you can to make it interesting,” says Tennant, whose cases display perfectly atop a fireplace mantel or mounted on a…