Harper's Bazaar March 2026

TECHNOLOGY HAS UPENDED a lot of things in life—the way we live and communicate, for example—but it has also changed the way we think about legacy. The word legacy used to imply a certain distance—between an event and its importance, between an act and its meaning, between the living and the remembered. It almost always felt like an inheritance or something left behind with intention: a home, a fortune, an art collection, a body of work, exonerating evidence, incriminating letters, a box of old photographs tied with a string. You lived your life, and only later did someone else decide what it all amounted to, for better or for worse. That version of legacy feels vestigial now. Legacy is no longer a marble bust; it’s a running transcript. Legacies are…

I have a quote tacked over my desk from an interview Jhumpa Lahiri gave to The Paris Review a few years ago: “The goal isn’t to be happy with my voice,” she says. “What I want is simply to have one.” March is our Legacy issue, and I’ve been thinking a lot about what legacy means today. Traditionally, the word has conveyed distance—between one generation and the next—and a sense of intention around what you leave behind. Now I’m not so sure. Maybe legacy is simply about having a voice and allowing its shape to be defined by others. This is something novelists seem to understand instinctively: Their stories find new meaning in the hands of each reader. That’s why I was thrilled to shine a light on a group…

“These are the SONGS that MADE ME,” says singer DANIEL CAESAR. “EVERYTHING you SEE or HEAR from me, you can KNOW THAT this is WHAT I was ON.” Caesar, 30, has emerged as a much-beloved voice in music over the past decade, thanks to a string of stripped-down, soulful R&B gems—including his most recent album, Son of Spergy, a powerful rumination on faith and family featuring collaborations with Sampha, Bon Iver, and Dev Hynes. But curating a playlist for our Legacy issue meant looking back at songs that have left an indelible mark on him, from Frank Ocean’s “Self Control” (“That [final] section always made me feel like I could punch a hole through a wall”) and Lauryn Hill and D’Angelo’s “Nothing Even Matters” (“A man and a woman coming…

WHY DON’T YOU… LIVE firmly in the moment. The recently departed and eternally chic Countess Jacqueline de Ribes was once described as the DJ of couture, thanks to the ease with which she mixed garments. “She was a real femme du monde,” Pierre Bergé told Harper’s Bazaar in a 2015 profile of the French socialite. “I think she may be the last to know how to live like that.” She cut up couture gowns to her liking, had her wardrobe showcased at the Met, and possessed a beauty so captivating that legendary Harper’s Bazaar fashion editor Diana Vreeland demanded photographer Richard Avedon take her portrait immediately upon meeting her. She was one of Truman Capote’s swans, she ran in circles with Yves Saint Laurent and Valentino, and Joan Collins’s Dynasty style…

WHY DON’T YOU…? DOUBLE (or TRIPLE) DOWN on the look and ACCESSORIZE with scarves too.…

WHY DON’T YOU…? Ground the look with a sleek black ALMOND-TOE FLAT.…