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    Queer History Was Made in ’90s Clubs. These Fliers Captured It.

    “Getting In,” a new book from David Kennerley, collects the edgy advertisements for parties at clubs like the Palladium and records a culture forged from defiance.In the new book “Getting In,” the journalist David Kennerley takes an electric visual stroll through New York’s 1990s gay club scene. Not with photos, exactly, but through fliers — more than 200 of them — featuring polychromatic drag queens and come-hither hunks who enticed him to dance to Frankie Knuckles and Junior Vasquez remixes at popular nightclubs like Twilo and the Palladium, and parties like Jackie 60 and Lick It!“People threw the fliers on the ground,” Kennerley, 63, said in a recent interview at a Midtown cafe. “I thought, why would you throw this out? It’s going to be a memento.”Kennerley assembled the book from his collection of over 1,200 fliers that he acquired from several sources — promoters outside clubs, now-closed gay shops and bars, club mailing lists — all before social media. A self-described “bit of a hoarder,” Kennerley considers the book an act of queer music history preservation.“We weren’t all snapping pictures at clubs back then, so we don’t have much of a visual record,” he said. “These provide some sort of visual evidence of what went on.”Kennerley and other ’90s club veterans recently shared memories of some of the fliers, and the era. These are edited excerpts from the conversations.via David KennerleyDivas Fight AIDS, Palladium (1992)LADY BUNNY, D.J. and CLUB KID Back in the ’80s and ’90s, we felt we needed to come together as a community to fight AIDS. The fear of AIDS made us party with greater abandon. For an entire generation of gay men, especially those connected to the club world, we weren’t saving money. We assumed the odds were against us. Loleatta Holloway and Lonnie Gordon — that’s quite a lineup in terms of what songs packed dance floors.MICHAEL MUSTO, NIGHTLIFE CHRONICLER We learned the power of graphic art from ACT UP and Queer Nation. They knew how to use slogans and imagery to get a point across. Promoters used that know-how to sell their parties.DAVID KENNERLEY It feels like she’s a superhero in a way. That’s what people needed to be then because of the stigma and persecution.via David KennerleyPurgatory, Sound Factory Bar (1992)KENNERLEY At first glance it would be muscle boys in short shorts. It is, but someone Photoshopped on the heads of Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Notice it was about getting out to vote. This one has credits of Jon McEwan and Jason McCarthy, the photographer and the promoter. They did one of George Bush spanking Dan Quayle, too.MARK ALLEN, GO-GO BOY and MODEL This was taken during a session where I was photographed with Richard, this kid from Venezuela, whose body was Al Gore. Mine was Bill Clinton. And Jon goes, I want to photograph you in cutoff shorts, the kind that were popular on Fire Island then. It sounded like something Spy would do in the ’80s. They took three shots and we went on to the next thing.You saw T-shirts of this image on cards. It was a good example about how something could go viral before the internet. I didn’t mind being anonymous. I thought it was art.SUSAN MORABITO, D.J. I don’t remember that particular party but I remember the flier.via David KennerleyThe Saint at Large, Tunnel (1992)MORABITO Back then, fliers inspired conversation and controversy sometimes. When the Saint at Large party used to send them in the mail, you couldn’t wait to get it. You’d get on the phone with your friends and talk about it.KENNERLEY Marky Mark had a song called “Good Vibrations” that went to No. 1. He was the Calvin Klein model for a while, and he would pull down his trousers and show off his tighty whities.The promise of the poster is, he’s going to show off his muscular physique. I paid a lot of money to go that night but I was very disappointed. He got onstage and he strutted around in a dark hoodie. Before you knew it, the song was over. I was like, wait, what about dropping the pants? I guess you could say it was misleading advertising.via David KennerleyCopacabana (1992)CHIP DUCKETT, PUBLICIST and PRODUCER Susanne [Bartsch, the club promoter and hostess] has a deep love of all things party. Inside Copa it was this perfect mix. There’s a baroness over here, a real one. Here’s a hooker and here’s a fashion model and it’s really gay but it’s also not gay. I don’t think Studio 54 did it in the same way. She’s still hosting parties every week.In those days I printed 50,000 fliers a month. Some guys in Queens who ran a club opened a printing company called Nightlife Printing. They did fliers for everybody. When I think of the amount of paper that got delivered to my office …Pork, The Lure (1994)KENNERLEY The Lure was leather and Levi’s oriented and they had a dress code. The party on Wednesday was geared toward the younger crowd, to get them involved in the scene. They also had B.D.S.M. shows on occasion. It got racy.MUSTO The way people forged a sense of communal identity was by going out. It was vital to have niche parties, where you had an exact type of gay, like twinks or bears. Now everybody has sex via Grindr, so that if you walk into a gay bar there is zero sexual urgency in the air.via David Kennerley‘Big’ Opening Night Party, Roxy (1996)ALLEN This was me, taken by the photographer Hans Fahrmeyer. I made some money on that one. It was on greetings cards and posters. I remember being in a cab and somebody had plastered on scaffolding 50 or 100 of the posters. I saw it for a few seconds. I thought, this is the closest I’ll ever get to my picture being in Times Square. I went back a week later and it was gone. That captured the fleetingness of the whole scene.LADY BUNNY This was a time when record companies would send D.J.s records to see what was a hit with our crowd. Gays has such good taste in dance music with zero promotion and a cover that didn’t even have the artist’s picture on it!ALLEN I thought it would lead to something incredible. It didn’t. But now it makes me think of my youth and the passage of time and how important the memories are. More

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    Jeff Daniels Unwinds With Hidden-Camera TV

    The actor, musician and playwright has made a career out of finding ways to stay creative between “Dumb and Dumber” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.”Jeff Daniels has accomplished a lot battling boredom.Before he moved to New York in 1976, he bought a guitar to play when he wasn’t getting work. After he moved back to Michigan in the 1980s, he started getting bored between movie jobs, so he formed the Purple Rose Theater Company. That’s why today, in addition to being an actor known for portraying Atticus Finch on Broadway and Harry Dunne in “Dumb and Dumber,” Daniels, 68, is an accomplished musician and playwright who sometimes performs a one-man musical at a theater he helped bring to life.“Alive and Well Enough,” his 12-episode audio memoir that Audible plans to release Sept. 7, incorporates skits, bits, songs and stories from his career. It leans heavily on his passion for the work, regardless of whether it resonates on the level of his role in the 1983 film “Terms of Endearment.”“The rush is between action and cut, when you’re doing it,” Daniels said in a phone interview this month. “The curtain call has always been kind of a silent movie for me. I walk out and I see them, I hear them, but that’s not the climax. That’s not what happened. For me, by that point, it’s over.”Daniels talked about pursuing his other endeavors — creative and athletic — while avoiding ticks. These are edited excerpts from the conversation and an email.1‘The Beatles: Get Back’I loved every minute of Peter Jackson’s documentary. Seeing the band’s creative process, to watch people of that caliber face the same mountain that everybody else does — whether they’re writing a song or a play or a musical or a poem — was affirming.2Golf in the BackyardDuring Covid, when we all had to kind of bunker, our family put together a golf course on our property. We play with plastic balls, and we each use one club. We’ve got a creek and a pond and some things you have to work around. But you never have a problem getting a tee time, and there’s never a slow foursome in front of you.3My KindleI love the portable library aspect of it, and I read more because of it. I recently read “Grinning at the Edge,” Paul Allen’s biography of the playwright Alan Ayckbourn. And I’ve got Rick Rubin’s “The Creative Act” queued up now.4Detroit TigersThey’re young and they’re talented and they’re getting better every season. For me, it’s fascinating to watch the management manage the talent and the contracts and who you need. It’s the same uniforms, the same game, the same field, and yet the players change. The cast changes. It’s this living, breathing thing that’s evolving.5Clearing Your Head in the WoodsThings get unlocked when you’re walking or biking through the woods. If you’re stuck on something, then just go for a bike ride and wait. Across the street from my house, there’s a state recreation area. It’s kind of like having 10,000 acres of your own, which you didn’t have to pay for. It’s terrific, especially in the winter when there aren’t any ticks.6Circle RepWhen I went to Circle Rep Off Broadway in the 1970s, they had a whole bunch of playwrights there, including Lanford Wilson and John Bishop. That’s where I fell in love with that kind of theater — live, creating, new play stuff. I wanted to create that creative place at Purple Rose Theater Company, where I’m surrounded by like-minded people who have to do this thing because it’s what we do.7‘Impractical Jokers’When I was doing “To Kill a Mockingbird” on Broadway, I would come back to my apartment and turn on the hidden-camera show “Impractical Jokers” to wind down after a show. Whatever Atticus Finch might’ve watched if he were around, it probably wouldn’t have been “Impractical Jokers.” It was a way to disconnect from the show and just unplug. And the guys just crack me up.8New York CityI go to New York for the theater — to see it and be in it — but also to remind myself of who I am. It’s all about the imagination and the art and the creativity, and imagining all those writers who were in New York and kicking around. It’s a good place for me to write.9My GuitarFor my entire career, an acoustic guitar has kept me creatively alive. Over the past 20 years, I’ve played in clubs all over the country, but my regular gig is on my porch looking out at the lake.10Writing, Even When It’s HardThere’s a battle to it. But when it happens, when you unlock it and that thing launches you toward your ending in a way that you never saw coming, that’s the fireworks. Writing that line that’s going to end the scene, and you close your laptop because you’re going to take the rest of the day off, that’s what keeps you going. You hang onto those euphoric moments. More

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    Book Review: ‘The Great White Bard: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race,’ by Farah Karim-Cooper

    In “The Great White Bard,” Farah Karim-Cooper maintains that close attention to race, and racism, will only deepen engagement with the playwright’s canon.THE GREAT WHITE BARD: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race, by Farah Karim-CooperWas my relationship to Shakespeare and race in need of a reality check?I asked myself that question as I did the 50-yard dash to catch the G train for a rehearsal of “Hamlet,” clutching in my hand a copy of “The Great White Bard: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race,” by Farah Karim-Cooper. The book takes a necessary look under the hood of the plays, delving into the Elizabethan and Renaissance ideals of race and how Shakespeare helped shape and define them. “Instead of worshiping his words,” Karim-Cooper writes, interrogating them “allows us to confront crucial questions of our day.”As a Black actor who has had the chance to play many of the plum Shakespearean roles, had I been looking at his work through rose-colored glasses? Of course I knew there was racism in Shakespeare, but to what extent? This question is top of mind in drama schools and theaters of late, with Shakespeare’s relevance at stake. I know because I’ve been brought to campuses to discuss it.So this summer I made “The Great White Bard” my trusted, troubling and fascinating companion on train rides, during rehearsal breaks, in dressing rooms and backstage, while working on Shakespeare’s greatest play on arguably New York’s greatest stage, the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.Karim-Cooper, a director of education at Shakespeare’s Globe theater and a professor at King’s College London, is not merely analyzing from a distance; she’s an eyewitness on the front lines. Since 2018 she has helped put together festivals on “Shakespeare and Race” at the Globe — facing social-media blowback as a result. And she’s drawing on a growing body of important research by prominent scholars, including Ayanna Thompson, Kim F. Hall and Margo Hendricks.In a sweeping yet forensic 336 pages, “The Great White Bard” argues that “Shakespeare’s texts are a reservoir of what is known as race-making” — how language can define racial identity and establish hierarchy.The book details how racism plagues Shakespeare’s plays and Shakespeare scholarship. Both, Karim-Cooper contends, overtly and subtly elevate whiteness and denigrate Blackness, rendering true inclusion practically impossible. (Sexism and misogyny play a big part, too.)The result: Shakespeare for the few and not for the many.Yet Karim-Cooper is by no means offering up a luminary for cancellation. “To love Shakespeare means to know him,” she writes. “At some point love demands that we reconcile ourselves with flaws and limitations. Only then can there be a deeper understanding and affinity with another.”The book illuminates the numerous instances of racialized language in “Othello” (that “barbarous Moor”); “The Merchant of Venice” (Shylock described as “devil,” “wolf,” “dog” and “cur”); and “Titus Andronicus” (Aaron the Moor, also “barbarous”). Descriptions of interracial relationships in “Titus” and “Antony and Cleopatra,” Karim-Cooper argues, dehumanize Blackness and establish white supremacy.Her insights also reach into unexpected places, as when she finds sexual stereotyping of Black and dark women in the comedies “Much Ado About Nothing,” “Love’s Labour’s Lost” and “As You Like It.”The author’s analysis is both dizzying and impressive, yet at times overzealous. Some parsing of the texts feels narrow and binary, diminishing the scope and scale of their multiple meanings. Her carefully reasoned claim that words like “kindness” and “fair” are inherently connected only with whiteness runs the risk of hyperbole, in Shakespeare’s time or now. Surely the boogeyman can’t be everywhere.I have always found myself in Shakespeare, as if these works were written for me. I feel seen, heard and recreated by them. In playing many of his leading roles, I have found pure joy and pain, surrendering to the better and darker angels in myself. In some cosmic way, I believe these characters are as much drawn to me as I am to them.This is not to say that I haven’t had to come to terms with racism in the texts, from my first “Othello” in 1992 to my most recent turn as Shylock in 2022, with stints as Macbeth, Antony, Richard III and Prospero in between.Where I found racism, I also found complex characters who took my breath away with their great depth and astonishing humanity. Words, words, words: Shakespeare’s words contain multitudes of meaning, ideas and emotions that in my Black body become mutable and ancestral — shifting with time, intention, context, perception and culture.Every night after a “Hamlet” performance, as I headed home from the Delacorte, my grappling with “The Great White Bard” would resume. It has indeed exposed me to flaws and limitations, while also affirming Shakespeare’s power and abundance. Perhaps Karim-Cooper and I are after the same thing. I challenge some of her findings, but I respect her book and the alarm she sounds.“The Great White Bard” contributes to an essential discussion on Shakespeare and race, one that must include literary scholars, historians, etymologists, audiences and, yes, even actors. Let us all debate and think critically about the issues Karim-Cooper raises. At the end of the day, such tough love can guide us to truly love Shakespeare.John Douglas Thompson is a New York City actor who most recently played Claudius in “Hamlet” for Shakespeare in the Park.THE GREAT WHITE BARD: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race | By Farah Karim-Cooper | Illustrated | 336 pp. | Viking | $30 More

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    Name These Books That Became Broadway Musicals

    Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s monthly quiz about books that have been made into television shows, movies, theatrical productions and more. This month’s challenge is about books that were adapted into Broadway musicals; coincidentally, all of the correct answers were adapted into films before they made it to the stage. Tap or click your answers to the five questions below.New literary quizzes appear on the Book Review page every week and you can find previous installments in the Book Review Quiz Bowl archive online. More

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    Nechama Tec, Polish Holocaust Survivor and Scholar, Dies at 92

    She wrote about heroic Jewish resisters in her book “Defiance,” which was later made into a film starring Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber.Nechama Tec in 2018 at her home in Manhattan. A sociologist, she wrote about Jews as resisters of the Nazis and why certain people became rescuersvia Tec familyNechama Tec, a Polish Jew who pretended to be Roman Catholic to survive the Holocaust and then became a Holocaust scholar, writing about Jews as heroic resisters and why certain people, even antisemites, became rescuers, died on Aug. 3 at her home in Manhattan. She was 92.Her death was confirmed by her son, Roland.In “Defiance: The Bielski Partisans” (1993), Dr. Tec’s best-known book, she described the courageous actions of Tuvia Bielski, who commanded a resistance group that fought the Germans and, more important, saved some 1,200 Jews. The partisans entered ghettos under siege and brought Jews back to the Belarusian forest, where Mr. Bielski had built a community for them.“Defiance” gave Dr. Tec a platform to show that Jews saved other Jews during the war and were more active in resisting the Nazis than some have commonly believed.When a friend suggested to the filmmaker Edward Zwick that “Defiance” would make a good movie, he was not immediately persuaded.“Not another movie about victims,” he recalled his response when he wrote in The New York Times about directing the film, released in 2008, which starred Daniel Craig as Tuvia Bielski and Liev Schreiber as his brother Zus.“No, this is a story about Jewish heroes,” he said his friend told him. “Like the Maccabees, only better.”As Mr. Zwick put it, “Rather than victims wearing yellow stars, here were fighters in fur chapkas brandishing submachine guns.”By then Dr. Tec had written “When Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland” (1986). Her interviews with rescuers for that book yielded a portrait of Christians who hid Jews, despite the likelihood of being imprisoned or killed for providing such aid. They were, she concluded, outsiders who were marginal in their communities; had a history of performing good deeds; did not view their actions as heroic; and did not agonize over being helpful.The cover of Dr. Tec’s book “Defiance.”“Many were casually antisemitic, but that wasn’t their prime purpose in life,” said Christopher R. Browning, a Holocaust expert who is a professor emeritus of history at the University of North Carolina and who edited, with Dr. Tec and Richard S. Hollander, a collection of letters written by Mr. Hollander’s Polish Jewish family from 1939 to 1942. “Using her skills as a sociologist, she was able to portray a more complex spectrum of interactions than the simplistic ones that people who didn’t collect empirical data as she had.”Nechama Bawnik was born on May 15, 1931, in Lublin, Poland. Her father, Roman, owned a chemical factory. Her mother, Esther (Finkelstein) Bawnik, was a homemaker.Soon after the Nazis occupied Poland in 1939, Mr. Bawnik transferred title of his factory, rather than have the Nazis confiscate it, to his foreman, who also gave him a job and a place for the Bawniks, including Nechama’s older sister, Giza, to live on the top floor of the building. Nechama hid in the living quarters, her only link to the outside a hole in a wall that let her look onto the courtyard of a convent school.As conditions for Jews worsened and rumors of deportations frightened them, the family considered relocating to Warsaw but found it too perilous. In mid-1942, Nechama’s parents sent her and Giza to live with a family in Otwock, Poland, a half-hour’s train ride from Warsaw. Nechama had false papers that identified her as Krysia Bloch. To help her play the role, she learned Catholic prayers and a family history.The sisters, who both had blond hair and blue eyes, were able to pass as orphaned nieces of the family they were living with and moved around without hiding. In the summer of 1943, they and their parents moved in with a family in Kielce.When the Bawniks needed money in Kielce, Nechama’s mother baked rolls and sent Nechama to sell them in a local black market. Nechama also sold bottles of vodka that had been distilled by a local farmer, Roland Tec said. Once, he said in a phone interview, a retailer denounced her and the Gestapo chased her away; when she returned, her father told her to run into nearby fields, while her parents hid under floorboards, until it was safe.After the war, the family returned briefly to Lublin and then moved to Berlin. In 1949, Nechama immigrated to Israel, where she met Leon Tec, a Polish-born internist who later became a child psychiatrist. They married in 1950 and moved to the United States two years later.Daniel Craig, left, as Tuvia Bielski and Liev Schreiber as Zus Bielski in the 2008 film “Defiance,” based on Dr. Tec’s book.Entertainment Pictures/Alamy Stock PhotoNechama studied sociology at Columbia University, where she received a bachelor’s degree in 1954 and a master’s in 1955.After working at the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene, she began teaching sociology in 1957 at Columbia. She then taught at Rutgers University, returned to Columbia and moved to Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., before joining the sociology faculty of the University of Connecticut’s Stamford campus, in 1974. She remained there for 36 years.She earned a Ph.D., also in sociology, from Columbia, in 1965.Dr. Tec said that she had been determined to put her Holocaust past behind her, but that in 1975 her childhood experiences demanded her attention.“When these demands turned into a compelling force,” she wrote in “Defiance,” “I decided to revisit my past by writing an autobiography.”In that autobiography, “Dry Tears: The Story of a Lost Childhood” (1982), she recalled the attitude that Helena, the grandmother in the family of rescuers in Kielce, had toward Jews.“I would not harm a Jew,” Dr. Tec recalled Helena saying, “but I see no point in going out of my way to help one.” She added: “You and your family are not like Jews. If they wanted to send you away now, I would not let them.”In another book, “Into the Lion’s Den: The Life of Oswald Rufeisen” (1990), Dr. Tec explored the life of another Polish Jew, who hid his identity, worked as a translator for the German police and helped save about 200 Jews in the Mir ghetto.“Especially riveting are the details of his translations for his German superiors,” Susan Shapiro wrote in The New York Times Book Review, “in which his careful change of two words could save an entire Jewish community.”After his identity was revealed, Mr. Rufeisen took refuge in a monastery, converted to Catholicism and joined partisan fighters, according to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust remembrance and research center in Jerusalem. He became a Catholic priest after the war and moved to Israel, where he joined a monastery on Mount Carmel.In addition to her son, Dr. Tec is survived by her daughter, Leora Tec; two grandsons; one great-grandson; and a half sister, Catharina Knoll. Her husband and her sister, Giza Agmon, both died in 2013.During the filming of “Defiance,” Dr. Tec was pleased to see that the Bielski partisan camp in the Belarusian forest had been faithfully recreated in Lithuania, with a kitchen and workshops to repair shoes and watches and to tan leather.“She was in awe of what they had built; it was really incredible,” said her son, who was a co-producer of the film. He added: “As soon as Daniel Craig saw her on the set, he cornered her and spent an hour or an hour and a half asking her questions. It was wonderful.” More

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    How ‘Red, White & Royal Blue’ Reimagined a BookTok Sensation

    The filmmakers didn’t want to disappoint fans of Casey McQuiston’s novel about the romance between a U.S. president’s son and a British prince.On most Fridays, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London closes at 10 p.m. sharp. But one night last summer, after all of the tourists had spilled back onto the streets of South Kensington, two men slow-danced among the Berninis and Rodins until the sun rose the next morning. A cover of “Can’t Help Falling in Love” by the indie-pop singer Perfume Genius echoed through the sculpture hall, soundtracking their tender moment.The nocturnal scene was a scripted one from “Red, White & Royal Blue,” the film adaptation of the 2019 novel by Casey McQuiston. The two men under the dimmed lights were the actors Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine, and they swayed until the director, Matthew López, called “Cut!” around 2 a.m. for a lunch break.“It was just the three of us and our crew,” said López, who’s also the film’s co-writer. “It made for an incredibly intimate, really special night.”The romantic comedy follows Alex Claremont-Diaz, the bisexual son of the first female U.S. president (played by Uma Thurman, with a thick Southern drawl), and Prince Henry, the younger brother of the heir to the British throne who has known since birth that he’s “gay as a maypole.” What starts as a simmering rivalry between the impulsive American (Zakhar Perez) and the buttoned-up Brit (Galitzine) soon develops into a clandestine relationship. Neither is publicly out, and their secret love complicates things, especially for Henry.Amazon Studios and Berlanti Productions secured the film rights to McQuiston’s novel at auction ahead of its May 2019 release, and the book has since spent more than 20 weeks as a New York Times best seller.But best-seller lists don’t fully convey the adoration that “Red, White & Royal Blue” has garnered on BookTok — the literature-loving corner of TikTok — where fans have shared their obsession with the escapist love story en masse, and videos tagged #redwhiteandroyalblue have received more than 500 million views.Jacob Demlow, who frequently posts about “Red, White & Royal Blue” on his “A Very Queer Book Club” account, said he flung his copy across the room in delight when he first encountered it.“I couldn’t believe what I was reading. It was all these amazing tropes that romance lovers have loved forever, but there was a couple in it who looked like a couple I would be in,” said Demlow, who estimated that he’d read the novel at least a dozen times. “I grew up watching movies about the girl falling in love with the prince, but I’d never seen that through a queer lens before. It was kind of earth-shattering in ways I still don’t fully know if I can comprehend.”The film, premiering on Prime Video on Friday, hopes to recreate that excitement onscreen, and represents the directorial debut of López, a Tony-winning playwright known for penning “The Inheritance,” as well as writing (with Amber Ruffin) the musical adaptation “Some Like It Hot.” López was working on those projects in 2020 when his agent first floated the idea of turning “Red, White & Royal Blue” into a stage musical.“I read it and said, ‘Yeah, sure, maybe. But let’s talk about the movie,’” López recalled. “I knew I wanted to be the person who made this film by, like, Page 50.”The director Matthew López, at right, working with his stars on set. “I knew I wanted to be the person who made this film by, like, Page 50,” he said.Rob Youngson/AmazonAfter pleading his case to the producers Greg Berlanti and Sarah Schechter, López signed on to direct and did a second pass on an original script by Ted Malawer. He cast two lead actors who had cut their teeth on Netflix romances: Zakhar Perez, 31, who starred as Marco in “The Kissing Booth” sequels; and Galitzine, 28, who appeared in the streamer’s military romance “Purple Hearts.” Galitzine also played the prince in Amazon’s Camila Cabello-led “Cinderella.”For both Zakhar Perez and the director, the character Alex’s biracial identity was particularly meaningful. López grew up in Panama City, Fla., with his Puerto Rican father and Polish Russian mother, while Zakhar Perez is of Mexican, Middle Eastern and Mediterranean descent and was raised in northwest Indiana, where he said there was only one other Mexican family.“Matthew and I talked a lot about the mestizo journey,” Zakhar Perez said in a video call before SAG-AFTRA, the actor’s union, went on strike. “Being part Mexican, part lots of other things, I don’t want to say you’re forgotten, but in today’s world, it’s like, you’re either this or you’re that. There’s nothing in between. I’m kind of a cultural chameleon.”“As a young Latiné queer man, I never read something that centered someone like Alex,” López said, echoing his star. “If I had been presented with this character when I was in my late teens, early 20s, it may have changed how I thought about myself.”During the audition process, Zakhar Perez and Galitzine did their chemistry reads via video and did not meet in person until rehearsals began in London. But the nature of the script meant they would need to quickly become comfortable shooting a variety of passionate scenes, which were overseen by the intimacy coordinator Robbie Taylor Hunt.“Nick and I trusted each other quite quickly,” Zakhar Perez said of Galitzine. “We had to build a sexual tension from dislike to like to love, and we wanted to show that journey through the choreographed, intimate moments.”“I was never going to entirely fulfill the image of this book that the millions of people who love it individually have in their heads,” López said.Jonathan Prime/AmazonIn the book, McQuiston described Alex and Henry’s amorous bedroom — and tack room and hotel room — scenes in great detail, and López said he “never, ever shied away from the sexuality” onscreen.“At times, it’s extremely hungry and at times, it’s really tender,” Galitzine said in a separate prestrike call. “Matthew was always adamant that he wanted to portray gay sex in an accurate way, which he felt maybe hadn’t been the case in other L.G.B.T.Q.+ movies.”While the only lingering sex scene is a carefully cropped, emotional moment, and the only nudity is the flash of a naked buttocks, “Red, White & Royal Blue” received an R rating from the Motion Picture Association.López was surprised: “If we had put six bullets into the prince, we probably would have still gotten PG-13,” he said, and added, “If it had been a man and a woman, I question whether or not it would have gotten an R rating.”(The filmmaker Ira Sachs recently expressed similar confusion over the NC-17 rating for his new film “Passages,” which also features gay sex. The M.P.A. said in a statement to The Associated Press, “The sexual orientation of a character or characters is not considered as part of the rating process.”)In the weeks leading up to the movie’s release, anticipation continued to build among fans, coupled with fears that it might not capture the magic of the book. Some worried about the casting choices, the elimination of several supporting characters or the switch from a fictional queen of England to a fictional king, played in a single scene by Stephen Fry.“I was never going to entirely fulfill the image of this book that the millions of people who love it individually have in their heads,” López said. “I knew from the beginning,” he also emphasized, “that this movie would succeed or fail based in part on the fans’ belief that one of them has made this film. I am one of them.”Broader critiques take issue with the premise of the story itself and the fact that it’s yet another queer romance that involves the distress of coming out. But Demlow of A Very Queer Book Club sees it differently.“There are so many coming-out stories that need to be heard, and we also need more stories that aren’t coming-out stories,” he said. “It’s not that we need less of something. It’s that we need more of everything.” More

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    Can You Find These 13 Hidden Crime and Mystery Titles?

    “Well, the body in the library downstairs isn’t even tagged yet,” said the detective, absent-mindedly twisting the moonstone ring on her finger and trying to recall any relevant case histories involving multiple museum homicides.“I’d sure say someone acted with malice here,” said the police officer, eyeing the shadow of the man slumped under a Dutch still life of a fruit bowl. Art-wise, the floor was rapidly becoming a study in scarlet.“I’ll never get over how people really go to dark places when no one is watching,” sighed the detective. “Call the coroner and I’ll get the guest list from tonight’s benefit.”“Hey, look at the press pass on the vic,” said the policeman. “I’d say this is a deadly inside scoop.”“Well, the body in the library downstairs isn’t even tagged yet,” said the detective, absent-mindedly twisting the moonstone ring on her finger and trying to recall any relevant case histories involving multiple museum homicides.“I’d sure say someone acted with malice here,” said the police officer, eyeing the shadow of the man slumped under a Dutch still life of a fruit bowl. Art-wise, the floor was rapidly becoming a study in scarlet.“I’ll never get over how people really go to dark places when no one is watching,” sighed the detective. “Call the coroner and I’ll get the guest list from tonight’s benefit.”“Hey, look at the press pass on the vic,” said the policeman. “I’d say this is a deadly inside scoop.”“Well, the body in the library downstairs isn’t even tagged yet,” said the detective, absent-mindedly twisting the moonstone ring on her finger and trying to recall any relevant case histories involving multiple museum homicides.“I’d sure say someone acted with malice here,” said the police officer, eyeing the shadow of the man slumped under a Dutch still life of a fruit bowl. Art-wise, the floor was rapidly becoming a study in scarlet.“I’ll never get over how people really go to dark places when no one is watching,” sighed the detective. “Call the coroner and I’ll get the guest list from tonight’s benefit.”“Hey, look at the press pass on the vic,” said the policeman. “I’d say this is a deadly inside scoop.” More

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    For Dua Lipa, Just Being a Pop Star Isn’t Enough

    Though the singer has maintained a strict line between her music and her private life, she’s leveraging her personal passions in a bid to become a media mogul.LET’S GET THIS out of the way: Dua Lipa is finishing her third album. It’s due for release in 2024 and, despite the trend of musicians announcing and delaying records for years, Lipa will almost certainly meet her deadline. It’s funny to think of a pop star — or any successful young artist — as just another striving professional. But at 27, Lipa has already become the kind of multihyphenate entrepreneur who not only finishes her assignments on time but discusses strategy and efficiency with the clarity of a company founder delivering a TED Talk. “If I wasn’t as organized as I am, I would be a mess right now,” she says when we meet one drizzly May afternoon in London. The singer had asked one of her favorite restaurants, Sushi on Jones, hidden on the second floor of a King’s Cross concert venue, to open before dinner so we could have the place to ourselves, then arrived 10 minutes early to make sure everything was as planned.A lot happened in March 2020, so you probably won’t recall that Lipa’s second album, “Future Nostalgia,” leaked at the beginning of the lockdowns, denying her the precise rollout she’d spent many months finessing, postponing her international tour . . . and unintentionally cementing her as the leading pop star of the pandemic. Her barrage of shimmery singles — music for “dance crying,” as she describes it — later established her as the only female artist with two albums that have surpassed 10 billion streams on Spotify.The next record will still be pop, she says, lest her “fans have a meltdown.” She doesn’t want to “alienate” them, although she’s developing a new sound that may be informed less by the house and disco beats beneath songs like “Physical” and “Hallucinate” than by 1970s-era psychedelia. She’s working with a smaller group of songwriting collaborators, supposedly including Kevin Parker of the Australian psych-rock band Tame Impala, a rumor she all but confirms by denying: “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, then looks away and laughs a little. Lipa’s dressed — almost studiously — in pop star-off-duty drag: Ugg slip-ons, baggy white jeans, an old Elton John T-shirt, a few diamond-encrusted hoops in each ear.She can come across as guarded, a little aloof, cool but not necessarily cold, which could be the way she’s been her whole life — or the result of having become globally famous during a period of deep isolation. She lacks the impulse, so common among people her age, to make unnecessary small talk or feign friendliness in order to appear likable. Instead, she remains assiduously on message, implying several times that she feels that journalists are usually trying to trap her or tease out information before she’s ready to share it. “Especially being in the public eye, someone’s always waiting for you to trip or fail or whatever,” she tells me. During our meal, which was arranged to last 90 minutes and ends exactly on time, “whatever” is one of the words she uses most, in a way that makes her sound wary of having to narrativize her own life.But she’s particularly taciturn about the forthcoming album because it’s still in development — a process that’s “insular and exciting,” she says, even if “you have no idea what the reaction is going to be once it’s out, so there’s this nervous feeling” — but also because there’s so much else she prepared to discuss today: not herself, not the music, but the other elements comprising Lipa’s unusual plan for longevity, something she’s been working toward since she was 5, when she used to lead her classmates in schoolyard dance routines.AFTER HER TOUR concluded last November, Lipa arrived in London and began focusing on several non-music projects, as well as cooking and relaxing in the house she’s renovating in North London, near where she was raised by a pair of Albanian immigrants, Dukagjin and Anesa Lipa. They’d fled Kosovo in 1992, during the conflicts in the region, then eventually returned to Pristina, the capital; four years after that, they let their eldest daughter (Dua, whose name means “love” in Albanian) move back to England by herself when she was 15, where she briefly modeled and began to pursue music: Two years later, after appearing in a 2013 commercial for “The X Factor,” she signed with Ben Mawson, Lana Del Rey’s manager.Here in London — where her parents, younger brother (Gjin, 17) and sister (Rina, 22, an up-and-coming model) also live again — she enjoys eating vegetable samosas at Gymkhana and drinking orange wine at Westerns Laundry. Among her friends, who predate her fame and, she says, “ignore me in my own kitchen,” she’s the one who plans birthday dinners and trips. Many of these restaurants and destinations end up in Service95, the arts and culture newsletter she launched in February of last year after wanting a place to write about the bakeries, bookstores and other venues she’d been keeping lists of since she was a teenager.On the CoversMiu Miu top, $695, briefs, $1,020 and $360 (worn underneath), tights, $320, and shoes, $1,270, miumiu.com; and her own earring.Photograph by Luis Alberto Rodriguez. Styled by Carlos NazarioCeline by Hedi Slimane dress, price on request, celine.com; Van Cleef & Arpels ring, $63,500, vancleefarpels.com; and her own earrings.Photograph by Luis Alberto Rodriguez. Styled by Carlos NazarioShe’s currently recording a third season of her podcast, “Dua Lipa: At Your Service,” an accompaniment to Service95, for which Lipa interviews fellow artists like the singer Billie Eilish and the actor Dan Levy; queer activists like Brandon Wolf, who fights for gun reform after having survived the 2016 shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla.; and writers like Min Jin Lee and Esther Perel (as well as Hanya Yanagihara, this magazine’s editor in chief). She finishes each conversation by asking for a list of recommendations, whether that’s Los Angeles restaurants (Levy) or activists to follow (Wolf); her hope, she says, is to be of service to her readers and listeners, many of whom were likely born around 1995, when she was, hence the name. Earlier this summer, she created a Service95 book club; Douglas Stuart’s “Shuggie Bain” (2020), a gay coming-of-age story set in working-class Glasgow, was her first pick. Lipa also released a fashion collection that she co-designed with Donatella Versace, full of butterfly-print bikinis and floral stretch dresses. Its theme was La Vacanza, Italian for “vacation,” mirroring Lipa’s dominant, if slightly ironic, aesthetic on Instagram, where it looks like all she ever does is relax by a pool.Not long after, she’d appear as a mermaid in Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” a fitting acting debut, given that it’s based on a doll who’s a former teenage fashion model and, in a single afternoon, bounces between her many demanding professions. “I don’t even want to show you my phone, because I’m embarrassed about it, but it’s really down to the minute: where I’m going, what I’m doing,” Lipa tells me, then opens her calendar app, frowns and eventually turns the screen in my direction. “Wake up, glam, prep for podcast,” she says, scrolling through a day of appointments. “I have to watch ‘Succession,’ so I’ve got to schedule that,” she adds, pointing at the 7 p.m. slot, which is also when she’ll eat dinner. She even plans her showers, wherever she can fit them in. “For as long as I’m having fun, I’m going to keep making music,” she says. “But why can’t I do other things that I love, too?”IF THE DREAM of pop stardom is far-fetched for all but a few, the musical aspect of Lipa’s empire is, oddly, the least unique thing about it: With her husky voice and relatably imperfect dance moves, she releases catchy, inspirational who-needs-men anthems in collaboration with some of the world’s greatest audio minds and businesspeople. All of them have chosen to put millions of dollars into manufacturing and promoting her earwormy singles not only because she’s talented and beautiful and has good sonic instincts but also because she is — unlike most of her predecessors and peers — admittedly, almost defiantly, not sloppy. “I’ve probably spent more time waiting for artists to show up in the studio than I have working with artists,” says Mark Ronson, the 47-year-old record producer who has made two singles with Lipa, including “Dance the Night” from this summer. “If she’s two minutes late — literally, if it’s 12:02 — there’s a text: ‘Sorry, running five minutes late.’ That’s not superstar behavior, you know? She still works with the mind-set that she hasn’t [made it] yet.” Lipa’s particularly good at editing, he adds, at tediously working and reworking a chorus or melody. She’s comfortable making decisions quickly and multitasking: Sometimes while she’s onstage doing her choreography, she says, she’s also thinking about what she’s going to eat afterward.Pop, like all genres of creative expression, is more commercialized than ever. The musicians themselves are making less and less money, and those who grew up listening to artists like Britney Spears, Whitney Houston and Amy Winehouse (whom Lipa’s soulful raspiness sometimes summons) have clearly internalized the tragic lessons of those lives and careers. As women in a field driven by sex appeal — it’s no accident that Lipa announced her book club with some swimsuit selfies — they learn early on that people are constantly trying to use them. The smart ones, then, become alert to opportunities to diversify their portfolios and work their way to a kind of moguldom that outlasts radio trends. They grapple with the fact that popular music is a cat-and-mouse game, in which singers must switch up their sound often (while never straying too far from their original persona); refrain from releasing records too frequently so that their fans don’t get bored; and yet recognize, even then, that the audience and the industry might still discard them once they’re in their 30s.Rihanna, who hasn’t released an album since 2016, has her multibillion-dollar Fenty Beauty line; Ariana Grande will soon star as Glinda in Universal’s “Wicked” juggernaut. Lipa, who has filed trademarks for merchandise including cosmetics and will appear next year in the spy film “Argylle,” has made inroads in both of those directions; watching her and her cohorts’ shared trajectory, you get the sense that they’re expanding into other realms as early and as widely as they can, in part to guarantee their ubiquity but also to ensure against obsolescence. But with her multipronged pursuits (most of which fall under the banner of Service95, “the ultimate cultural concierge,” according to its tag line), Lipa’s approach is distinct in that she’s leading with ideas and information, not products, curating culture in addition to contributing to it. What began as a minimally designed newsletter created with a few former magazine editors — the issues are free and the first one featured short pieces about South African house music and the Irish disability advocate and writer Sinéad Burke — has since grown to accommodate YouTube cooking videos, live book talks with authors (hosted by Lipa) and reported series dedicated to such topics as men’s mental health and the spiking crisis in London, where young people are unknowingly being drugged by strangers at bars.Service95 represents who Lipa is “behind closed doors,” she says, a space where discussions around trans liberation are as common as those about jewelry and yoga. Though she’s a young, ambitious millennial, the content reflects the very Gen Z belief that all art and culture must be motivated by social justice and that all artists must talk about their ethics and values (at least those deemed palatably progressive) in all contexts and environments. “My intention is never to be political … but there’s a political bent to my existence,” Lipa says. “The easiest thing you can do is just hide away and not have an opinion about anything.” The singer is nevertheless cautious about how she lets her contributors use this microphone. She knows she’s the one who would face repercussions if a problem arose, so she approves every story herself and leads weekly editorial meetings. If it continues to grow, Service95 might one day replace the glossy, feminist-leaning fashion magazines of the 2000s; right now, it’s reminiscent of the chatty, lo-fi publications that the aughts-era blogger Tavi Gevinson offered young fans with “Rookie” before becoming an actress.“I think it’s a marketing tool: How confessional can you be?” she says. “I also don’t put so much of my life out there for people to dig into the music in this weird, analytical way.”Lipa, however, has taken the reverse course: Rather than amassing enough access and power within media to eventually jettison the industry for something more glamorous, she’s using her celebrity to expose her readers to everything she’s witnessing from her perch. “The world is really big, and maybe things don’t get to your [corner], so it’s a way of bringing everything together,” she says. This is a canny strategy, for it implies that Lipa’s a normal woman who just hustled her way into an abnormally charmed life while somehow staying grounded. It also makes her seem generous, despite the occasional tone-deaf moment, as when she wrote last November that she “saves up” to go shopping at Amore, the Tokyo vintage luxury handbag emporium.Among famous women turned media mavens, a category that has recently grown to include the talk show hosts Drew Barrymore and Kelly Clarkson, Lipa’s closest analog might be Gwyneth Paltrow, although Goop is much larger and more lucrative than Service95. Lipa won’t share audience metrics, but she does plan to bring some readers together at a forthcoming event series that will focus on food, wine and books. (“Like Oprah?” I ask, but she shrugs off the comparison: “We don’t really have Oprah [in London].”) She’s more inspired by Reese Witherspoon, the actress best known for playing Type A go-getters like Tracy Flick in “Election” (1999) who later became one of the first celebrities to launch her own book club, partly to create a pipeline of women-centered stories that her company could option for film and television. Maybe Lipa will do something like that, she tells me, but she hasn’t thought of a model “to base Service95 on, which is cool because then it can be its own thing,” she adds, sounding like the content executive she’s becoming. “I’ve found being in the media this way very encouraging.”She is, after all, a woman about whom many things have been written who now gets to write the story herself. In the newsletter, this takes the form of a short, paragraph-long editor’s letter. But on the podcast, the third season of which is now running weekly in partnership with the BBC, Lipa’s more present. Before speaking with each of her guests in conversations that can last an hour or longer, she says she does four or five days of research; Lisa Taddeo, a 43-year-old journalist who published the nonfiction sex narrative “Three Women” in 2019, told me the singer was among the most natural interviewers she’s talked to, “impeccably prepared, yet off book in the most conversational way.” What Lipa’s doing is different than journalism, though, if only because, as she admits, she avoids bringing up anything that might make her interviewees uncomfortable. She typically deflects inquiries about herself in favor of gathering advice from her subjects, who seem to open up in these conversations; it’s easy to forget that they’re speaking with another artist rather than any other geekily inquisitive host.Last September, Monica Lewinsky went on the show, where she discussed the Clinton sex scandal and how she recovered from her despair. She was nearly “publicly humiliated to death,” she says, after which Lipa lets out a heavy sigh. “Something that really struck me was how feminists agonized over you,” Lipa responds. “Whether you were using your own agency. Were you a victim? And I really wonder how this has evolved, and how this experience has defined your own relationship with the feminist movement because, for me, it completely blew me away that feminism then isn’t how we know it now, and maybe abuse of power wasn’t at the top of the list.”“It was your generation,” Lewinsky later reminds her, “that insisted on re-evaluating my story.” After their conversation, Lipa decided that the interviews in the third season should each be dedicated to a single topic, much like Lewinsky’s was centered on shame and healing. For the first episode, which premiered in June, the singer made what felt like a self-referential gambit: She invited on the English YouTuber Amelia Dimoldenberg, the host of the series “Chicken Shop Date” — in which she awkwardly interviews actresses like Jennifer Lawrence and Keke Palmer in a fast-food restaurant — to discuss “how to grow your empire and build your brand,” as Lipa says in her editor’s note announcing the episode. Dimoldenberg’s advice: “Especially for women … you feel like you have to please everyone, you have to come across a certain type of way where you’re not being a diva,” to which Lipa murmurs in agreement. “Believe in your idea,” Dimoldenberg adds. “That’s the most important thing.”Gucci coat (with brooch), $12,900, pants, $5,200, sunglasses, $695, and shoes, $1,250, gucci.com; and Skims bra, $34, skims.com.Photograph by Luis Alberto Rodriguez. Styled by Carlos NazarioEVEN IF LIPA can do all of this, the question remains: Why? Obviously, she could fill her days just being a massively successful musician. But a few weeks after our lunch, she tells me over the phone that she would be “doing a disservice” to herself if she weren’t “exploring all the things [she] loved and wanted to share.” It’s similar to other explanations she’s given me: She likes “being thrown into the deep end” and acquiring new skills, above all those that are “aligned” with her “activism and love of reading.” She’s been interested in media since high school, especially after her father got a master’s degree in journalism when he returned to Kosovo. (He became her manager last year after she parted ways with Mawson.) She wants to honor the sacrifices her parents made; these various gigs satisfy “what’s maybe the immigrant mentality … this thing I have in my head where I know that, if I don’t work hard enough, the rug could just be pulled from under my feet.” If the music stops bringing in audiences, maybe these other enterprises will.She never says that last part; she probably never would. She also doesn’t say what I think is the real answer, which is this: Anyone who works in media can tell you that there’s no better way to lead the conversation without ever having to actually talk about yourself. While Lipa’s editorial initiative may seem like an act of self-exposure, it’s in fact one of self-protection — it allows her to connect regularly with her audience by sharing her favorite Spanish wine, the public art installations she enjoyed visiting in rural Japan, the causes or activists or artists she cares about. Sharing a lifestyle, however, is different than sharing a life.During the rare instances when she has to address something more intimate, her own outlets are the ideal way to disseminate the message. After DaBaby, a rapper featured on a remix of her song “Levitating,” was videotaped making homophobic comments at a 2021 music festival, Lipa wrote a statement on Instagram, where she has 88.6 million followers, renouncing him and encouraging her fans to fight the stigma around H.I.V./AIDS. That sort of direct communication “was something artists didn’t have before,” she says. “Whatever was said about you in the press, that was it: That’s who you are.”In 2021, an organization founded by the American Orthodox rabbi Shmuley Boteach ran a full-page ad in The New York Times accusing Lipa of antisemitism after she defended Palestinian human rights. Her representatives asked the paper’s leaders to apologize, but they didn’t. For more than two years, Lipa has turned down all coverage opportunities in The Times. Then she convinced Dean Baquet, the newspaper’s former executive editor, to come on her podcast last December. When she brought up the controversy, he had little to say about the company’s decisions (he still works here), explaining the church-and-state divisions between editorial and advertising departments. To her, the exchange went as anticipated: “It was enough for me to voice it to the guy at the top,” and she could then move on from something that had bothered her for years.All these decisions are hers to make, of course — she owes the public no more or no less than she chooses. Still, it’s interesting, novel even, to watch a celebrity build a brand off her own interests and obsessions, rather than allow her private life to become an interest and obsession of others. Since the dawn of Madonna, we’ve expected pop stars (and indeed all female artists) to bare all — to reference their mental health struggles (Lady Gaga) or their partners’ cheating scandals (Beyoncé) — only to judge and punish them for doing so. Lipa refuses to engage on that level. Her music, too, avoids the strange dissonance of other female artists (Taylor Swift; Adele) who’ve achieved success by exposing everyday secrets and sadnesses, only to find themselves stuck looping those same narratives now that their lives aren’t so relatable. Lipa won’t sing about those kinds of Easter eggs: “I think it’s a marketing tool: How confessional can you be?” she says. “I also don’t put so much of my life out there for people to dig into the music in this weird, analytical way.”The next album will be “more personal,” she offers, but that’s not why she’s doing it. Two days before we’d met for sushi, Lipa had been rewatching “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” the 2020 documentary about the Bee Gees, “just bawling my eyes out,” she says, with her boyfriend, Romain Gavras, a 42-year-old French Greek film director. (Tellingly, her relationship with Gavras is the only thing her publicist asked that I not bring up myself.) In the film, someone talks about “music that just makes your body feel good,” she explains. “Those are the songs I get attached to — that’s the kind of feeling I want to convey.” Already, she’s proved herself adept as a singer in conjuring those sorts of sensations. But as she keeps talking, I notice that the ordinary gesture of recommending a film I haven’t seen is making her feel good, too. “You should definitely watch it,” she says, interrupting her thoughts about her own music. “It’s amazing. I cry every time.”Hair by Rio Sreedharan for the Wall Group. Makeup by Samantha Lau. Set design by Afra Zamara for Second Name. Production: Farago Projects. Manicurist: Michelle Humphrey for LMC Worldwide. Photo assistants: Daniel Rodriguez Serrato, Enzo Farrugia, Hermine Werner. Set designer’s assistants: Tatyana Rutherston, Viola Vitali, Oualid Boudrar. Tailor: Sabrina Gomis Vallée. Stylist’s assistants: Martí Serra, Alexis Landolfi, Anna Castellano More