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      The Old West Is New Again

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      When Navied Mahdavian, a cartoonist, and his wife, Emelie, a filmmaker, moved from San Francisco to Mackay, Idaho (population 473), they fixated on their new hometown’s theater. Or, rather, the ghost of a theater.A red and white marquee for the Mackay Main Theater dominated part of Main Street, and Mr. and Ms. Mahdavian, who had moved in pursuit of a cheaper and less frantic way of life, resolved with other community members to reopen the cinema, which had been defunct for years.Before the big reopening, one longtime town resident seemed less than enthusiastic about the plan, Mr. Mahdavian recalled, accusing the theater boosters of trying to import an “artsy-fartsy, social-justice-warrior” sensibility to the Idaho mountains.“We’re actually showing a western,” Mr. Mahdavian said.To which the resident replied: “John Wayne?”Instead, the Mahdavians chose “Damsel,” a new-age western from 2018 featuring a heroine played by Mia Wasikowska, a wimpy male character and a masturbation scene. It didn’t go over all that well.“We probably should’ve anticipated that the reaction in town would be mixed,” said Mr. Mahdavian, 38, who has chronicled his move to a rural area in the forthcoming book “This Country.”By taking an active interest in the West of the American imagination — and the ever-evolving notions about what a western story can, or should, be — the Mahdavians are part of a larger movement.“Every generation is going to interpret differently what it sees in the West,” said Richard Aquila, a historian and author of “The Sagebrush Trail.”Photo Illustration by Kim Hoeckele for The New York TimesCowboys ride in and out of popular culture every few years, propelled by a hunger for stories that are wild, tumultuous and unvarnished. Now, as western style spreads across fashion and entertainment once more, that spirit of reinvention is being applied to reinvent the western itself, inflecting an old genre with new viewpoints.Two cultural stars of the summer, Beyoncé and Barbie, have invoked western tropes. Beyoncé wore a disco cowboy hat tilted over her face and sat atop a silver horse in portraits promoting her Renaissance World Tour, the imagery reminiscent of an extraterrestrial cowgirl. Re-creations of the hat, for fans trying to mimic the look, have sold for over $100 on Etsy. “Barbie,” which has climbed to more than $1 billion at the box office, included a lengthy sequence of Margot Robbie venturing deep into the Wild West of Los Angeles while wearing a white cowboy hat, a pink bandanna and a western-cut pink ensemble. And Taylor Swift may no longer wear western gear in public, as she did early in her career, but there were plenty of cowboy boots and cowboy hats to be seen among her fans headed to the Eras Tour shows this summer.History rhymes, fusty fashions turn trendy and cult classics become newly beloved — so it’s no surprise that cowboys keep cycling back into the popular imagination.“There’s a longstanding tradition in American history of looking West,” said Andrew Patrick Nelson, a historian of American cinema and culture at University of Utah. “Part of the appeal is the idea you can live a more authentic, exciting and rugged life.”Coming out of a period of pandemic malaise, millions of people have gone that-a-way — in their clothing choices, social media posts, and selections of TV shows and movies. In fashion, high-end brands, including Prada, unveiled spring collections comprising get-ups that smacked of the Old West. On TikTok, thousands of women have posted videos of themselves modeling outfits billed as “coastal cowgirl” — linen shirts, boots, hats and well-worn denim shorts. The #CoastalCowgirl hashtag has racked up tens of thousands of views.“Glam western is probably the No. 1 trending thing in fashion right now,” said Taylor Johnson, 36, who owns the concert wear boutique Hazel & Olive.The silver cowboy hat worn by Beyoncé in promotional images for her Renaissance tour was a fashion inspiration for fans on their way to one of the singer’s concerts in New Jersey this summer.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesTaylor Swift fans, outside the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey in May.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesBarbie, played by Margot Robbie, went full cowgirl as she explored the world beyond Barbie Land in “Barbie.”Warner Bros. PicturesBrunello Cucinelli, the fashion designer, said the “ease and sportiness” of western style lent itself to perennial cycles of popularity. “As a younger man, I watched many Sergio Leone movies and listened to Johnny Cash,” Mr. Cucinelli said in an email interview. “While visiting America for the first time, I remember vividly my trips to Texas and how men dressed with their tapered jackets and those great belts with large buckles.”“Yellowstone,” the soapy “red state” rancher television series, was ranked by Nielsen as the top scripted program last year. In interviews, several TikTok users said their #CoastalCowgirl posts represented their efforts to mimic Beth Dutton, the ruthless main daughter of the show played by Kelly Reilly.Kimberly Johnson, 39, a stay-at-home mother in Delaware, said the series offered a reprieve from the Covid-era divorce drama of her own life. When she saw the #CoastalCowgirl trend, she said the thought that crossed her mind was: “Now I have an excuse to dress like I’m from ‘Yellowstone’!”“Yellowstone,” which is filmed and based in Montana, pumped some $700 million in tourism spending into the state’s economy, on top of $72 million in production spending from Paramount, according to a study from the University of Montana (which was sponsored by the Media Coalition of Montana and Paramount). Nearly 20 percent of visitors to the state in 2021 attributed their travel in part to watching the series, in what economists called “‘Yellowstone’-induced” tourism.Jordan Calhoun, a writer in New York who edits the how-to site Lifehacker, was one of the fans who went West because of the show. He said his affection for the series came about in the early weeks of the coronavirus pandemic, when he was locked down in his Harlem apartment and felt the need for a landscape that looked different from what he was seeing out his window. He longed for rows of pines, big stretches of sky. And he wanted to experience the Dutton family’s way of life.“I don’t know how to fix a fence or ride a horse or grow crops,” Mr. Calhoun, 38, said. “Self-reliance, or country living, is something that got really appealing during the pandemic.”Jordan Calhoun, a writer and editor who lives in New York, went West because of his love for “Yellowstone.”Jordan CalhounHe spent five days on a Colorado ranch in 2022. Although the trip confirmed for him that it wasn’t what he wanted full time, it taught Mr. Calhoun, who is Black, that the western landscapes he loved on TV were something he could go and enjoy. That was a realization far afield from what he had felt watching westerns when he was growing up.“I watched ‘Young Guns’ a thousand times,” he said. “There wasn’t much of me in it.”But as much as it is a place on the map, the West is also an idea, one that changes over time. And amid the latest round of fascination with cowboy culture, the western, a staple film genre since the early days of cinema, is being reimagined for a growing audience.From 2000 to 2009, Hollywood made 23 movies categorized as westerns, according to Comscore, which compiles box office data. That number shot up to 42 from 2010 to 2019. Some of these new films feature Black cowboys, Native American protagonists, queer heroes and damsels far from distress. Some are directed by female filmmakers, like Jane Campion, whose 2021 movie “The Power of the Dog,” which features a most likely closeted rancher, received more Academy Award nominations than any other film last year.Alaina Roberts, an American historian who wrote “I’ve Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land,” was raised with all the classic images of what a western film looked like: Davy Crockett wrestling a bear, John Wayne squinting through the Texas dust. Her mother loved those films.But when Dr. Roberts started her own career as a scholar, those weren’t the visions of the West that captured her imagination. Instead, she wanted to research stories of her own Black family members, who were enslaved by the Chickasaw and Choctaw tribes in what is now Ardmore, Okla. She also grew fascinated by the Buffalo Soldiers, all-Black regiments who policed the plains.“We shouldn’t be afraid of complexity,” said Ms. Roberts, 32, who consulted on the recent documentary series “The Real Wild West,” which focuses on Black and Hispanic cowboys, Buffalo Soldiers, Native leaders and women on the plains. “It doesn’t mean we’re trying to rewrite history.”TV shows and movies including “Yellowstone,” “The Harder They Fall,” “Bitterbrush,” and “The Power of the Dog” are reshaping the cowboy image.Top: Paramount Network, Netflix; Bottom: Magnolia Pictures, NetflixThe list of movies, TV shows and documentaries taking on these more tangled western tales keeps growing. There’s “The Harder They Fall,” a 2021 film from the director Jeymes Samuel about Black outlaws, sharpshooters, horse riders and frontier townspeople. The director Kelly Reichardt has put her stamp on the genre in two films: “Meek’s Cutoff,” which is centered on pioneer women played by Michelle Williams, Shirley Henderson and Zoe Kazan, who realize that a Native American man they meet on the Oregon Trail is more trustworthy than their white guide; and “First Cow,” about a pair of misfits, played by Orion Lee and John Magaro, trying to make a go of it in mid-19th-century Oregon. There’s also Chloé Zhao’s “The Rider,” a rodeo story about the Lakota Sioux tribe.Ms. Mahdavian, 41, who moved with her husband from San Francisco to rural Idaho, is another filmmaker who has trained her camera on the West. Her 2022 documentary, “Bitterbrush,” follows female cattle ranchers near her new home. “I don’t have an agenda to kill the western,” she said. “I find myself drawn to telling stories that feel true to a certain type of lived experience.”Western films have tended to reflect the experience of the people who produced them and the ideas in the air at the time of their production, film historians say. The westerns of the World War II era, for example, fulfilled a hunger for clear-cut messages. Some see “Stagecoach,” the 1939 John Wayne classic, as a parable for the New Deal: A group of Americans (a whiskey salesman, a drunken doctor) have to work together to prevail over what’s lurking around them.Then came the 1960s, when social changes raised questions about the old order, driving a desire for new types of anti-establishment western heroes, like Clint Eastwood’s antihero “Man With No Name” character, or the jovial outlaws played by Paul Newman and Robert Redford in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”“It’s almost like a Rorschach inkblot test,” Richard Aquila, 76, a historian and author of “The Sagebrush Trail” said. “Every generation is going to interpret differently what it sees in the West.”John Wayne, the quintessential western actor, in the 1939 film “Stagecoach.”Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesFor die-hard lovers of western films and novels, the periodic resurgence of the genre is invigorating because it sends new fans toward old classics. W.F. Strong, a professor of communications and culture at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, delights in hearing from young readers who have recently discovered Larry McMurtry’s 1985 novel “Lonesome Dove,” which follows a group of lovably bone-headed cowpokes from their tiny hometown, Lonesome Dove, to the plains of Montana.Mr. Strong, 68, said he particularly loved how Mr. McMurtry, who died in 2021, was able to capture the lives of ordinary Americans in the novel. “He was writing about my people — and I didn’t realize you could do that as an author,” he recalled. “When I was young, I thought you had to be writing about glamorous things far away, like England.”For many people, including those taking part in the #cowgirl memes on social media, that’s part of the appeal — the idea that the western experience seems within reach, that wide-open plains are closer than they appear. Kyra Smolkin, a content creator in Los Angeles who has been posting her cowgirl-themed fashions on TikTok, said she grew up in Toronto “romanticizing small towns and ranches.”“What’s cool about cowgirl style is it’s attainable — there’s no barrier to entry,” Ms. Smolkin, 30, said. “I love that there’s an ease to it. It’s easy to make your own.”And for the Mahdavians, the couple who moved from San Francisco to Idaho, there was a thrill to making the western story their own, by setting up a home in the kind of landscape that they had long associated with the movies. They built a house on a small plot of land about a 20-minute drive from Mackay. It is surrounded by snow-capped mountains, and there are no people in sight.They have also gotten past the mixed reception they received for their opening night at the renovated theater on Main Street. They pulled it off by showing “The Quiet Man,” a 1952 western romance starring John Wayne.“We had, like, 70 people come, which for a population of 500 is a lot,” Mr. Mahdavian recalled. “People definitely responded to John Wayne.”First collage: Bettmann/Getty Images (background); Amir Hamja/ The New York Times, Maggie Shannon for The New York Times, Paramount Network, Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images (hats); Paramount Network, Jason Kempin/Getty Images (shirts); Gabriela Campos/Santa Fe New Mexican, via Associated Press, Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times, George Frey/EPA, via Shutterstock, Roy Rochlin/Getty Images (boots)Second collage: George Rinhart/Corbis, via Getty Images (background); Amy Sussman/Getty Images (body) More

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      Pharrell Williams Shares His Inspirations, From Henry Taylor to ‘Jabberjaw’

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      Pharrell Williams — the clothing designer who succeeded Virgil Abloh in February 2023, just over a year after his death, as Louis Vuitton’s men’s creative director; the Grammy-winning record producer behind such pop masterpieces as Justin Timberlake’s “Justified” (2002) and Clipse’s “Hell Hath No Fury” (2006); the musician and performer who in conversation casually refers to the French electronic duo Daft Punk as “the robots” and Karl Lagerfeld as “Karl” — doesn’t like talking about himself. “This is absolutely Dante’s ‘Inferno,’” he said over the phone this past June, a few days after lighting up Paris’s Pont Neuf with his spectacular debut for the French fashion house. At one point, it seemed like he might give up on the conversation altogether. “This is straight up like voice mail syndrome,” he said. “I mean, do you like listening to yourself on voice mail?” Williams, 50, was raised in Virginia Beach by his father, Pharaoh, a handyman, and his mother, Carolyn, a teacher. It was there that he met numerous lifelong collaborators, including Chad Hugo, his producing partner in the Neptunes, a duo as important to the sound of hip-hop over the past 30 years as the Funk Brothers were to Motown in the 1960s. A dedicated polymath who shifts between styles, genres and media, Williams is his best, most creative self in the presence of water. He grew up in a housing project called Atlantis, right by the beach; today, he holds an annual music and art festival in Virginia Beach called Something in the Water. And when he’s not in Miami on Biscayne Bay, he spends his time in Paris, where he has a music studio at the LVMH headquarters overlooking the Seine.At top: “This was taken in Los Angeles last year, a few months before the Louis Vuitton announcement. Being a producer and a creative director are similar. I can go from apparel to drums, from trunks to melodies. Within my design studio, I have a section allocated to music, so I go back and forth all day.”Left: Launchmetrics/Spotlight. Right: © Henry Taylor, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Fredrik NilsenLeft and right: “I wanted to work with [the American artist] Henry Taylor [whose paintings, one of which is shown here, were embroidered onto garments and bags from Williams’s first collection for Louis Vuitton]. It’s not lost on me that this appointment was given to another Black man from America. This is pivotal for us, you know, after Virgil, our brother who’s gone back up to the stars. I think it’s important that we continue to tell interesting stories. I don’t have an agenda — I am the agenda. I want not only people who look like me but people who don’t look like me to be inspired by this moment. And working with an artist like Henry Taylor helps tell that story.”From left: Dre Rojas; courtesy of Helen Williams; Sam HayesLeft: “This was taken at a Chanel show in Africa last year. [Williams was a brand ambassador from 2014 to 2022.] We went to Dakar, Senegal, and I had on a fresh pair of [Adidas] Sambas. Years ago, I’d asked Karl [Lagerfeld, Chanel’s longtime creative director who died in 2019] to take the house to Africa, and he said we would get to it, but he passed before we got a chance to.”Center: “My oldest son [Rocket, pictured here with Williams at Disney World in 2012] makes beats. We [Pharrell and his wife, the model and fashion designer Helen Williams] also have triplets. It’s a triple handful. We say it’s beautifully intense and intensely beautiful.” Right: “We turned a house in Miami into a studio. I have no idea [when we set it up], but it’s been a couple of years. I’m terrible with chronology: I live in the moment, but I process things in the future and I get lost in the past. In Miami, it’s all about the weather and the humidity. It’s always been very inspiring to me. It’s fun to record there on the water, which sounds like a flex, but it’s really not.” From left: Kourtrajmeuf; Vinyls/Alamy; Dre RojasLeft: “With this Vuitton appointment, it’s like I’m a perpetual student. If I’m the king of anything, it’s the king of being a pupil. I knew I wanted to work on Damier [the brand’s signature checkerboard pattern]. I’ve always loved pixelated camo, so we did it with Damier, leveling it up, and that’s how we got Damouflage [pictured here on a model during a fitting earlier this year]. Being surrounded by so many talented people is the best. I mean, I’m an Aries, so I’ve always been superimpulsive. But without the resources and the people, I’d be just like every other person with a great idea.”Center: “As a kid, I listened to a lot of records my aunt would play in her house. Parliament-Funkadelic had songs that blew my mind. I also think [Kraftwerk’s sixth studio album] ‘Trans-Europe Express’ (1977) happened around that time. Atlantis was like this neighborhood in a bubble. It’s where music was everything and, when certain songs came on, it was like a musical happening right there in front of you. You could either be a part of it or you could stand back and watch.” Right: “This picture was taken earlier this year at Le Café V [a Louis Vuitton cafe in Osaka]. Japan is my favorite place. On my 50th orbit, I had a birthday party organized by [the Tokyo-based artistic director of Kenzo and hip-hop producer] Nigo. One of the most amazing gifts is his presence in my life. Twenty years ago, I needed to go to Japan to record something, so Nigo arranged for me to come to his studio, which is basically a compound on five floors of a building. One floor is a showroom, one is a photo studio, another is a recording studio, and I was like, ‘Wow, this guy lives what’s in his head.’ That changed me. I was so used to bragging because that was the world I came from. And then I met Nigo, who barely said anything. He didn’t have to. Humility is in the Tokyo air like the humidity in Virginia.”From left: Dr. Carolyn Williams; Hanna-Barbera/Photofest; Columbia/PhotofestLeft: “I think this picture is from around 1976, so when I was 3 years old. I’m the third of eight kids — two sisters and five brothers. I want to say ‘Star Wars’ (1977) came out around then. I just remember being back in the Atlantis apartments in Virginia Beach. I didn’t know life was as hard as it was, because it was fun to me.” Center: “My favorite cartoon as a kid was ‘Jabberjaw’ (1976), and the band he played in was called the Neptunes. So that’s where the name [of his songwriting and production duo with Chad Hugo] came from.”Right: “I love watching movies to escape. But the funny thing is, I couldn’t tell you from what. My favorite movie is ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ (1977). I relate to Richard Dreyfuss’s character and the alien.” More

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      in Movies

      Summer Fashion Inspired By Eric Rohmer’s Films

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      The outfits featured in the late French filmmaker’s work, celebrated by a new Instagram account, offer an antidote to all that is plastic and pink.She’s rolling in the grass dressed in sunflower yellow, kissing a man about whom she’s passionately ambivalent (“Boyfriends and Girlfriends,” 1987). She’s strolling through the countryside in a fleecy blue sweater, having no fun at all (“The Green Ray,” 1986). She’s lounging on a beach in a red bikini and ivory bucket hat, about to embark on a confusingly ambiguous friendship with the shirtless Frenchman she’s observing (“A Summer’s Tale,” 1996).This is summer love, Eric Rohmer-style: It isn’t easy, but it sure is chic.The outfits featured in the late French filmmaker’s works have long been celebrated, and continue to build a following, now quite literally, on an Instagram account called @Rohmerfits, which debuted in May.Rohmer’s films, which spanned the 1960s to 2000s, were famous for their unhurried plots: Characters bounce around France, in between the countryside, the seaside and the city; they analyze their romantic entanglements; they read Balzac; they seduce and irritate each other — and they do it all while wearing Mediterranean-blue sweaters, high-waisted jeans, billowy cotton shirts and pops of red.“There’s just this air about them where you want to be within them,” Alexandra Tell, the creator of @Rohmerfits, said of the costumes. The characters are “often on vacation, so you want something that’s sort of breezy that you can move in,” she said. “His clothes aren’t extravagant, but they’re elegant in this easy, ineffable way.”The secret to such aesthetic ease may lie in Rohmer’s devotion to naturalism. Like his contemporaries Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, Rohmer, who died in 2010, began as a film critic. These critics-turned-auteurs “were very much against a sense of artificiality that stemmed from the shooting in studios,” said Ludovic Cortade, a film scholar who teaches French cinema at New York University.Amanda Langlet plays Margot in “A Summer’s Tale” (1996). Rohmer often asked actors “to come up with several costume options that would reflect their own tastes,” said Ludovic Cortade, a film scholar.via The Criterion ChannelAn extension of that naturalism, Professor Cortade said, was Rohmer’s decision not to use costume designers for many of his films, and instead asked actors “to come up with several costume options that would reflect their own tastes, which was a great strategy to convey a sense of authenticity.”The aesthetic is a sharp contrast to movies like the upcoming “Barbie,” which will be released this month. While “Barbie” plays with literal plastic, Rohmer did the opposite. “Maybe the ‘Barbie’ world is more reflective of our reality,” Ms. Tell said, while Rohmer’s earthy naturalism now “feels like more of an escape.”Though the looks were fastidiously curated by Rohmer, they never felt forced, Professor Cortade said. In “Boyfriends and Girlfriends,” for example, a marigold tank top and belt, as worn by Blanche, who is played by Emmanuelle Chaulet, match the color of some orange juice in a glass cup. “You can see the wrinkles in the clothes,” said Ms. Tell, a 32-year-old writer and curatorial assistant who lives in Brooklyn. “It’s very tactile.”The outfits’ simplicity allows audiences to focus on the characters and their relationships as they grapple with complex questions of morality and love. Though Rohmer’s tone could be witty and farcical, his films astutely tackled “the challenges of personal interactions and the awkwardness behind that” — a dynamic that has only been heightened with the advent of digital technology, Professor Cortade added.In “Boyfriends and Girlfriends,” a marigold tank top and belt, as worn by Blanche, who is played by Emmanuelle Chaulet, match the color of some orange juice in a glass cup.via MetrographIn “The Green Ray,” Delphine is wearing a crimson blazer when she says to a friend, played by Rosette, through sobs: “I need a real vacation.”via The Criterion ChannelOnce she does go on vacation, Delphine wanders around morosely, lonely and dressed in all blue.via The Criterion ChannelIn other words, it’s Rohmer’s blend of aspiration and realism that keeps his films — and costumes — so fresh, Ms. Tell said: His characters, like Margot in “A Summer’s Tale,” played by Amanda Langlet, wear clothes you would wear, but better styled. They too have challenging so-called situationships, but with the handsome Gaspard, played by Melvil Poupaud, and amid the backdrop of a grassy path.In one scene in “The Green Ray,” Delphine, played by Marie Rivière, moans about going on vacation with her family after a breakup. Clad in a glorious crimson blazer, Delphine says through sobs: “I need a real vacation.” A friend, played by Rosette, convinces her to join a trip to Cherbourg, promising her they’ll “have fun and meet people.” Instead Delphine wanders around against the muted sun, morosely, lonely and dressed in all blue. More

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      Margot Robbie’s Best Barbie-Inspired Looks From Her Press Tour

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      The actors’ strike effectively ended the “Barbie” film’s press tour. But Margot Robbie’s pink-carpet outfits are worth remembering.The actors’ strike has hit the brakes on the hot pink convertible that is the “Barbie” film’s press tour.Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling and other stars of Greta Gerwig’s forthcoming movie inspired by the doll are unlikely to appear on pink carpets until further notice in solidarity with SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union. That means the parade of neon fashion led by Ms. Robbie has probably come to an end.Ms. Robbie, who was styled by Andrew Mukamal, had her pick of designers throughout the press tour, from vintage Versace to Vivienne Westwood. But several of the actress’s best looks took inspiration from Barbie’s clothing archive, including a black-and-white-striped swimsuit the doll wore when it was introduced in 1959, a prim skirt suit from the ’80s and a swirly minidress Barbie wore in the ’90s.Those outfits, seen here alongside the Barbie clothes that inspired them, struck the exact right balance between kitschy and chic. “It’s not subtle,” Ms. Robbie said in an interview with People, “but it’s very fun!”This Barbie is glamorous.Mattel; Lia Toby/Getty ImagesEnchanted EveningAt the “Barbie” premiere in London, Ms. Robbie wore a Vivienne Westwood gown accented by a white tulle stole and a three-strand pearl necklace. The look recreated the glamorous get-up of the “Enchanted Evening” Barbie introduced in 1960.This Barbie works hard and plays hard.Mattel (Barbie); Jung Yeon-Je/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images; Chung Sung-Jun/Getty ImagesDay to NightThe “Day to Night” Barbie doll, released in 1985, was ready for work and play. Its transitional wardrobe inspired what Ms. Robbie wore at the Seoul premiere: a Versace pencil skirt and blazer, which morphed into a sequined pink bodice and tulle skirt.This Barbie is classic. Mattel; Warner Bros.Original BarbieIn Sydney, Ms. Robbie wore a Hervé Léger bandage dress that paid tribute to the black-and-white one-piece swimsuit worn by the original Barbie. The actress, like the doll, completed her look with white sunglasses and black open-toe shoes.This Barbie is a star.Mattel; Nina Prommer/EPA, via ShutterstockSolo in the SpotlightThe strapless, sequined mermaid gown Ms. Robbie wore to the film’s Los Angeles premiere was a custom Schiaparelli recreation of the dress for the “Solo in the Spotlight” Barbie, a doll released in 1960.This Barbie is groovy. Hector Vivas/Getty ImagesTotally HairIn an abstract Pucci minidress, hot pink Manolo Blahnik heels and long, crimped blond locks, Ms. Robbie channeled the style of “Totally Hair” Barbie, introduced in 1992, at a photo call in Mexico City.This Barbie knows how to accessorize.Mattel; Hector Vivas/Getty ImagesEarring MagicBalmain made the pink leather minidress Ms. Robbie wore to the film’s Mexico City premiere. The look took inspiration from “Earring Magic” Barbie, released in 1992, down to its low-slung belt and chunky earrings.This Barbie is ready for Palm Springs.Mattel; Jon Kopaloff/Getty ImagesPink & FabulousAt a press appearance in Los Angeles, Ms. Robbie wore a custom Valentino halter dress that referenced the “Pink & Fabulous” Barbie, a doll introduced in 2015.This Barbie is polished.Mattel; Lee Jin-Man/Associated PressSparkling PinkThe bedazzled three-piece Moschino set that Ms. Robbie wore in Seoul was an updated version of the skirt suit worn by the “Sparkling Pink” Barbie, released in 1964.This Barbie is Ms. Robbie. Mattel; Steve Marcus/Reuters‘Barbie’: The MovieOf all Ms. Robbie’s Barbie-inspired outfits, the most meta might have been the pink-and-white gingham set she wore at CinemaCon in Las Vegas. The look referenced a dress Ms. Robbie wears in the “Barbie” trailer and the frock made for a new Barbie doll based on Ms. Robbie’s likeness.Elizabeth Paton More

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      in Music

      Jane Birkin, Singer, Actress and Fashion Inspiration, Dies at 76

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      She was a lithe beauty of 1960s European film, a famous musical collaborator and lover of Serge Gainsbourg, and the namesake of elegant Hermès handbags.Jane Birkin, who helped define chic female sexuality of the 1970s as an actress in arty and erotic European movies and in her relationship — equal parts romantic and artistic — with the singer Serge Gainsbourg, died on Sunday in Paris. Ms. Birkin, who later became known for inspiring one of the best known lines of luxury handbags, was 76.Her death was confirmed by President Emmanuel Macron of France, who called her “a French icon” in a message on Twitter. The French news media reported that Ms. Birkin had been found dead at her home but that the cause was not immediately known.The child of a famously beautiful actress and a socially connected British naval officer, Ms. Birkin led a life guided by many happy accidents.While she was on a flight in 1984, a plastic bag in which she was keeping her possessions broke, leading her to complain aloud that Hermès did not make a bag that could fit all her things. The man sitting next to her happened to be Jean-Louis Dumas, then the head designer of Hermès (and later its chief executive). The company released the Birkin bag line the same year — in just the large size she had requested.Standard Birkin bags now sell for $10,000, and the difficulties of obtaining one — given a complex manufacturing process and a deliberately rationed supply to boutiques — have given the bag the cachet of exclusivity.Her relationship with Mr. Gainsbourg began just as fortuitously, in 1968. She was in her early 20s, her first marriage having fallen apart, when, without particular renown as an actress and without speaking a word of French, she managed to be cast in a French movie, “Slogan,” starring Mr. Gainsbourg.The two fell in love, but Ms. Birkin did not see a way to remain long in France. Then, dining out one night, she had a chance encounter with the French director Jacques Deray, got hired to act in a movie of his, stayed in the country and solidified her relationship with Mr. Gainsbourg.She lived in France for the rest of her life, and her engagement with Mr. Gainsbourg and his music proved equally enduring.The most notable product of their collaboration and romance was their 1969 hit recording of Mr. Gainsbourg’s song “Je t’aime… moi non plus” (“I Love You… Me Neither”).In the song, a duet, Mr. Gainsbourg speaks of sex in a low, conversational voice as Ms. Birkin confesses her love in suggestive murmurs and moans and the high-pitched singing of an ingénue.The song was condemned by the Vatican and banned in several countries and by the B.B.C. television network. But it sold millions of copies.Nearly 50 years later, in 2018, Ms. Birkin was still singing music by Mr. Gainsbourg, by then on a world tour of orchestral versions of his songs.“If I am singing in Argentina in two weeks’ time,” she told The Guardian, “it is because of ‘Je t’aime.’”Jane Mallory Birkin was born in London on Dec. 14, 1946, to Judy Campbell, an actress who gained renown for performing for British troops with Noël Coward during World War II, and Cmdr. David Birkin of the Royal Navy.In 2021, her father’s exploits during World War II were recounted in “A Dangerous Enterprise,” a book by Tim Spicer, a former British military officer. Commander Birkin’s duties included navigating boats on moonless nights across the English Channel to bring to safety Allied spies, stranded airmen and escaped prisoners of war who had found themselves in France.Ms. Birkin, at 18, married the British composer John Barry, known for arranging the trademark theme to James Bond movies, and they had a daughter, Kate. At 20, Ms. Birkin appeared in Michelangelo Antonioni’s hit 1966 movie, “Blow Up,” an erotic tale of a London fashion photographer. She played a fashion model — the credits listed her as only The Blonde — and gained some attention for a risqué nude scene.Ms. Birkin with the English actor David Hemmings in a scene from Michelangelo Antonioni’s film “Blow-Up,” released in 1966.Sunset Boulevard/Corbis, via Getty Images“Had it all worked out with John Barry, I would never have been curious to know what was going on anywhere else,” Ms. Birkin told The Guardian in 2017. “I would have just gone on being his wife. I would have been delighted. But because he went off with someone else, and I was left with Kate, I had to find a job quite fast.”That led to her audition for “Slogan.”The movie that kept her in France was “La Piscine” (“The Swimming Pool”), starring Alain Delon and Romy Schneider. (It found unexpected renewed popularity in the United States in 2021.) A sun-soaked film of sex and jealousy with many shots of scantily clad actors, the movie proved to be an effective showcase for Ms. Birkin’s long-limbed beauty.Her romance with Mr. Gainsbourg captivated the French public. She was the young doe-eyed expat, he the aging but still virile artistic genius. The relationship lasted for more than a decade, ending when she left him in the early 1980s for the French film director Jacques Doillon. Mr. Gainsbourg died in 1991 at 62.Though Ms. Birkin would later speak self-deprecatingly about her role as Mr. Gainsbourg’s muse, she embraced becoming “the keeper of the Gainsbourg flame,” as The New York Times labeled her in 2018.She described to The Times connections between the music he wrote for her and work by classical composers like Chopin and Brahms.“I would have thought that he was probably France’s most modern writer,” she said. “He invented a new language, he cut words in two like Cole Porter.”Ms. Birkin and Mr. Gainsbourg with her daughters Charlotte, left, and Kate Barry in 1972. Charlotte became a singer and actress. Kate became a photographer who died in 2013.James Andanson/Sygma, via Getty ImagesMs. Birkin released “Oh! Pardon tu dormais…,” her first album of her own songs written in English, in 2021. “The results are an emotional tour de force from an artist who has never gotten her musical due outside of France,” the music writer Ben Cardew wrote in a review for Pitchfork.Ms. Birkin also continued to act, including in films by Agnès Varda and plays by Patrice Chéreau. She was also popular in France as an activist for women’s and L.G.B.T.Q. rights as well as for her British accent when speaking French, which the French found endearing.“The most Parisian of the English has left us,” the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, wrote in a message on Twitter on Sunday. “We will never forget her songs, her laughs and her incomparable accent.”Ms. Birkin in 2021 at the Cannes Film Festival in France. Hermès put her name on a line of exclusive handbags.Stephane Cardinale/Corbis, via Getty ImagesMs. Birkin had a mild stroke in 2021 and had recently canceled a series of concerts because of health issues.She is survived by two daughters, one with Mr. Gainsbourg and the other with Mr. Doillon: the singer-actresses Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou Doillon, each of whom has, like their mother, inspired designers and followers of fashion. Her other daughter, Kate Barry, a photographer, died at 46 in 2013 in a fall from a window of her fourth-floor Paris apartment.Ms. Birkin discovered that her romantic separation from Mr. Gainsbourg did not dim their collaboration. He kept writing new songs intended for her until he died.After their breakup, “you could talk back to him for once,” she told The Guardian. “You were not just his creation any more.”Guy Trebay More

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      in Television

      Does ‘And Just Like That …’ Signal the End of Stealth Wealth?

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      So does the pop culture and fashion wheel turn.And just like that, stealth wealth, the aesthetic made viral by “Succession,” with its toxic billionaires in their Loro Piana baseball caps and Tom Ford hoodies locked in a C-suite cage match to the death, has been swept off screen.In its place: logomania, branding that can be seen from whole city blocks away and accessories that jangle and gleam with the blinding light of bragging rights.The outfits, that is to say, of Carrie and Co. in Season 2 of “And Just Like That …,” the “Sex and the City” reboot come recently to Max — the streamer that, as it happens, also gave us the Roys in their greige cashmere. Both shows are set in New York City, the home of strivers and entrepreneurs, of “Washington Square” and Wharton, of constantly evolving social castes highly, and literally, invested in their own identifiable camouflage.If watching “Succession” was in part like engaging in a detective game to suss out what character was wearing what brand, so insider were the fashion politics, watching “And Just Like That …” is like attending brandapalooza: the double Cs and Fs and Gs practically whacking you on the head with their presence. (Warning: Spoilers are coming.) All the over-the-top fashionista-ing is back. The room-size closets!It’s the yin to the “Succession” yang: a veritable celebration of the comforting aspirational dreams of self-realization (or self-escapism) embedded in stuff that may actually be the most striking part of an increasingly stale series. Certainly, the clothes, which often serve as their own plot points, are more memorable than any dialogue.Well … except maybe for that instantly classic line in Episode 1, uttered by Lisa Todd Wexley (Nicole Ari Parker) on her way to the Met Gala in reference to her gown and feather hat: “It’s not crazy — it’s Valentino.” But that’s the exception that proves the rule.Lisa Todd Wexley stopping traffic on her way to the Met Gala in Valentino.Craig Blakenhorn/MaxThere is Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), with her multiple Manolos and Fendis, self-medicating with shopping, returning home one day with six Bergdorf Goodman bags. Charlotte (Kristin Davis) toting her Burberry doggy poop bag (also possessed of a Burberry apron and Burberry ear muffs) and bemoaning the fact that her teenage daughter hocked her Chanel dress to fund her musical aspirations.Lisa Todd Wexley dropping her kids off for camp in a bright green Louis Vuitton jacket and scarf. And Seema (Sarita Choudhury), the character that passes for a restrained dresser thanks to her penchant for neutrals (and the occasional animal print), loudly lamenting the theft of her caramel-colored Hermès Birkin — one of her totems of self, ripped directly from her hands.Lisa Todd Wexley dropping her children off for camp in Louis Vuitton.Jason Howard/Bauer-Griffin/GC ImagesSeema with her caramel-colored Hermès Birkin.Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin, via GC ImagesThere is Loewe and Pierre Cardin; Altuzarra and Dries Van Noten. There is also an effort to repurpose clothes, like Carrie’s wedding dress, in order to promote the virtues of rewearing, but it’s pretty much lost in all the rest of the muchness. There is a dedicated Instagram account on which the costume designers Molly Rogers and Danny Santiago share their finds, with 277,000 followers. @Successionfashion, by contrast, has 184,000.All of which means what, exactly? Is the era of quiet luxury, so recently embraced by TikTok, already at an end? Have our attention spans, so famously abbreviated, moved on? Has the physics of fashion exerted its force and produced an equal and opposite reaction to an earlier action?As if. In many ways, the fashion in “And Just Like That …” seems to protest too much. In part that’s because it seems like a regurgitation of the fun that came before, which was itself a reaction to the minimalism of the early 1990s, which itself was born in that decade’s recession.The fact is, no matter how much lip service has been paid to quiet luxury or stealth wealth or whatever you want to call it, and how it is 2023’s “hottest new fashion trend,” it was never a recent invention. It has been around since way back when it was referred to as “shabby chic” or “connoisseurship” or “old money,” all synonyms for the kind of product that didn’t look overtly expensive but was a sign of aesthetic genealogy — the difference between new money and inherited money that fashion co-opted and regurgitated to its own ends. Just as more obviously coded consumption has been around since Louis Vuitton plunked his initials on some leather back in 1896 or since Jay Gatsby started tossing his shirts.Note the Fendi bag on the back of Carrie’s chair.HBO MaxFind the Burberry-branded doggy poop bag tucked on Charlotte’s arm.HBO MaxWe’ve been declaring the “end of logos” and, alternately, the “rise of stealth wealth” for decades now. There are cycles when one is more ubiquitous than the other (usually having to do with economic downturns when flaunting disposable income is not a great look), but they exist in tandem. They help define each other.Consider that during the current economic uncertainty, exactly the kind of environment that tends to fast-forward the appeal of low-key high-cost items, the most successful global brands have remained the most highly identifiable: Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Hermès. Or that in his recent debut for Louis Vuitton, Pharrell Williams introduced a bag called Millionaire that costs — yup — $1 million. (It’s a yellow croc Speedy with gold and diamond hardware.)What is more interesting is, as Carrie and the gang continue on their merry wardrobed way, how clichéd both styles now seem, how performative. Once they have trickled up to television, it’s impossible not to recognize the costume. Or the fact that whichever look you buy into, they are simply different ways of expressing wealth, in all its decorative strata. And wealth itself never goes out of fashion. More

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      in Music

      Popcast (Deluxe): Pharrell Williams at Louis Vuitton and Gunna’s New LP

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:The story behind Pharrell Williams’s ascension to the men’s creative director chair at Louis Vuitton following the death of Virgil Abloh, and the role of global celebrity in high fashionA Paris cultural report, including recent French rap and the exhibits at Musée d’OrsayInspired by a viewer question, a conversation about hip-hop’s lack of Billboard chart penetration this yearGunna’s new LP, which has a chance of reaching the top spot on the Billboard album chartA new song from Certified Trapper and an old song by Big Pokey, who died on SundaySnack of the weekConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. More

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      in Music

      Roaring Twenties Enthusiasts Gather in New York

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      Hundreds of time travelers in 1920s-era outfits took ferries to Governors Island earlier this month to attend the two-day Jazz Age Lawn Party, one of New York City’s most curious summer traditions.They wore flapper dresses with feather boas, pinstripe suits with black-and-white wingtips and lots of boater hats, cloche hats and bow ties. Gathered on picnic blankets in a grassy field, they passed the day sipping gin and tonics before dancing to hot jazz performed by the Dreamland Orchestra.A man wearing pink pants and suspenders drank beer from a Mason jar while his young son, also in suspenders, sat on his shoulders. Lines gathered outside a stand that sold newsboy caps and another that offered on-site tintype portraits. A pie contest included the category, “Hobo’s Choice,” which rewarded the confection most likely to be “stolen off a back porch.”The orchestra was conducted by the pencil-mustached bandleader Michael Arenella, who started the event in 2005. “We were pretty much the first event out here,” he said. “It was maybe 50 people then. People are drawn to the Roaring Twenties because there’s a youthfulness to the era. After the war, people were looking to have a good time, after their brush with mortality.”In the edited interviews below, re-enactors on the second day named their Jazz Age fashion heroes and pondered whether they would actually time travel back to the era.Cyrene ReneeModel and playwrightDesiree Rios for The New York TimesIf you could time travel back, would you? I’d go back. I’d be a showgirl at the Cotton Club and be the best dancer there. As much as I love the era, I don’t think life was better, though. There was segregation. Yet despite what we were going through as people of color, we created beautiful dance, music and art.Do you have a Jazz Age fashion hero? Josephine Baker, all day, every day. She was righteous and liberated in her beauty.Inez RobinsonEducatorDesiree Rios for The New York TimesWould you go back? I can’t romanticize that period, as a person of color, but I’m very drawn to the era’s fashion. As a Harlem native, I have an affinity for the Harlem Renaissance. African Americans were using fashion to carry themselves proudly every single day.Jazz Age fashion hero? Coco Chanel. Her designs introduced gender fluidity. She pioneered the idea you could go both ways.Skip DiatzRetired librarianDesiree Rios for The New York TimesWould you time travel back? People think of the 1920s as one big party, but it was just good for a few people of certain persuasions. It was also a time of intolerance and prejudice. I’d probably go back just for a weekend. However, this is only one time period I’m involved with as a re-enactor. I did a World War II event the other weekend, and I was at a Revolutionary War event recently in Mount Vernon.Your old-timey fashion hero? Douglas Fairbanks Jr. He was married to Joan Crawford and was the best dressed man in Hollywood.Michael ArenellaBandleaderDesiree Rios for The New York TimesWould you go back? I’d like to go back, because I relate to the simplicity of that time. Don’t get me wrong, it was a harder life, and lots obviously wasn’t good, but things were simpler then, and I feel we’ve gotten further from that.Jazz Age fashion hero? Gary Cooper. He was just starting out, and he had that elegant swagger. You don’t see elegant swagger in a man these days.LaVerne CameronRetired paralegalDesiree Rios for The New York TimesWould you time travel back? Yes, because I think people were happier then, though I’d want to arrive before the Great Depression. Women’s liberation was starting and so much of that fashion remains stylish today, from sequins to headbands.Old-timey fashion hero? Carole Lombard. She married Clark Gable and died in a plane crash. She started the blond hair trend.Jesse Rosen and Taylor DunstonScientist and Beauty sales executiveDesiree Rios for The New York TimesWould you go back?J. R.: I think there are aspects of me that wouldn’t fare so well then, but to experience those parties, I don’t know …. If I could come back, sure, but I’d stay here if it was a one-way ticket.Jazz Age fashion hero?T. D.: I can’t immediately think of one but I feel Tom Ford pulled heavily from this era. His suits are masculine yet use feminine color palettes. He loves a luxurious full lapel with strong shouldering, like the gangsters wore. You could argue the power suit was born in the 1920s and that Ford borrowed from it.Michael AsanteFlight attendantDesiree Rios for The New York TimesWould you go back? I’d be naïve to say any era was better, but in terms of fashion, I’d like it if everyone still dressed like this. The mobsters in particular, with their red ties and cigars, were really bringing it.Jazz Age fashion hero? I feel Karl Lagerfeld was channeling the Jazz Age. The gloves. The white collar. His white cat, Choupette, in a carrier basket.Charles AnnunziatoEvents coordinatorDesiree Rios for The New York TimesWould you go back? Probably not. The prohibition era was a time of hardship. Now we can get liquor whenever we want.Jazz Age fashion hero? Bonnie and Clyde. Because they did whatever the hell they wanted.Caroline Shaffer and Marissa KoorsGraphic designer and Book editorDesiree Rios for The New York TimesWould you go back?C.S.: Absolutely not. I like having the internet and rights as a woman.M.K.: Only with a return trip. I have rights in this era and so do my friends and allies. We also have medicine. I could have gotten the Spanish flu.Jazz Age fashion hero?C.S.: Jean Harlow. She played unremorseful characters, like women who got involved with married men, yet she played them in a surprisingly likable way.M.K.: Elsa Schiaparelli. She took from surrealism and said, ‘What if we put lobsters on our dresses?’ Wearing Schiaparelli was to wear art.Alvin and Marla NichterRetired electrical engineer and Retired fashion image consultantDesiree Rios for The New York TimesWould you go back?M.N.: I think I would have fit right in. It was a ladylike time. A time of gentleman. Girls were girls. Men were men. Wait, could I get in trouble for saying that? What I mean to say is it was a stylish feminine era, which I like.Jazz Age fashion hero?A.N.: My glamorous great-aunt. She was a fashion buyer for the top New York department stores back then. She’d go to Paris to bring back the latest fashions for New Yorkers. I’ve seen pictures of her. She was the bee’s knees. More