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s you enter the exhibition “Naomi: In Fashion” at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, you are greeted by a video montage of Naomi Campbell’s iconic walk down the many runways of her 40-year career: a flirty sashay from baby Naomi at Todd Oldham in the mid-’90s, a moody saunter in a black silk outfit for Isaac Mizrahi from Fall 1997, a dead-serious stomp in a sequined black Saint Laurent tuxedo just a few years ago—all distinctly different, all distinctly 

A solo V&A exhibition on any one person, particularly during his or her lifetime, is rare and sought-after. (Previous honors have been bestowed upon Alexander McQueen, Frida Kahlo, and David Bowie.) I also observe, quietly, two Black girls, perhaps 16 or 17, who are transfixed, staring closely at the footage and swapping stories about admiring her beauty and “fierceness.” I smile, thinking of my own experience of observing Naomi Campbell from afar at that very age. When I was growing up in London, Campbell’s image and mononym were so inextricably linked with fashion that when I told my West African father, a general practitioner with absolutely no knowledge of fashion, that I had aspirations for a career in the industry, he asked if I wanted to be Naomi.

The exhibition opens with personal images from Campbell’s archive. Baby photos, dance-recital portraits, her childhood ballet shoes, and a candid of a seven-year-old Naomi being tucked into a blanket by Bob Marley (she features in the late musician’s “Is This Love” video) signpost the celebrity to come. There’s one particular image, though, that holds my attention: a jubilant Naomi holding her mother Valerie Morris-Campbell’s waist as they dance and family gathers around the kitchen table in the background. It’s oddly familiar, perhaps because we all have a version of this image in our family photo albums. An image of us deliriously happy, somewhat naive and oblivious to what’s to come. But for me and fellow Black women, images of Campbell have also offered us glimpses of ourselves. Resilient, strong. Misunderstood but always major. She didn’t play the game; she simply chose to change it.

“I didn’t like being the first in a lot of things. Barriers have to be broken. Challenges have to be met,” Campbell tells me of her modeling journey. “I just wanted to do the best work that I could do. [I figured] if I made a decision to be in this business, I would embrace it. I wanted to give it my best because my family definitely did not want me to do this.”

Campbell’s stats read like an MVP’s. There are the 500-plus magazine covers, including one for 

 magazine heralding Naomi as a face of the newly minted supermodels, a group that included Linda Evangelista, 

, and Cindy Crawford. “They’re the supermodels, and they’re hotter than a curling iron,” the 1991 article quipped. There are the campaigns for as many brands as there are on the floors of Bergdorf’s: Louis Vuitton, Lanvin, Burberry, Valentino, Fendi, and the list goes on.

Then there are the pop-culture moments, some of the most notable (and notorious) of the past 50 years. George Michael’s “Freedom! ’90” music video is etched into the collective consciousness, as is her writhing with Michael Jackson in the “In the Closet” music video two years later. Her fall when she was wearing the nine-inch platform Ghillie heels on Vivienne Westwood’s runway in 1993 garnered so much press, Campbell claimed that other designers later asked her to fall during their shows too. (She refused.) In 2007, when she completed her required community service after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge, she wore an argent Dolce & Gabbana gown and had Steven Klein pap her from behind the gate. A 2019 video that showed her furiously wiping down her plane seat with disinfectant wipes, which seemed prescient after Covid appeared, went viral on YouTube.

Campbell also has a reputation for what can generously be referred to as a lack of time management. In fact, the scheduling for this cover story is so frantic and delayed that I begin to lose hope we will ever speak. Possibilities of a conversation in New York are dashed, a late-night rendezvous in Sardinia during the Dolce & Gabbana Alta Moda show never materializes, and a walk-through of her Victoria and Albert show is promised and then canceled. Am I exhausted? Yes. But this is the kind of story that befits an icon, that befits Campbell—a supermodel of such epic proportions living up to expectations of being unattainable (and 

). Because being an icon has a multitude of meanings. We, the public, want to lionize or villainize icons, and we don’t forget them. Campbell is singular; in the fleeting cycle of celebrity, stars like hers are hard to fade.

When we do speak, Campbell is on vacation in Ibiza with her two children and a group of friends that includes actresses Eiza González and Michelle Rodriguez. “I haven’t been here in seven years,” she explains as she sits for lunch. “It’s hard to unwind because, yes, I am a workaholic. I will admit that. But you have to do it to help your mind, for your body. You have to reenergize to get inspired, you know what I mean?”

Her respite is well earned. At 54 years old, she has reestablished herself as a catwalk mainstay, but in recent years she has also integrated herself with a new generation of designers, tastemakers, and talents, acting as a mentor and guiding light to an industry in flux—one that is making progress, yes, but still marred by racism, sizeism, and nepotism.


Torishéju Dumi, a British-Nigerian-Brazilian designer based in London, had a Paris Fashion Week debut that was something out of a fashion fairy tale, thanks in part to Campbell’s cosign. “It was so sudden and unexpected,” she says about Campbell opening her Spring 2024 show—Dumi’s first after graduating from Central Saint Martins in 2021—presented in the gilded ballroom at the Shangri-La hotel. “The response was just overwhelming. [Her walking] had an enormous impact on the brand and for me personally, and helped open doors that I never imagined walking through. It’s funny because there’s not a first memory of Naomi Campbell for me. I just remember always seeing her and her being this Black woman that I admire. A true icon.”

Next-generation supermodel Alton Mason considers her his blueprint: “Naomi Campbell is a huge inspiration when it comes to just presence and power as a model,” he recently told 

 “Naomi, Prince, Michael, Tupac. I would say those are my top four.”

“I want them to have control of their image,” Campbell explains of the new vanguard she’s helping reach its potential. “I want them to know that they are a part of something as well. Not just being hired for a job. That they have a story and a journey to share. Everything goes so quickly in our business. I love that in my time, we had real relationships with the designers. It wasn’t just when we were doing shows; we visited each other, we cared, because sometimes it’s kind of lonely. There were many lonely times, but we held each other up. I want to do the same,” she says.


While Cindy, Linda, and Christy all remain part of the public lexicon, it’s Campbell who has consistently endured. She is a collision of beauty, one where art meets commerce: almond eyes, luminous skin, and a body Azzedine Alaïa, the late couturier, once called “like that of a racehorse.” She can sell you Chanel couture and Boss commercialism, all in the same year. She can flit between sexy, coquettish, regality, and demureness if that’s what the assignment calls for. She is racking up her covers (no less than eight so far in 2024, including this one) and campaigns, while her contemporaries have decidedly slowed down.

Fendi artistic director Kim Jones has remained close with Campbell for about 20 years, casting her throughout his time at Fendi, Dior Men’s (which he also helms), and Louis Vuitton, where he famously had Campbell and Kate Moss walk the runway in his farewell menswear show in 2018, in coordinating Monogram trenches. “I met her at a party through Lee [Alexander] McQueen. It was brief, but she was sweet,” Jones recalls. “She is one of a kind. She has the most brilliant sense of humor, and when people ask why she has had such a long career, it’s because she has a special combination of kindness, loyalty, passion, humor, and an ability to adapt to any situation.”

Campbell’s longevity is particularly impressive in an industry where she was one of the “firsts”: the first Black woman to open a Prada show, the first on the cover of French 

 Tremendous praise was welcome, but it also came with “tremendous pressure.”


“People think that you want to be the only one, but it’s not necessarily so,” Campbell explains. “That’s why I wanted to celebrate us in the exhibition—Naomi Sims, Beverly Johnson, Iman, Bethann Hardison, Veronica Webb, Karen Alexander—because they were also before me.”

The exhaustive nature of being one of the first had its effects. She was catnip for the press, which painstakingly documented her highs and lows, but especially her lows: the outbursts, the assault convictions (there were four), and her battle with addiction. This is, sadly, nothing new. So implicit is the association of Black women and “bad behavior,” often levied by public perception and put before any praise, that it universally unites Black women in anguish. If she is a diva, what made her one? Is it who she is or was it her circumstance? Campbell has said she never earned as much money or as many advertising assignments as her white counterparts did. As early as 1991, she said, “I may be considered one of the top models in the world, but in no way do I make the same money as any of them.” Today Campbell says, “A lot of people think, ‘Oh, too strong. She can deal with it.’ To a point. I have feelings just like everyone else.”


“[People say], yes, she’s thrown a phone. Yes, all that,” says activist and former model agent Bethann Hardison, her “American mother,” who has known Campbell since she was 14. “But her self-esteem was always in play from the time she was a teenager. Believe me, the kid has always been determined and self-conscious of who she was, to a point,” Hardison continues, lending some insight into the more intimate side of Campbell. “The fact is that everybody is very taken with her—the outside world, media, people—with the fact that she is Naomi Campbell, just that alone. She’s really one of the few [models] that’s a star that paparazzi care about what happens to her. Thing is, when she does arrive, when it’s time to be on, she has a great personality. And she’s smart as shit.”

Hardison is one of a long line of elders in Campbell’s life who have played guardian to her and her legacy. Her closeness to Azzedine Alaïa is well documented. (She stayed with him in Paris, with her mother’s blessing, when she was 16, and she affectionately called him “Papa.” (Campbell has never met her biological father.) Designer Gianni Versace was a confidant and ally. Vivienne Westwood too. Campbell sang the praises of longtime friend John Galliano in his recent documentary. She made regular trips to Africa to visit Nelson Mandela, who called her his “honorary granddaughter.” Quincy Jones has called her his “other naughty little sister.” The late Clarence Avant, a prominent music executive, was her “Uncle Clarence.” “I’m not a fair-weather friend,” Campbell says. “It’s just not who I am, and I won’t give that back. You grow up together, you are on your journeys together, your journeys are aligned. You build your family outside of your own family.”


Chosen family aside, Campbell made a shocking announcement to the world when she revealed the birth of a daughter in May of 2021 and a son in June of 2023, both delivered via surrogate. They’ve largely been kept out of the spotlight, other than a glimpse of her daughter on the cover of British 

 masterminded by her close friend Edward Enninful, who was then the magazine’s editor in chief. She remains understandably scarce on the details (including their names), but she drops into an affectionate rhapsody when she speaks about how they’ve changed her.

“It’s the biggest joy,” she says. “The biggest blessing is to have these two innocent, beautiful souls and for me to be able to be their mother. I learn a lot each day. They’re good kids.” I ask whether jet-setting for jobs has been thwarted. “I definitely don’t take them from New York to London for a two-day shoot. That’s too much, but my kids love to travel. They must have known!” she says, laughing.


Reminiscing about four decades—the designers, the culture, and her own stories—makes for emotional work. “I used to drive by the V&A on the bus and never thought this would ever happen to me. I think it’s even more meaningful because it’s in the country that I was born in. It’s an institution, and I’m just beyond overwhelmed with gratitude,” she says.

Advocacy and philanthropy have been interwoven throughout her career. She’s called for greater model diversity in her work with Hardison’s Diversity Coalition, she was named the global ambassador for the Queen’s Commonwealth Trust in 2021, and she has been honored by amfAR for her 31 years working with the foundation to fuel AIDS research. “My purpose is bigger,” Campbell says. “My purpose is the African continent. My purpose is the emerging creatives. My purpose is to open this up for everybody. There’s so much talent out there that just doesn’t get given that opportunity.”

At the top of the V&A exhibit, you are met with a compendium of some of Campbell’s most memorable looks. 

 Dolce & Gabbana gown sits next to her Covid-combating outfit from 2020, consisting of a hazmat suit and cashmere Burberry cape. Giggling at the latter, I realize she is one to always embrace the entire narrative: the good, the not so good, the new, the old, the internet, and the analog, and she gives us carte blanche to do the same.


Often, those who are held up as iconic are the ones who are the most complex. They are idolized beyond measure, their mistakes magnified. But the mark of a true icon is how you move through—if and how you are able to evolve. That’s Naomi Campbell: Like a rolling stone, she’s always kept going. She’s welcomed members of a new generation that has been reintroduced to her by way of the wave of ’90s and ’00s nostalgia—and as she explains, she’s as enamored of them as they are of her. “It was so much fun. I love their confidence,” she says of TikTok celebrities like Sabrina Bahsoon, a.k.a. Tube Girl, and Khaby Lame, both of whom she has worked with and she says inspire her. “They’re always asking me what the ’90s were like. I’m just shocked they even know who I am!” That’s hard to believe. As Hardison says, “She will be on the runway when she’s 75. There’ll never be another Naomi!”

There seems to be a misunderstanding. Whether one likes it or not, there is, in fact, no such thing as waiting for Rihanna. The overture, even when delivered 

 from her biggest fans, is inaccurate. Unwieldy. Despite recurring, matter-of-course grievances, nobody, in truth, should be marking time in this manner. It’s a fantastic delusion that neglects the pop star’s signal. Her many signals. How she administers, with regularity, her own hospitable blend of bewildering beauty, play, seduction, good humour, and a superior glow, not to mention a whole regency of intense, generative style.

Isn’t it the case that with each new outfit, Rihanna erects a monument, sends out a flare and lights up group texts? She gives denim an ulterior motive, reinstates the pin-thin heel, and works over the concept of a hat. She is super-fluent with fur trim and at piling on Chanel pearls when going to the store. She can play to her audience in nothing more than ripped cut-offs and the colour pink. She’s out of sight; we know this. When Rihanna considers the shoulder, she creates a total eclipse. When Rihanna shows up in a long yellow train, the red carpet recedes. Silk, we’ve observed, falls differently on Rihanna. It finds its final form.

And yet, the premium of her whereabouts, how she enters and exits – creating a new cosmos each time she steps out of a car or leaves a restaurant – is lost on those busy grumbling for more. When the music comes, whenever that is, the very notion that it ‘arrived late’ will evaporate into a lapsed, prefab calibre of impatience that simply doesn’t suit Rihanna. Because hers is a project of magnanimous proportions, dispensed on her own sweet time.

The order of things is of zero concern, and the notion of an overdue album fails to understand something very simple. Has there ever been a feeling more turned-on and simultaneously unbodied than anticipation? Has there ever been an artist whose everyday performance plays, to perfection, on this type of pleasure? If desire subsists on some measure of disquiet, along with the sport (and business) of a good tease, then being disobliged by Rihanna is, perhaps, the most luxurious value of affection out there. It is she who should be running up the bill. As critic Doreen St. Félix wrote in 2015, “…as a Black woman whose artistic inventiveness outpaces her peers and music executives by what feels like whole years, (Rihanna) will also perpetually be owed”.

To anticipate Rihanna is to experience a lucky break: the unorthodoxy of a pop star who decelerates, observes, and sizes up while still outdistancing everyone in her orbit. The Fenty universe is vast, even speculative (and worth over a billion, it’s been recently reported). The manner in which Rihanna recuses herself from forced cycles of production without withdrawing totally is strategic, sure, but also part of her appeal. The sense of ease that, like a halo, diadems all of her movements, announcements, awards, covers, deals – it brings joy. She’ll design a perfume with notes of rose and tangerine and house it in a rich, amber bottle, but nobody will bother to talk about rose and tangerine. 

There are those who cite heaven when characterising Rihanna’s smell. Others, well, they are left speechless, blushing. Proximity to her has become an industry in and of itself. She is the ecstatic – the one who gets us all started. The artist and entrepreneur with a swerving, shimmering vision that flies high and swoops down, landing with the studied, soft power of a Yankees cap dipped low and, among other things, a deeply approachable grin. The cameras might chase, but Rihanna is never in a hurry. Her step is paced, leisurely and cool. We are the beneficiaries of what she makes known; these are the terms. Some of us, myself included, find this fun.

In the meantime, we send dispatches to friends. Rihanna’s transmissions offer balance, ballast-like. They declutter and eliminate confusion. They form a point of convergence around a shared love of pinstripe suits with no shirting, or are, simply put, a reminder to reach out. Just a few weeks ago, when I was missing someone I hadn’t spoken to in a long time, I texted her a recent photo of Rihanna smiling, looking over her shoulder. The image was, for want of a better term, 

. In it, Rihanna is wearing a delicate lace tank top, loose jeans and plenty of gold. The image brought to mind an energy from the past, when my friend and I were unversed in so much but well-provided for because we weren’t thinking beyond the extent of that week or that one July in New York. Rihanna, smiling and looking over her shoulder, can set off these sorts of memories. Delight in its purest mode, fixed to an original feeling.

There are several examples kin to this image – a whole catalogue, really. Looks that don’t mark any big occasion but ricochet off our recall. It’s Rihanna’s incorruptible, photomontage style, her imagined characters released from formula or ruse. Her pink-pixie ode to Maxine Gibson, courtside at a Clippers game. Her slate of bucket hats; her thing for varsity jackets and oversized coats. The complete gymnastics of a leopard-print catsuit; the ballad of a Swarovski gown, brined in a mythic score of crystals. And of course, Rihanna’s Venus-inflected account of glamour. A diamond choker and pale-teal bustier, for instance, swathed in a tulle cover-up, are neither Marilyn nor muse, but attentive to Rihanna’s sartorial repute; she’ll often add full-sleeve gloves as if to say, I’ve arrived, but I’m not staying long.

, Rihanna’s eighth studio album, was released nearly six years ago, I sat on my couch and listened to it, song after song. As for many people that night, my phone screen was bright with the album’s red-stained artwork featuring an illustration of baby Rihanna crowned and holding a black balloon. I texted my friend as we listened together, sharing our reactions, trying to express with words the sensation of a sound that, like anything new, was not always immediate, most times imperfect, but pressing and discoverable.

The album was puckered; it slowed and just as quick, peeled rubber. It was fitful but so inward, confessional, and seared. The way Rihanna sang “

” had the familiar hold of a late-night voicemail; the vibrational, submerged bump that opens “Needed Me” was mighty, like a pitter-patter levered wide open with a crowbar. “Love on the Brain” was the kind of ballad any listener acquainted with wrecked, extinguishing love might receive nostalgically. A few songs loitered like Rihanna was just passing the time. But my friend and I stayed unguarded. The album’s roughhewn qualities were a mystery instead of a sure thing, and isn’t that nice? To delay a good thing – and 

 is a great thing – is such a gift, because doubt is fertile ground. Doubt, in theory, provokes. Doubt, in true Rihanna design, is coy.

 was a full house of moods, some of which were, in that moment, unavailable to me, but eventually found their purpose at a party or in a car ride home. It was an album, as well, for listening to alone. Its tentative, volatile tone continues to be moving because Rihanna’s prepossessing talent for switching us on is hardly ever overworked. Songs that ripen and pay court to our solitary experiences just as much as when we long for company or a crowd, and then again when we choose to dip out early without saying goodbye. She has proven that her music gains on itself, and while said in jest, a widely held opinion is that 

 remains the album of the year, regardless of the year. 

 is idealised, because it appeared shapelessly only to develop into its own deluxe holding pattern. It was the future, then, and is still incandescent now.

So there. Rihanna’s big enterprise – her Billboard-charting music, her beauty front office, her designs and who she sends down the runway – all of it, is unbothered though never fooled. She’s always paying attention. When the new album arrives, you can trust that it will disorganise and organise us all. I can’t wait. I can wait. Revisiting Rihanna’s work is like experiencing some matter of extrasensory affluence, either meeting you where you are or getting you where you need to go. Her musical intermission, if one can call it that, is anything but. We won’t see it coming. She’ll just… take place. Her ambushing wattage and puttylike sound. Her sublimity and pearls for a trip to the store.

Trust Harry Styles to bring meaning, quite literally, to Halloween. Harryween.

In the final leg of his sold-out Love On Tour series of shows, his six-person band took to New York’s Madison Square Garden on the weekend of Halloween. On the bird-call from their faithful leader, his legions of fans turned up to the concert in fancy dress. Crowds outside gathered in traditional All Hallows’ Eve getups of ghouls and goblins, and many paid homage to Styles’ signature style (think feather boas, kick-out flares and heavy-set platforms).

Not one to miss out on the chance for a display of style, Styles appeared on stage as Dorothy from 

, complete with a sparkly blue pinafore with matching bow, and of course, ruby-red slippers (his band make up the Tin Man, Glinda the Good Witch et al). All outfits are courtesy of Alessandro Michele, Styles’ friend and creative director of Gucci, of which Styles has long been a brand face.

Enveloped in the rapture, the crowd hangs on to every minute of his husky growl and swivel of the hip as he breaks out into a spooky rendition of Britney Spears’ “Toxic”. But put aside Styles’ Mick Jagger swagger, and the crowd, made up of all ages, races, genders and sexualities, feel bound to something a little deeper than just the look and charm of the 27-year-old performer. Affirmations of beauty are swapped, expression is celebrated and friendships are formed under the umbrella of the pop phenom. Case in point: ‘#hslotoutfit’ (Styles’ Love On Tour outfit, in case you were wondering) hit 37 million views on TikTok in the US alone.

“It’s funny because I don’t think of myself that way (as a style icon)... but bringing people together is the thing I’m most proud of. (At the shows) I get kind of a front-row seat to see a bunch of people getting in a room together and just being themselves. Not coming to the front of the stage, because they’re hanging out at the back, dancing like nobody’s watching. Having the most basic version of a good time. Humans interacting and accepting each other,” says Styles, expressing wonder at the zeal of his committed fandom, the Stylers. “A room full of people just loving each other is so powerful.”

A few weeks ahead of our conversation, Styles quietly emerges at an airy photo studio in Los Angeles for his Dazed cover shoot. Despite the furiously quick turnaround from inception to execution of the shoot (things in HS’s world happen quickly and meticulously), the star is in wonderful spirits. Perfectly on time, and flanked by a burly and ever-present security guard, he’s quiet and reserved but polite, greeting everyone with a northern accent that’s been slightly tweaked by his years in LA. Immediately, you’re struck by his presence. A certain sort of wanton sex appeal that even the most hardened of critics couldn’t resist radiates when he looks you in the eye, something he’s careful to do when you are in conversation. (A recent study suggested Styles’ sea foam-green eye colour was the most beautiful in human existence.)

He’s dressed in a fitted baby tee and low-slung jeans, kept just so by an umber-brown belt, and finished with a crochet skull beanie that reads ‘attainable’, though I am not quite sure it would look as uncontrived on anyone else. He wears clothes unbelievably well. But that we already knew: the aforementioned face of Gucci is often feted as our generation’s Bowie in his fearless, genderless and boundary-less approach to fashion. He’s donned a frilly gown on a 

 cover and gets your grandma’s cardi (OK, it was actually JW Anderson) a permanent spot in the V&A.

Our shoot is no exception in bringing on the glam. As photographer Rafael Pavarotti readies his camera, Dazed’s editor-in-chief Ibrahim Kamara takes Styles through the proposed looks for the shoot. He immediately grabs an angelic cream look of a Rick Owens webbed sweater, a Galliano corset, and a Comme des Garçons kitten heel from the splatter of Polaroids affixed to the wall. A psychedelic Prada jumpsuit complete with Swarovski choker is another favourite, and a Balenciaga look with top-hat aplomb is quickly greenlit. At ease in front of the camera, he slips from one look to another, each more fantastically concocted than the last. He’s the right side of confident and seems, through observation, content.

It’s a far cry from the vision of the fairly sheepish Harry Styles from One Direction: 16 years old, with a mop of curls. Despite the group’s mega-success of over 70m albums sold worldwide, we perhaps never knew the potential of what lay beneath until the release of 

 (2017), his breakaway solo album after the group’s hiatus and a revealing look at someone whose enigma had been overshadowed by headlines and hysteria.

“I was 16 (when One Direction started), I just kind of finished school and didn’t really know what it was that was happening,” he explains. “Everything was really new and exciting and I didn’t know how long everything was gonna last. It kind of became like, ‘Woah, how long can we keep this going?’ because I really didn’t expect any of this to happen.

“There was a time when I was younger, and I was in the band, when I would have been afraid for everything to have stopped. I didn’t necessarily know who I was if I wasn’t in the band. Now, the idea of people going, ‘We don’t like your music any more, go away’ doesn’t scare me. I think there was a time when it did. It gives me the freedom to kind of go, ‘Great!’ I’m not working from a place of fear. I’m working from a place of wanting to work stuff out, and try different things.”

It’s a sum of parts that has worked well for Styles. His sophomore album, 

 (2019), went double platinum in the US and won him Grammy, Brit, and Ivor Novello awards, with 

 ranking it among its 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, a feat that he has finally had time to reflect on. “I think things are hitting me for the first time,” he says. “It really is the first opportunity where I felt like I had time to take it in since leaving home, to be honest. So, going forward, I’m just going to take things in as they’re happening – how nice some of those things are, how not nice some of those things are – and observe them. When we get back to some semblance of normality, I will check in with parts of myself and make sure I don’t lose myself again and get pulled back in.”

While conquering music, he dipped his toes into the silver screen with a role in Christopher Nolan’s 

 (2017). He used a world tour that was paused due to Covid to take on a trio of new movie roles. He has a much-anticipated role in 

, a psychological thriller set in a utopian California starring 

’s Florence Pugh. Directed by Olivia Wilde, whom Styles began dating during filming, the film isn’t due for release until September 2022. An 11-second clip has been ripped on to fan accounts and cumulatively got over a million views on YouTube. His relationship with Wilde has been a daily feature of celebrity gossip rags, though the privacy around it is closely guarded by Styles and images of them together are scarce.

“I’ve always tried to compartmentalise my personal life and my working life,” he explains. Paparazzi snaps suggest the two are very much in love, though any assumptions on his love life are curtailed for his Dazed cover story.

, an adaptation of Bethan Roberts’s 2012 novel, centres on husband Tom Burgess, played by Styles, and wife Marion Taylor, played by Emma Corrin. Set in Brighton in the 1950s, the film follows David Dawson’s character Patrick as he falls in love with policeman Tom and a tug of war of emotions between the three begins. The story explores homosexuality at a time when it was expressly forbidden. Both films offered Styles room to grow as an actor.

“I like to challenge myself and do something different and movies are definitely where I feel most out of my comfort zone,” he reflects. “I’m coming from music where I don’t think anyone really knows how it works, but I am somewhat in my comfort zone! But in movies, when I show up, I’m the new guy. I haven’t been (an actor) for a long time and that’s really cool, I feel like I’ve learned so much and life is about learning.”

And as much as acting is an education, it’s also incredibly personal for Styles. “(With acting), you’re trying to remove a lot of yourself and key into someone else,” he explains. “On the most basic level, it’s like being a kid and you’re playing pretend. I am not a very confrontational person, I think I’m pretty chill, so then when you have a character who is like that, it’s fun to explore.” Styles has never had formal acting lessons, and instead reads scripts with a partner and immerses himself in the “humanity of the character”.

“I think music and acting really aid each other in a lot of ways. In my experience, a lot of the time when I’ve gone to do a film I’ve felt like, ‘Oh, I’m probably not gonna do any music for a while because I’ll be so focused on that’. And then I actually find that, by the time I get home at the end of the day, I just write so much. Any time you are looking at the world through someone else’s lens and exploring different emotions, it feels like a benefit in so many ways.”

In October, the Twitterverse erupted after 

’s Matt Donnelly spotted Styles’ blink-and-you’ll-miss-it role as Eros in 

, the newest mega-movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, directed by Oscar winner Chloé Zhao. Styles cautiously checks the publication date of this Dazed story before confirming his inclusion as the brother of villain Thanos. “I’m only in right at the very end,” he says humbly. “But who didn’t grow up wanting to be a superhero, you know? It was a great experience and I’m so grateful to have gotten to work with Chloé.”

With his career expanding from global to almost stratospheric proportions, Styles has made room for other projects instead of taking any iota of spare time for himself. Namely, Pleasing, his shape-shifting umbrella company that will see him take the leap from musician to mogul. The first drop from the Pleasing universe? A curated line of products that speak to the celebratory beauty sensibility that Styles is known for. He talks me through the genesis of Pleasing from his hotel room in Boston, while massaging his undereye with The Pleasing Pen, a dual-ended eye and lip serum infused with okra, marshmallow and lingonberry, a delicious-sounding concoction that I’m told helps with tired eyes. “It was an idea I’d kind of had for a while,” he describes. “I’d been talking with a couple of people close to me, like Molly (Hawkins, Styles’ creative director). Firstly, I just thought it would be fun but, in actuality, Pleasing is about a couple of things.”

“It’s starting with nail polish, because that was kind of the birth of what it was for,” Styles continues. “Me seeing a colour on a flower or a wallpaper or something and thinking, ‘Oh, I wanna put that on my nails’. It was a fun little project, but during the pandemic, and when we eventually named it Pleasing, it felt like it was so much more than nail polish. I’ve always found that the moments in my life which have brought me the most joy are the small ones, whether it be, you know, the end of the night under the stars or a bite of food, or sitting with your friends thinking, ‘Oh, I’m never gonna forget this’. It’s always those moments that I find have the longest-lasting effect on me, in terms of sparking something wonderful in me. I really think that the essence of Pleasing is finding those little moments of joy and showing them to people.”

The collection cleverly eschews the usual cosmetic tropes of concealment and masking, and instead celebrates illumination: highlighting what’s already there, in a way that democratises who can see themselves as part of the Pleasing cosmos. The product line starts small, though I have been promised there is more to come, in a sporadic drop-style format: a ‘Pearlescent Illuminating’ serum, ‘Pleasing Pen Matte’ lip oil, and ‘Perfect Pearl’ nail polish, all of which have been mindfully and sustainably made. “I don’t think that putting someone’s face on something sells a bad product,” says Styles firmly. “The product has to be good, and I think our product is good.”

The lustrous finish of the plant-based nail polish was created to mimic the iridescence of pearls (a string around his neck being one of the star’s signature flourishes). Styles and his team have created the Pleasing line with the lightest possible footprint in mind, using post-consumer plastics and compostable paper printed with bio-sourced inks. “We also totally understand that we are putting more product into the world, so if we’re gonna do that, then we have to do it the right way,” says Styles, his hand gestures showing off a marigold and optic white manicure.

“I also think that what this can become is so much more than just products you can buy. I think it’s about giving, and giving back. I am blessed to have fans who are so supportive of me, who believe in freedom and who have created this safe space for each other. Pleasing is really for them. That feeling of community is kind of what we would like Pleasing to (reflect).”

Styles is transparent about his approach to Pleasing. Business and money-making aside, he wants to build a platform that can put ideas, creativity, and empathy front and centre. “I think we have an opportunity to make something really cool, a company that operates in a completely different way,” he says. “I think the true DNA of Pleasing is about working with talented people who might not necessarily have the light shone on them, and collaborating.” A humanistic approach to a beauty company is a novel idea, though a complicated one. Can a modern beauty brand really ask you to come-as-you-are 

 buy into the added extras? Styles doesn’t seem put off by the challenge. “As humans, we are always changing we’re always learning new stuff and I don’t know why a company can’t operate from that same kind of standpoint.”

It’s a venture that leaves Styles, whose public persona has been carefully and sensibly guarded, open in a way that he hasn’t been before. “We’re Pleasing and we’re not perfect, and we are always gonna be trying to learn to do better,” he admits. “Do I have any idea where Pleasing will be in five years? No. Obviously I have an idea of what I would 

 us to be aiming at, but honestly, I don’t know. That’s what makes it exciting to me.”

I ask him when he feels his most beautiful. “I don’t think being beautiful or feeling beautiful is about looking good. When people are happy and glowing, they’re radiating. And that’s what I think the products do, it’s about helping you 

 beautiful.” He pauses thoughtfully, and repeats my question back to me, “Hmm, when do I feel my most beautiful? I would say internally, when I’ve finished meditating or something… Or maybe when I’m asleep!” he giggles.

I comment, more than once, on how at peace Styles, whose every move is writ large on the internet, seems. What he takes from his glam-rock icons (Prince, Freddie Mercury, Elvis Presley), he grounds in his everyday-ness. He’s never let his stardom eclipse his need for normalcy. “I read 

 by Alain de Botton, and there’s a chapter where he talks about the idea of emptiness being more important than fullness,” he says. “How a lot of things can be really distracting, especially in the home. I think about the space that I want around me; I need it to be calm.”

“You know, I read another book by Jon Ronson called 

,” continues Styles. “It got me thinking, for a long time, about how scared I was of saying or doing the wrong thing, and how much trouble that would get me in. I was still growing up, making mistakes. I’m not ashamed of those things any more. I’ve seen subconscious changes in a lot of places in my life.”

Just as he’s trying to imagine what a beauty brand can mean for a younger generation, he’s also looking at the future possibilities of pop music, albeit starting from a clean slate. On the precipice of his Saturn’s Return (Styles turns 28 in February), he seems ready to enter a new, risk-taking and career-defining chapter. “I have unlocked an ability to be myself completely, unapologetically,” he says with conviction. “I started only listening to classical music because it felt like it gave me a blank canvas to work from. So I wasn’t hearing things I would then be referencing. I think that so much creativity comes from my boredom and giving myself the chance not to be distracted by things. I’m the most human I’ve felt in a long time, for sure.”

Observing Styles in his different guises – heartthrob, musician, business owner, friend – the character that defines him now, more than ever, is himself. “I sometimes feel like I’m supposed to be floating on this cloud of success and happiness, and obviously that’s not how it works,” he muses. “I think through my own sense of self and personal journey, I am realising that happiness isn’t this kind of end state.” And just as Dorothy clicks her heels to return home in 

, when Styles speaks about his journey from then to now, and everything the horizon could hold, it’s almost as if he is coming home.

No one can resist the allure of Zoë Kravitz. Not the waifish model-cum-waitress serving us at Greenpoint’s premier hangout Five Leaves, where we’re meeting for our interview. Between taking our order she reports back to her colleagues in hushed tones that she is serving “Zoë’s table”. Not the archetypal Brooklynite couple reclining in the park on the overwhelmingly humid mid-July day, who only break from gazing at each other to stare as we stroll past post-lunch. Not the two hipster bros who whip their heads around at breakneck speed on Williamsburg’s Bedford Avenue as she walks back to her home nearby.

Although Kravitz herself seems unaware of the attention, one thing is clear: she is the cool kids’ cool kid. She arrives for our interview straight from Pilates, dewy from the midday heat and dressed down in a white tank and heather-grey yoga shorts, her signature wavy braids framing her delicate features. Her mix of good looks and down-to-earth energy (she’s happy to offer counsel on my dating life) goes to prove that some people really do have it all. She’s genuinely nice too. She greets me with a hearty grin, graciously pours us both water every time we run low, and takes breaks from her kale and steak salad to ask with genuine concern if the sound from the busy Brooklyn street where we are sitting will interfere with my recording.

Arguably set up for life with Eighties (and enduring) style icon and actress Lisa Bonet as her mother and perennial rock god Lenny Kravitz for a father, Zoë Kravitz could easily have had her head turned by the inevitable interest this was going to generate in her and her life and assumed vapid It-girl status. A fashion favourite, she has been the face of Saint Laurent across beauty, fragrance and fashion for four years – “It’s simple and beautiful clothing,” she says.

“I feel like me and Anthony inspire each other. We talk about inspiration pictures and send things back and forth. Me and Anthony are tight.” She has also fronted campaigns for Calvin Klein, Tiffany and Balenciaga. Yet Kravitz has taken that undeniable head start in life and written her own story.

Beginning her acting career with appearances in films such as 2011’s 

 garnered her big-screen time, albeit in supporting roles. A kick into high gear came with parts in George Miller’s 

 film series. But it was her performance in HBO’s 

 that led to Kravitz breaking through. Holding court as the bohemian yoga instructor Bonnie Carlson (a part originally written for a white woman, and for which Kravitz adroitly handles the nuanced racial power dynamics in the shifting of the story), she stars alongside an assemblage of Hollywood’s finest actors: Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon and 

An ability to flit seamlessly between indie flicks and mega-budget franchises is Kravitz’s superpower. Her turn as Robyn “Rob” Brooks in the 2020 TV adaptation of Nick Hornby’s 1995 novel, 

, may have been short-lived (it was cancelled after one series), but she cleverly reinvented it with millennials in mind. Her character, a female record store owner living in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights, who has flashbacks to and laments her ill-fated relationships with both men and women, ensures this is a far cry from the Stephen Frears movie of the same name, which John Cusack and her mother starred in 20 years earlier. Kravitz, here, plays the Cusack role.

In addition to the lead character, Kravitz was an executive producer on the project and her command was seen everywhere from the freewheeling, globe-trekking soundtrack to the directing decisions. “I don’t think the network understood the importance of that story,” she says, “but I am still touched by how many women, especially women of colour, come up to me saying they loved it.”

In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, she left her Williamsburg home for London to take on her biggest role yet, starring alongside Robert Pattinson’s Batman as Selina Kyle – aka Catwoman. She had already played the role, after a fashion, in 2017’s 

, but now she can get her teeth into a character that has already been portrayed by Michelle Pfeiffer, Halle Berry and, most recently, Anne Hathaway. It was the biracial Eartha Kitt’s 1960s 

 – coming as it did in an era of racial tensions even more heightened and politicised than our own – that has remained in memory, immortalised. Today the role comes with its own legacy and feverishly passionate fanbase. The weight of that didn’t go unnoticed by Kravitz, but it didn’t deter her either. “It was different. It was scary. It was unexpected for me. And that was what was exciting.”

With megastardom on the cards, her rise hasn’t come without setbacks. After marrying actor Karl Glusman in an intimate ceremony at her father’s Paris home in 2019, she filed for divorce 18 months later – a dark spot on an otherwise bright few years but the start of an invigorating new chapter. She feels affirmed – unafraid. Her feature directorial debut 

 was recently acquired by MGM. Kravitz herself is reluctant to divulge much but she’s already hard at work on the project, off to scout for locations after we meet. “I am 32 and it’s fucking fantastic,” she says. “I am happy about all the experiences. If you don’t learn and grow, what’s the point?”

Lynette Nylander: How have you been spending your time in these strange circumstances we find ourselves in? What’s been your reality in the pandemic?

Zoë Kravitz: It’s been so many things. I never had to worry about my job or where I was going to live – how I was going to pay rent or for food. In that respect, I’m very lucky. I also worked a lot through it. We had already started shooting 

 when it happened. It was crazy because we were shooting this big movie and then everything stopped. The movie was shut down for six months. I stayed in London for three months, in a house in Notting Hill, this dark, funny house in London. It was very weird being away from home and my family being in other places.

ZK: My dad’s in the Bahamas. My mom’s in California. Eventually I ended up coming back here to New York for a couple of months and living upstate, which was good for me. I think it was important to take the time to feel all the things that we were all feeling. I realised how I was personally using the fast-paced life as a way of not doing and dealing with a lot of things. I’m very thankful for that time to really sit and look at, “Who am I? What do I want to be doing? How do I want to spend my time? How am I connecting with my friends and family when I talk to them?” All of those things, I had to look at.