Letter from the Editor
Cultural anthropologists could mine all sorts of insights if they were to spend time backstage at fashion shows. It’s where I often get a sense of the moods that shape the themes we explore each month. This issue’s focus on authenticity is no exception. My first hint that this sentiment was zeitgeisty came when I was chatting with Michele Magnani, senior makeup artist for M.A.C, before the Stella Jean show in Milan. He told me that designers wanted makeup that “emphasized reality and celebrated the real woman.” Mentioning runway beauty and reality in the same sentence seemed a little rich on the irony scale, but he insisted it was a reaction to Instagram makeup, which he feels encourages “dangerous transformations.” Freshly washed hair is also apparently having an authentic moment. In our “Beauty Trend Report” (page 80), beauty director Lesa Hannah notes that Eugene Souleiman created “childlike, untouched-looking hair” at Stella McCartney and Chloé that he characterized as “real-person hair.” Then I started noticing authenticity being cited as inspiration in the fragrance world. At the New York launch of Gucci Bloom, creative director Alessandro Michele told us that his fragrance was for women “who want to be their real, authentic selves.” A few months later, I was in Paris for a party celebrating Chanel’s new fragrance, Gabrielle. The press material suggested that Gabrielle, which was Coco’s real name, reveals the “authenticity of Chanel in its purest form, stripped of all artifice.” For “Pure Esprit” (page 64), Kristen Stewart, the face of the fragrance, told me that being authentic is about “being true to that feeling in your stomach and having the confidence and lack of fear to follow that.” In the manufactured pop world, our cover girl, Lorde, is widely praised for being contemplative, sensitive and authentic. (See “Oh My Lorde” on page 124.) Fellow pop artist Katy Perry isn’t viewed in the same complimentary light, which may explain why her recent public pursuit of authenticity has been ridiculed. In “Get Real” (page 120), Andrew Potter, author of The Authenticity Hoax: How We Got Lost Finding Ourselves, tells writer Courtney Shea that “real authenticity dies when we start considering how something will be received by external forces.” For k.d. lang, it always comes down to ego: “Authenticity is a type of acceptance of, and surrender to, who you are instead of trying to become something,” she tells features editor Greg Hudson in “Ingenue Encore” (page 111). Coco Chanel would likely have disagreed with that sentiment. She once said that “Hard times arouse an instinctive desire for authenticity.” Yet this notorious fabulist also understood the paradox inherent in that desire when she declared: “I have chosen the person I wanted to be and am.” While choice, and the potential contrivances behind it, can erode authenticity, self-actualized dreamers like Chanel inspire us to see beyond our past and envision our future. And what’s more authentically human than that?