Raye Is British Vogue’s October Cover Star
As much as I love people-watching at fashion week, I’ve always found art openings to be the best places for truly original street style – more risk-taking, more colour, more exuberance! Earlier this year, at Dick Jewell’s extraordinary solo show at new art hotspot Graces Mews in Camberwell, I was delighted to find a room full of people dressed with exceptional personal flair, including the designer Martine Rose and photographer and filmmaker Mark Lebon, who showed up in a very cool mud-cloth kilt.
At this time of year, I’m usually able to get my art-world people-watching fix pretty easily – Frieze is just around the corner – though, frankly, this month it’s looking like I’ll be spoiled for choice. In this issue, you’ll meet three gallerists opening new spaces that I’m excited to introduce, all women with a distinctive point of view. Among them is east London grande dame Maureen Paley. Known for her signature bouffant and dark sunglasses, she’s taking up residence in Wolfgang Tillmans’s old studio in Bethnal Green with an inaugural exhibit by – who else! – the legendary German photographer himself.
Still, the main event for fashion history geeks this autumn will undoubtedly be Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World at the National Portrait Gallery, a major retrospective dedicated to Beaton’s oeuvre. To say that Vogue plays its part in the show would be an understatement indeed. From when Beaton first signed a contract with this magazine, almost a hundred years ago, to the more than five decades of work that would follow, Beaton’s history is Vogue’s history. Accordingly, Beaton expert – and Vogue contributing editor – Robin Muir has been tirelessly preparing the blockbuster exhibition, which opens next month. In the October issue, he traces the multihypenate’s indelible imprint on the pages of the magazine and beyond. As Muir writes: “Beaton was a star, as much of a celebrity as those he photographed, occasionally more so.”
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Elsewhere in the issue, the craze for Formula 1 ramps up with our profile on Lando Norris, though you’ll be forgiven for mistaking the Gen Z motorsport star for a midcentury leading man. In a swoon-worthy shoot captured by photographers Sean & Seng, the 25-year-old F1 driver looks like a young Marlon Brando (once you spot the A Streetcar Named Desire reference, it’s impossible to unsee it). Beyond solidifying his internet BF status, Norris is making major moves both on and away from the track, as writer Kate Lloyd discovers.