APR

SPRING
SELFIE-MADE
KATE
CHIC UPTON
AND THE

173
RISE OF THE
SOCIAL-MEDIA
SUPERMODEL

ROMANTIC, THE
SPORTY, SHAPE
SURPRISING ISSUE
LOOKS
AND MINDY
FLATS WITH KALING
EVERYTHING! EMILY
BLUNT
PLUS THE
FITTEST
WOMAN ON
EARTH

KIM & KANYE

THEIR FASHIONABLE LIFE
AND SURREAL TIMES
#WORLDSMOSTTALKEDABOUTCOUPLE
 APRIL kanye west and 60 vogue.com
kim kardashian,
photographed in 62 editor’s letter
Los Angeles by
Annie Leibovitz. 74, 82 masthead
86 talking back
Letters from readers

104 contributors

110 up front
We all like to put
of difcult tasks—
but for Adam
Green, chronic
procrastination

fAs hi on ed i tor : g rAce cod d i n gto n . h A i r, A n th on y t u rn er ; mA keup, A A ron d e mey for seph orA. grooming, ibn jAsper . mensweAr ed itor : r eneLou pAd orA.
was threatening
to unravel his life.
So, at long last,
he took action

122 lives
America’s new
ambassador to
Libya, Deborah
Jones, has taken
on a demanding
diplomatic post
in the shadow
of tragedy. By
Suzy Hansen

130 nostalgia
In 1954, the great
American reporter
Dorothy Thompson
challenged the
fashion world to
fnd a working
wardrobe for a busy
size 20 journalist. By
Janine di Giovanni

flash
136 it girl
Iggy Azalea

140 back home

Yasmin Sewell on
her native Australia

142 tnt
Elisabeth TNT
takes to the Alps in
Gstaad for an avant-

love and marriage garde art fair and

a lavish wedding
keeping up with kimye, p. 208 continued>48

40
  vogue april 2014 vogue.com
letter from the editor

all in the family

kanye west, in
prada pants, witH
kim kardasHian
and BaBy nOrtH, in
nina ricci dresses.
pHOtOgrapHed By
annie leiBOvitz.

Shaping today
N
o doubt you have an opinion on the cover that role is currently being played by Kim and Kanye to a T.

BOw les a n d cOd d i n gtOn : ji ll d e mli n g. de ta ils, se e i n tH is i ssu e.

of this month’s Vogue. Everyone is going
to have an opinion on this month’s cover.
When it comes to
Kim Kardashian
and Kanye West
(“Keeping Up with
Kimye,” page 208), it’s impossible not to
sail into controversial waters; for every
ardent supporter there is a vociferous
critic. Part of the pleasure of editing
Vogue, one that lies in a long tradition
of this magazine, is being able to feature
those who defne the culture at any giv-
en moment, who stir things up, whose
presence in the world shapes the way it
looks and infuences the way we see it.
I think we can all agree on the fact that
62   vogue april 2014
(Or perhaps that should be to a K?)
If I told you the levels of secrecy that went into plan-
ning this story, it would take up the en-
tire issue, let alone this letter. Needless
to say, Grace Coddington and Annie
Leibovitz, who created a wonderful se-
ries of images of the couple and their
adorable baby girl, North, and the in-
trepid Hamish Bowles, who interviewed
Kanye and Kim at Sarah Burton’s Al-
exander McQueen atelier in London,
Le Meurice hotel in Paris, and Kim’s
mother’s house in Los Angeles, all took
the subterfuge in their stride—Grace
masters of and Hamish even donned Kanye-like
disguise
HamisH BOwles disguises at one point. As for the cover,
and grace
cOddingtOn gO my o p i n i o n e d i t o r ’ s l e t t e r > 6 8
undercOver fOr
tHe kim-and-
kanye stOry.
vogue.com
BABY MAKES
THREE
Radiant in white, the
future Mrs. West
cozies up with Kanye
and North in a Nina
Ricci satin dress
embellished with
organza and lace
flowers. On Kanye:
Prada leather pants,
worn throughout.
Fashion Editor:
Grace Coddington.
Keeping Up With

Kimye
From London to Paris to Los Angeles, Hamish Bowles joins Kim
Kardashian and Kanye West in their quest for world domination—
and the perfect wedding dress. Photographed by Annie Leibovitz.
TRAINING DAY
Surrounded by the
Vogue team, Kim
gets ready for her
close-up while Kris
Jenner entertains
baby North. Dolce
& Gabbana Alta
Moda corset dress
with a lace, organza,
and layered-tulle
skirt. Details, see
In This Issue.
T
he fast-cooling Los An-
geles afternoon air is flled with the scent of eucalyptus and
mimosa, the gurgle of water as it tumbles down a fountain
wall into a picture-perfect azure pool, the exultant strains
of Pharrell Williams’s “Happy,” and a chorus of “Old Mac-
Donald Had a Farm,” performed in unhappy a cappella by
Annie Leibovitz and Kris Jenner.
The frantic warblings of this unlikely duo are intended
to entertain the geographically named North West, perched
between her father, Kanye West, creative polyglot, and his
fancée, North’s mother, Kim Kardashian, cultural phenom-
enon—or Kimye, as the media has dubbed the telegenic pair
while it relentlessly tracks their every move. North (“Kanye’s
side of the family calls her Nori,” says Kim) is poised on her
mother’s knee, a knee that is currently enveloped in a fall of
Lanvin satin the color and consistency of double cream, fash-
ioned by Alber Elbaz into a wedding dress of ffties haute cou-
ture magnifcence. The dress is a ftting complement to Kim’s
voluptuous movie-star beauty, with her fashing Ava Gardner
looks and Sophia Loren fgure that have helped to establish
a new contemporary body paradigm after an era of waifs.
Small wonder that Kim idolizes Elizabeth Taylor, whom
she frst became aware of as a supportive friend of Michael
Jackson. Taylor once lent Kim her Cleopatra cape for a
photo shoot, and Kim conducted Taylor’s last interview (by
phone and e-mail), about her legendary jewels. “Everything
seemed so selfless for her,” Kim remembers. “We talked
about the jewelry and how it ultimately didn’t belong to her;
she just wanted to help people.” When Taylor’s estate was
sold to beneft the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, Kim
even acquired some of those jewels herself. She also went
to look at Taylor’s house. “It was just so enchanting,” she
remembers, “with a garden with really pretty trellises and
beautiful roses, but it wasn’t realistic for me to purchase. It
only had a one-car garage.”
Although North has inherited her father’s furrowed, quiz-
zical brow, the pretty ten-month-old who is the focus of all
this attention seems an island of preternatural serenity in the
roiling sea of frenetic activity that is la vie Kimye.
North’s parents have already involved her in their creative
lives. “I take pictures of her all the time and dress her up,”
says Kim. “I put Kanye’s big chains around her, and I put a
little Louis bag and some Jordans, and I was like, ‘What up,
212
Daddy?’ ” Kanye, meanwhile, has made an adorable little
stop-frame video of North caught in her natural movements
that he’s edited to make it appear as if she’s break-dancing.
“Anybody need anything?” asks the agelessly glamorous,
apricot-skinned Kris, futtering eyelashes as thick, long, and
lustrous as a hummingbird’s wings. “Water? Vodka? Get on
my train!” she laughs. “Just kidding!” Kris (who, as Kim
notes, “goes by the name of Lovey, not Grandma!”) is an
astute businesswoman and an executive producer of Keeping
Up with the Kardashians, now in its eighth season. Her home
office is stacked with Kardashian product and magazine
spreads—there is even a framed copy of her estranged hus-
band Olympic gold medalist Bruce Jenner’s 1979 GQ cover.
When Kim was an impressionable little girl, she remem-
bers, her fashion-mad mom “would always wear really
tight—she was into Vicky Tiel, Moschino, or Chanel—with
huge Moschino heart earrings. She had an amazing body
and was always so in shape. One time Kourtney and I sat in
my mom’s closet—we must’ve been eight or nine—and we
were like, ‘If Mom dies, we’re going to write down who gets
what.’ We went through every last piece of her wardrobe. We
were so mean then!”
Kris, she recalls, was a frm but fun mother who gave her
churchgoing daughters an idyllic childhood and a privileged
life. Kim and her sisters would ride their bikes down to the
Beverly Hills Hotel for breakfast and spend their days play-
ing tennis or soccer. At one time or another Jay Leno, Bruce
Springsteen, and Madonna were all neighbors. Madonna
once gave a seven-year-old Kim and her sister Kourtney a
box of her discarded fuorescent-rubber jewelry, although
their school friends refused to believe its exciting provenance.
“We had this amazing house in Beverly Hills,” says Kim.
“My dream one day is to buy it back for my mom. I actually
have to get to work to make that happen. That’s my fve-year
plan. I want to knock on their door and say, ‘Will you please
sell me this house?’ ”
Kris’s present house is itself a camera-ready hymn to
glamorous aspiration.
“I’m obsessed with cozy,” she says, and the va-va-voom
Deco interiors are flled with comfortable soft furnishings
strewn with fur and cashmere throws and scattered with silk
cushions. A fre blazes in the entrance hall, casting its ficker-
ing light on the giant marble checkerboard foor and catch-
ing the folds of the silver lamé curtains tied back with tassels
of Swarovski jet-black crystals. Family pictures abound—
Kris even has some framed images of her underwear-clad
daughters from the 2011 Kardashian Kollection for Sears
campaign shot by Leibovitz. Kim politely disabuses Annie
of the notion that they might have been put here expressly
for the shoot (“She’s always had them; she loves them,” she
assures her). There is a wall densely hung with elaborately
staged Christmas portraits of the ever-expanding Kardashi-
an-Jenner family. “We’ve done it since I was born,” explains
Kim, who stares out from her childhood pictures with an
almost otherworldly beauty. Suddenly, however, those Kar-
dashian girls are all grown up and vamping in body-con
gowns. David LaChapelle, maestro of all-American kitsch,
shot their most recent Christmas group.
For the moment, Kim and Kanye are camping out chez Kris
while their own rambling new manse in the hills of Bel Air is
being readied for their burgeoning family. Kanye’s old house
has been deemed to have “no privacy and no space,” whereas
Kris lives in a gated community trellised by horse walks and
dotted with Disney-perfect stables. However, Kanye’s erst-
while home serves its purpose: “We use the whole bottom
foor for storage,” says Kim, who keeps the majority of her
wardrobe there. “We have a ‘walk in’ house!” Kanye jokes.
It’s also, Kim admits, “the place that we go when we want to
get away because there’s a lot going on at my mom’s house.
His house is very calm and tonal.”
Kris had just fnished decorating a spare bedroom at her
house in lush draperies and dark jewel colors when North
arrived, but graciously ceded a redo to the couple. Now Tord
Boontje’s iconic Swarovski pink blossom chandelier twinkles
above a Lucite crib and pale-colored shag-pile carpeting, all
refected in a narcissism-nurturing mirrored wall.
It would appear that Kanye applies the same collaborative
spirit that informs his music to his decorating projects, as
well as the concept of sampling. Claudio Silvestrin, the for-
mer partner of John Pawson, worked with him on the New
York apartment he acquired a decade ago, transforming it
into a serene minimalist tone poem in limestone and pear
wood. Meanwhile he is working on the Paris apartment he
has had for two years with Oana Stanescu, as well as Joseph
Dirand, the design comet whose com-
mercial projects include store concepts for
Alexander Wang, Balmain, and Rick Ow-
“Kim is like a
ens, and who, in Kanye parlance, “killed
it” with his Deco-fabulous scheme for
fantasy, period,”
Monsieur Bleu, the eatery of the moment
at the Palais de Tokyo. Dirand “taught
says Kanye.
me about Corbusier and Jeanneret and
Perriand,” says Kanye, “but he gets every-
“She’s like a
thing—bases everything of of Versailles.”
The apartment’s foors were inspired by
dream girl. And
the distinguished Belgian antiquaire and
interior designer Axel Vervoordt, whose
I think a dream
exquisite, moated Kasteel van ’s-Graven-
wezel, a showplace for his work, left
girl should live in
Kanye suitably awed when he toured it a
couple of years ago. All of them seem to
a dream world”
have been consulted for Kimye’s Bel Air project, as well as
Waldo Fernandez, Sandy Gallin, and Clint Nicholas.
“I’m looking at all of this sci-f, retro-future stuf, muted
color palettes” for both his homes and his music projects,
says Kanye, nestled with his fancée in an accommodating
banquette in Kris’s shagadelic den-cum-bar. “Starting to
build one language, you know?”
His aesthetic partnerships are as thoughtfully curated as
his architect choices; Kanye collaborated with the perfor-
mance artist Vanessa Beecroft on his 2013 Yeezus tour, fus-
ing a plethora of ideas into a singular aesthetically cohesive
concept. He considers his music “a sonic painting. I’m not
music. I’m not fashion,” he explains. “I’m just art. Life is a
giant art project.” Right now he is working on his logo with
Peter Saville, the legendary art director famed for his collabo-
rations with Joy Division in the eighties. “Album covers and
stuf—that shit is serious to me,” he maintains.
“Creativity is hard,” he observes. “The creative process—
it’s like a relationship: It can be grueling, it can be extremely
fun, it can be extremely fulflling, it can be extremely daunt-
ing. Do you want to put out currently acceptable stuf, or do
you want to try to push toward the future and try to expand?
“You need new ideas,” he continues, relating the concept
to his architectural projects, “but Sandy Gallin’s older, Axel
Vervoordt is older, so they’ve lived. Claudio will be like, ‘I’ve
been through three marriages—and we need to have two
bathrooms!’ ”
Kanye is surprised that this mix-and-match approach
has raised eyebrows in the design world. “Wait a second;
Walt Disney worked with a lot of diferent animators,” he
notes. “When I work with music, I work with a lot of dif-
ferent people. If you work together, you can fnd something
greater—and all people can win.
“I’m really into fantasy, as you know. I’m obsessed with
Walt Disney and Tim Burton and Hayao Miyazaki. Kim is
like a fantasy, period,” he says. “She’s like a dream girl. And
I think a dream girl should live in a dream world.”
“I do live in a dream world,” says Kim. “The fact that
I’m waking up tomorrow, shooting for Vogue, I get to play
dress-up every single day of my life, have my dream fancé,
my dream baby, you know?”
Ten days earlier, Kim began her Vogue wedding-dress od-
yssey in London in the light-fooded atelier of Alexander
McQueen’s Sarah Burton, where, under conditions of abso-
lute secrecy, Catherine Middleton’s mag-
nifcent dress for her marriage to Britain’s
future king was conceived and fashioned.
For Kim, Sarah has designed a dress with
ostrich-feather panniers and a train, and
a bodice of plumes, adapted from one in
her debut collection that Daphne Guin-
ness wore to the Met Costume Institute’s
McQueen-themed gala in 2011. The feath-
er tendrils have been sewn by hand onto
a chifon base, and the imposing dress is
light as a cloud.
Kim arrived exultant, having suc-
cessfully managed to throw off the 30
or so paparazzi that had been her near-
constant shadows. She evaded them by
dodging into Selfridges (“It’s the only
place I know here,” she said), where luckily she ran into a
friend and they conspired to switch cars.
“I’ve always been fne with it,” Kim tells me later of the
constant paparazzi monitoring. “I think only when I got
pregnant did I start to have a problem because they were
so nasty to me—the things they would say. I’ve never really
recovered. And they still say crazy things when I’m with my
daughter and make it a scary situation. When you’re young
and you’re riding around L.A. with your friends it’s fun and
exciting, but now I’m in my 30s and don’t really care to go
out and be seen or impress anybody.”
Kim is wearing a pearl-buttoned Céline overcoat, black
leggings, and a pair of beloved Margiela boots that Kanye
bought for her in 2008 (“I was like, ‘What’s Margiela?’ back
then,” she notes wryly), but all eyes are on The Ring, a prettily
faceted ffteen-carat cushion-cut diamond that Kanye, after
consulting a number of other jewelers, eventually chose from
Lorraine Schwartz and had set to hover on a dainty mount.
“He did so good,” says Kim, “I just stare at it all day.”
Kanye presented it to her on her thirty-third birthday in
the baseball stadium in San Francisco (where he was per-
forming), fying the entire clan Kardashian in for support.
213
SCREEN TIME
The camera-ready
family gathers in
North’s mirror-walled
nursery. Givenchy by
Riccardo Tisci ivory
fox stole, sequined
trompe l’oeil print skirt,
and belt. On Kanye:
Balmain T-shirt.
 “It was the most special day of my life,” remembers Kim,
who discovered a 50-piece orchestra waiting for her. “The
lights go on and they start playing my favorite Lana Del Rey
song, ‘Young and Beautiful,’ from The Great Gatsby. It just
reminds me of us.” Kim thought that Kanye had hired Del
Rey to serenade her for her birthday. “That’s so something
he would do!” she says, suggesting he is even more romantic
than a character in a movie. “Literally, he is the most roman-
tic person I’ve ever even heard of.” But then the scoreboard

F
fashed, pleeease marry meee!!!, and Kanye went down on
bended knee.

rom London, Kim decamped to Paris

to join Kanye and meet with more de-
signers who have created couture looks
for the Vogue shoot. It is a city dear to
the couple’s hearts. Kanye discovered
it when Damon Dash took him to Eu-
rope some ten years ago, “before I even
dropped the frst album. Paris is like the
girl that’s rude to you at a bar at frst,
and then you eventually fall in love with
her the most.” It was a slow burn for Kim, too. “Now I abso-
lutely love it,” she says, “but I remember the frst time I went it
seemed like such a diferent world to me. Paris is the place we
go when we want to get away,” she adds. “People don’t hound
you here. At night when we’re jet-lagged we just throw on
sweats and take a walk around the city and window-shop in
the middle of the night.”
They love the city so much, in fact, that they are planning
their upcoming nuptials here.
“People are probably assuming we’re going to have this
massive wedding,” says Kim, “and I think that it will be—
but intimate. Two hundred people—just all of our closest
friends—a special night for us and all the people that really
love us and that have supported us.” Intimate or not, Kim
is planning multiple costume changes, and Kanye, naturally,
is thinking iconic. The Louvre, perhaps, or Versailles. Or
both. “We could get the Hall of Mirrors or something,” says
Kanye. “We could turn up.”
As the couple prepares for another round of fttings, their
close friend and Kanye collaborator (on the artwork for the
Watch the Throne album) Riccardo Tisci joins them for din-
ner with Pedro Almodóvar chez Azzedine Alaïa and takes
the group around that fashion maestro’s emporium for a
late-night shop. “I did a personal styling of Kim, all Alaïa,”
Riccardo tells me, noting that the designer was naturally
enamored of Kim’s hourglass proportions. “He was blown
away: He loved.”
Riccardo has some frm words of advice for Kanye on
the subject of the actual dress his future bride will wear to
the altar. Namely, not to get involved in the process. “Let
her live; it’s her dress,” Riccardo counsels him, rushing in
where angels fear to tread. “It’s got to be her dream, not
your dream—a surprise when she walks up the aisle.” (“I’m
very feminist, very ‘sister’ in that way!” Riccardo confdes.)
As Kim tries on her dresses in a setting of Middletonian RAVISHING
discretion and subterfuge at Le Meurice, “I decided to not Striking a graphic
have any opinions,” says a chastened Kanye playfully, installed contrast with
on a gray sofa, when asked if he prefers the fat or the heel Kanye’s matte black
Lamborghini , a
with the look. “Flat is cooler, no?” posits Riccardo, “but high Schiaparelli Haute
heels will make her stronger.” c o n t i n u e d o n pa g e 2 8 2 Couture ivory silk
chiffon sleeveless
top and bouillonné
216 skirt. On Kanye:
Fear of God T-shirt.
217
 FLYING HIGH
Sharing a private
moment. Lanvin
Blanche Collection
by Alber Elbaz ivory
strapless techno–
duchesse satin dress.
On Kanye: Louis
Vuitton coat and
Alternative Apparel
hoodie. Details,
see In This Issue.
MIDNIGHT IN parIs
The couple’s getaway
of choice. “When we’re
jet-lagged we walk around
and window-shop in the
middle of the night,”
says Kim. Alexander
McQueen ivory feathered
dress. On Kanye: Uma
Wang coat. In this story:
hair, Anthony Turner;
makeup, Aaron de Mey
for Sephora. Grooming:
Ibn Jasper. Menswear
Editor: Renelou Padora.
Details, see In This Issue.