Emma Stone Is Vogue’s September Cover Star! PLUS Alex Cooper’s Podcast Empire

0:05Hi, everyone. This is The Run Through, and I'm Taylor Antrim. You're expected to hear Chloe and Choma, but they're taking a break from the show this week. So you have me here to talk about all things September issue. Actually, you don't only have me. You have my illustrious colleague, Virginia Smith. Hi, Virginia. Hi, Taylor. Thanks for having me. So the Vogue September issue is legendary, of course, and it's out now, and it's totally packed. I mean, as always, the thing about September is that it's really meant to be a fashion issue. It's an issue where the ambition around the fashion shoots is sort of above and beyond.

0:42And the shoots are always really interesting and have interesting storylines behind them. And we're here to talk a little bit about that. But it's also an ambitious issue when it comes to features, which is something that I look after at the magazine. And in this September issue, there are tons of people in it. You can read about everyone from Tory Burch to Lauren Sanchez and Huma Abedin, who won wedding season this year. Can we say that? We can. Jack and Laz, the designers who were formerly of Proenza Schooler and now are taking over at Loewe. And you have a profile of Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear.

1:15I actually wrote that one, so I want to give it a special shout out. And the cover story is of the totally remarkable Emma Stone. And we have also a really fun read, which is a deep dive profile into the phenomenon that is Call Her Daddy's Alex Cooper. So a little bit later on the show, I'm going to get the writers for those two respective features, Jason Gay, who's been writing for Vogue for a long time, and Alessandro Kadina on the show here to talk about their features. So that's what you have to look forward to. But we're going to start, as we should, with the fashion shoots. So, Virginia, this has been – I mean, I want people to understand a little bit about what summers are like around here at Vogue.

1:58It's not really the dog days of summer in June and July, is it? No. I mean, it's been quite a July, let's just say that. But, you know, in terms of September, you know, this planning really starts very early on. And when we, you know, start seeing collections in New York and London and Milan, and then by the time we get to Paris, we're really meeting and discussing, you know, what we feel this season is about, what we want to say. So tell us when that is happening. Like, when are you having those conversations? Early on, we usually meet in Paris over a couple of days as a group. The international editors from Vogue are usually in town for the Paris collections.

2:42Which is in March. Which is in March, yes. So we have a couple of meetings and we start collectively sort of talking about what everyone's thinking about the season. And the question that we were really trying to answer this September is, what makes fashion relevant? Particularly in these, like, very trying times, both in a complete worldview and also in fashion, this unprecedented change in fashion. Like, what makes fashion relevant? And the things that kept coming up are certainly creativity and personality and personal style and individuality and all those things. And so that was really the question we were trying to answer when we were putting together this issue.

3:25Can you talk a little bit about what your role is like? So you're at the fashion shows in March, and you have sort of a special responsibility, which is to kind of draw together everybody's ideas and make them make sense, right? Yes. I have help doing it, a lot of great help from both my team here in New York and Laura Ingham. I work very closely with Vogue UK and many others, but basically we're putting our own ideas together. We're talking to our core stylists that we use and getting ideas from them. And we're trying to sort of sift through things. It's very funny once you work at Vogue for sort of a few years.

4:12It's very funny how many of us have the same reaction to things. So there's like buckets of ideas that are similar. And you sort of take the best of the best and tweak them like, oh, well, actually, that's a great idea. But this version of it might even be better. So you're sort of just going through everyone's ideas and figuring out, okay, what is the message? What's the best way to say it? And it's a process. But it does start, you know, in Paris. And then we hit the ground running when we all get back to our respective markets. and, you know, everyone starts planning their own covers and we start planning what we call these global stories.

4:52And, you know, then we're off to the races trying to make all this happen. You know, it's fun. It's, you know, September, we all know the bar is very high. There's a high standard. We really want to do something very special. And I personally love this September issue. We have a lot of new ideas here, a lot of new names included in the issue, some new creative teams in the issue. And I think it's, as you say, you have some incredible features in the issue. And I think it's just a great fashion feature. You know, we have Grace Coddington is back on the cover story, which is incredible. Stephen Klein has done some images.

5:30And then we have newcomers like Drew Vickers doing an incredible story with Melina Gilchrist about this imaginary road trip that's a really, really great story. So I'm very proud of this issue. We got those pictures and the Drew Vickers pictures in, and I was like, did the production like go on a road trip in Bucharest? What am I looking at here? But these were – he uses CGI and AI to create these like otherworldly backgrounds. Yeah, he does. It's pretty remarkable. It's totally remarkable. Like you can't believe it. I mean they're incredible. You know, we would never have been able to probably pull that off without that help from CGI.

6:11but it was, they're remarkable images. I mean, that meeting that you refer to in Paris, it's like a morning meeting. Everybody actually assembles into a room together to talk about what they've seen. And, you know, I haven't been to the Paris meetings because I work here in New York, but I've been to various sort of New York iterations of these meetings over the many years I've worked at Folk. And I have to say, this is one of my favorite things about working here. It's just this extremely creative sort of back and forth meeting of editors talking about the things they've seen on the runways and sort of extrapolating of what it all means.

6:44And I often feel like I feel lucky to be in there. I think that, you know, if people really wanted to be a fly on a wall for a great Vogue meeting, this is one of the ones that they would want to be there for. Yeah, they're really interesting. I'm always like sort of in awe of my colleagues that they, you know, see something that I may not have really responded to, but they did. And I always think that's so interesting. And, you know, it's Nicole Phelps who's, you know, incredible. Mark Colgate always has something very insightful. And then it's really interesting to see, you know, how other markets respond to things that, you know, may be different from how someone in the U.S.

7:23would feel. So it's a really interesting – it's really interesting to get everyone's perspective on it. And we get kind of a roadmap. I also want people to understand it's not just like we're there to talk about the September issue. we get a little bit of a roadmap for September, October, November, December, like through the end of the year. And so it's a way that you start to, you know, conceptualize and understand what we're going to be up to for the whole rest of the year. Yeah, we're really trying to get sort of the broad strokes, the big ideas accomplished at that meeting. You know, after that, people, you know, you can sort of come up with the smaller things that feed into that.

8:01But our goal is always to see, okay, what are the big ideas this season? And if we can sort of get that covered in these two mornings, then we've done, you know, a pretty good job. We love a catchphrase. Love a cover line. Cover line, catchphrase. Theme. Personality dressing was a big one for September. So, but let's get into it a little bit. You mentioned Grace Coddington, so I want to walk people through the cover story just a little bit. Because it's a pretty special cover story, and there are a lot of elements that are very intrinsically vogue to it, including Grace, who's been part of this title for many, many decades, right?

8:38Yes. And you work closely with Grace. What is it like to work with Grace on a shoot? You know, Grace is – she's so detail-oriented, and, you know, she really maps out the pictures in her head. She actually used to do thumbnail sketches of every look, you know, every image that she saw in her head, which was, you know, remarkable. She also used to sketch every single look that went down the runway. At runway shows. Yes. You would see her with her little. It's amazing. And she would call in the looks based on her sketches. Oh, my gosh. I mean, that's before, you know, Vogue runway was so, you know, prevalent and was so quick.

9:15Right. But, I mean, you know, it's pretty remarkable. But so it was great to have her back. Obviously, she and Nicolas Ghesquier are very close friends. Yes, and I should say it's Emma Stone on the cover and Nicolas Ghesquier, who's a friend of Emma's and did all the looks. Yes, and he did really a special collection specifically for this shoot and for us and for Emma with Emma in mind and Vogue in mind. And, you know, this conversation, I think, came out of a lunch that he and Anna had and morphed into, you know, these incredible sort of one-of-a-kind pieces that he wanted to really apply sort of couture techniques to in his Louis Vuitton world.

10:00So we were still so lucky and fortunate to have, you know, his level of talent. And, you know, when you talk about what makes fashion relevant today, it is certainly someone who has a vision, a singular vision like himself, who's been, you know, defining and leading fashion for so long. He's one of the real survivors. He really is. We talk about the shuffle and how creative directors are moving from house to house, but he's like, you know, has just been in place for such a long time. Yeah, he has. And, you know, I just have been very fortunate to be an editor for the last 20 years where he's been making these remarkable clothes time and time again.

10:43And I never take that for granted, I have to say. How rare is it to have a designer to do basically a custom, you know, collection only for a shoot like this? Have you ever seen it happen before? I don't think we've ever had – I don't recall anyone – anytime we've ever had a collection like this done for us. I mean, certainly we've had special looks and special pieces done for us. But in terms of, you know, this many, I don't think we've ever had it before. And, you know, the funny thing is – The power of an Anna Wintour watch. I know, exactly. But we kept – you know, and of course we had all the faith in the world in him.

11:19Totally. But I'd be like, do you think we might see a sketch at some point? And we get like a piece of embroidery, and it was very beautiful. And I was like, okay. And then maybe like a sleeve would come a couple of days later, and then there was like one little lace thing at one point. I mean, it was very funny in how this came together because then I would call Grace and say, Grace, have you gotten anything else? Because I'll send you what I have and you send me what you have. It was very funny trying to piece it together with her. But, you know, it did come together, of course, and it was quite beautiful.

11:52But we weren't quite sure up until very, very close to the shoot of exactly what we were getting. One of the great features in the issue is written by Hamish, our beloved Hamish Bowles, about the late Andre Leontali, who I know you worked with for many years. And I would love for you to, I don't know, talk about your relationship with him. And in the story in particular, Hamish mentions that you asked Andre about a zebra stole he was wearing at the Dries Van Noten show. So tell us that story. Well, it was, I mean, it was early on in my career here at Vogue. I think it was maybe the first or second season.

12:25And I was at Dries Van Noten, and Andre comes in in this sort of fabulous, like, zebra, like, well, I thought it was a scarf or a coat at the time. Right. And I was like, Andre, you look amazing, you know. He goes, oh, darling, I just got this off the floor of the Ritz. It's my rug from the Ritz. And I was like, oh, my God. That's amazing. I mean, I even overlapped with him. I was right at the end of his time as a like in-office phenomenon at Vogue. And I remember every day he was in, it was just like no matter where you were in the offices, you could hear him talking on the phone, bellowing about something that, you know, had just come through.

13:06It was really remarkable to work with him. I mean, Andre was a lot of fun. I mean, a lot of fun. He was a major personality. And, you know, I remember asking Andre one time, I said, Andre, I've got to go see so-and-so. And they had such a terrible show. What am I going to do? What should I say? He said, darling, you tell them you applaud the courage of their convictions. Okay. Fantastic. And that has stuck with me for the last 20 years. if I get in a tight spot, the courage of your convictions is that I can always pull it out. Thank you, Andre. Thank you, Andre.

13:48Okay, we're going to take a short break, and we'll be back after this with my conversations with the writers Jason Gay and Alessandro Kadina.

14:06Hi, I'm Rebecca Ford, senior awards correspondent at Vanity Fair and co-host of Little Gold Men. Oscar season is upon us. Little Gold Men takes you behind the scenes of the race for the biggest prize in Hollywood. There's a hundred wrestlers in the room, but only one can be Oscar nominated. Whether you're a movie lover or an industry buff, Little Gold Men from Vanity Fair has everything you need to know about this year's Oscar race. Follow and listen to Little Gold Men wherever you get your podcasts.

14:43I'm really excited to have both of you guys on the show. We've already talked on this episode a little bit about how the September issue is something of an ambitious project and starts very early in the calendar with all of the fashion conversations. But it's also a very ambitious project when it comes to features. And you two have written two of the sort of centerpiece features in the issue. Jason, you wrote the cover story on Emma Stone and Alessandra. You wrote a sort of deep dive feature on the podcaster media mogul Alex Cooper. I also want to make the point that neither of you are strangers to writing for Vogue or even working at Vogue, Alessandra.

15:18You're a bit of a veteran editor who led the culture coverage at the website several years ago. And Jason, when I came on at Vogue, which is ancient history, one of my first directives from Anna was to go to lunch with Jason Gay, who she was very proud of having tempted into the stable here. So, Jason, you've been with us for a long time. I have. And Taylor, you did not get the white shirt memo I can see from the Zoom call here. but yeah I feel like I've been brought out of hibernation it's been a while and I'm thrilled to be back in the fold here Jason a little bit of that history still I want to dwell on you you have profiled everyone from like Rihanna to Nicole Kidman and of course Emma Stone which I think this is your third cover story yes doing Emma Stone but one thing while I have you is I want to establish the fact, which I think is true, but correct me if I'm wrong, you got the last on-the-record interview of Beyonce known to the magazine world.

16:22Is that true? You know, it's been a while since I went back to try to confirm that. And, you know, it's possible, Taylor, this could be ignominious history. Like, she had enough of this after talking to me that she said, never again. That's right. That's right. The 15 minutes that you managed to grab of her after that music video shoot that you were to fly on the wall for, that was it for her. She's like, I don't want to talk to that man or any of his brethren ever again. That's it for me. So, yeah, it might not be the distinction that you think it is, Taylor. I mean, there have been like two more Beyonce cover stories since that one.

17:01But that one is the one that I really remember because the chase to get time with her in some kind of scene was so high stakes and so, like, difficult. And you got it. I remember you texted me after you came out of this sort of video shoot that you'd seen. You were just like, I got a scene. I got a scene. And it was, like, just so improbable that we would get there. So anyway. But Emma Stone is a little bit of a layup for you because, like I said, you've done two other cover stories for us. I think it was 2014 and 2016. The 2014 is the legendary Build-A-Bear workshop scene where you made teddy bears with her.

17:38I think that was where the friendship started. But tell me a little bit, like, you know, I always like to go into kind of how these stories came to be. And I remember I sent you an email, I think it was in March, about how we had Emma on the cover and would you be up for interviewing her for a third time. And your response was like totally immediate, even though I think you were on like a family spring break at the time. but you were like, good to go. Let's do it. That's great. So tell me a little bit about that moment of thinking about interviewing her for us again. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I was rappelling down the face of a cliff in Zion National Park when I answered an urgent text from Taylor.

18:13But to me, yeah, it's a layup in the respect that it's really interesting, I think, as somebody who does this to visit somebody over a passage of time. And so this has been, and Alexander, I'm sure you've had this experience too, that like, you know, you get to sort of see someone's growth, the changes that happen in their lives. You know, Emma in 2014 was a certain kind of movie star, certainly on her ascension. 2016 was just before La La Land, which was the film that kind of just really launched her. She, of course, won the Oscar for her. And then in the intervening, like eight years, she's had probably the biggest period of, you know, professional and personal, unquestionably, the biggest period of professional and personal growth in her life as she's gotten married, had a child, and of course won another Oscar for Poor Things.

19:00And then it's just gone off in this really interesting creative direction in her life. So yeah, it's fun to reconnect with somebody when so much has happened and so much interesting stuff and stuff you can get behind. And look, can we be a little candid here about these kinds of experiences and going to interview people for stories that it's always a nice thing when you go into it, really believing in the work that they have spent the last bunch of years doing and the work that they have coming up. And that's not to say that that's always the case. And she has just done incredible stuff, I think, and really taken a lot of risk.

19:38You know, now there's a way in which, you know, you can manage a successful career to just kind of keep, you know, nibbling away at the success, or you can take big swings. And I think there's no doubt that she has done that. And I I was eager to talk to her about all that and all the stuff that's happened in the time since. One of the like centerpiece profiles is this deep dive into the world of Alex Cooper written by you, Alessandra. And you were just on the heels of having written the cover story on Hayley Bieber, right? And when I contacted you and I thought this may completely rub people the wrong way, but I felt like there was some spiritual overlap between a deep dive into the world of Hayley Bieber and a deep dive into the world of Alex Cooper.

20:19How do you feel about that idea? I don't think anyone would be offended by that, actually. Like, I think that there is definitely some significant overlap, especially in like devoted audiences. That's right. That's right. And sort of like, you know, young woman rises to the peak of an empire kind of, you know, trajectory going on, right? Right. Kind of like against all expectations put on her by sort of like celebrity society up to that point. Not that Alex Cooper was a celebrity before, but the sort of, you know, perception of like attractive young blonde rises to the top of her field for sure.

20:59So I feel like you'd had your reps with Haley Bieber, and then I was going to plunge you into the world of Alex Cooper. And I asked you – I actually didn't know, Alessandra, if you were like steeped in the world of Caller Daddy. And I think I asked you in my opening salvo to you. I was like, are you Daddy Gang? And your response, which was exactly the response I was looking for, was? I don't think I remember. You were like, I am not Daddy Gang. Right. So it's – It's one of these things where you're kind of looking for someone that has such a devoted fan base as Alex Cooper to do a kind of deep dive into what their world looks like.

21:39You actually need someone who's slightly removed from that world. So I was that that would describe you. I would say because my awareness of Alex Cooper was actually pretty like formed from the early days, really. So when she was on Barstool, when the whole breakdown with her co-host, Sophia Franklin, happened, and it was like in the New York Post, and it was sort of peak COVID, and there wasn't a lot going on, and that was kind of like a sexy news story that was very, like, talked about. I had tried listening to it then just because I was curious. And it seemed just distinctly not for me particularly, which is not to say, it's not a judgment.

22:20It just wasn't for me. It was kind of hyper-sexualized, sort of like shock jockey, kind of like talking about hookups. Right. Sort of like fun, brash sorority sister vibe. And that just wasn't, what I was personally looking for, but I knew that it was hugely popular. And I was seeing girls walking around wearing baseball hats that said daddy or like daddy gang merch. And I was sort of like, oh, there's like a, something's happening. But I knew it was just, I was aware of it, but it was not, I was not like, gotta listen every week. And then of course, one of the reasons we wanted to do this story is that from those days that you describe when the show sort of broke and was on barstool and had this kind of like, hyper-sexualized sort of rundown of her and her co-host's lives, it sort of turned into something else.

23:13And Alice Kipper obviously struck out on her own. There's a whole hubbub there about how that went down. But there was the moment that Call Her Daddy became like this incredibly important thing in the media universe felt to me that moment seemed to happen during the election, right when Vice President Harris went on the podcast. Yeah, I would say that's true. I mean, I think that she had by then definitely pivoted to a different format. It was her by herself. It was more interview focused. Like she still would do these one-off episodes where she talked about her life, but it was much, you know, she's happily married at this point.

23:54Like she, you know, or was in a serious relationship. It was a lot less of the like, you'll never guess who I banged last night kind of discourse and more like relationship stuff, mental health stuff, emotional health stuff, and had really segued into doing these longer form interviews with celebrities and, you know, pseudo celebrities who were the height of the internet fixation.

24:22More with Alessandra and Jason after a quick break.

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25:04Jason, I want to ask you the occasion for one of the occasions for Emma being on our cover. She's in another movie with her collaborator, Yorgos Lanthimos, called Begonia, which you have seen. It's about to premiere at Venice. Tell us a little bit about it. Oh, man. It's not like asking me to, you know, explain Ant-Man 3. This thing is so off the rails, as you would expect from Yorgos. I really came away from this story because I went back and watched it all with a real appreciation for how this guy just I mean, he takes big swings he's an incredible creator, collaborator and with Emma, he has found kind of this partner in crime who is willing to take these deep dives it's hard to think of a film that was more ambitious, risky, boundary pushing than Poor Things.