Excerpts From The December 2014 Vogue, Presented Without Commentary

On Hollywood Bad Boys
“But does this occasional model — currently the face of the Calvin Klein cologne Reveal — fear coming off as fake? “I grew up unsure whether I would end up being in the film business or being a gangster,” he says, without a hint of irony. (His father, scrap-metal kingpin Billy Hunnam, ran northern England’s underworld for decades.)”

On Regifting
“It’s not that I didn’t want things. My problem was that what other people gave me wasn’t what I would have chosen.”

“For Christmas, a glamorous and very generous friend, who had given me a pleated blue, white, and gold-patterned Hermès scarf the year before, sent what I thought was a box of chocolates. In those days, I didn’t eat chocolate. When I called my friend to say how delicious her gift was, she sounded a little surprised.”

“Not being able to accept gifts graciously is clearly a pathology of some sort, and with me, it’s incurable.”

“Then I think of the pair of shiny bronze zippered-leg jeans, in a size 14, that the author Gloria Nagy (who is a size 0) once got a friend. She not only regifted them, she unfriended the sender.”

On Fashion and Beauty
“When a major leather house like Fendi offers customizable handbags, it’s hard not to take notice.”

“This was the trade-off for legs as linear as a Baccarat highball: unable to sit or eat in comfortably, they became the preserve of evening — standing, chitchatting, and flitting around the room. All they needed was a sharp intake of breath, a wispy chiffon blouse, and vertiginous Manolos[…] Just don’t expect to eat more than a canapé or two.”

“For Amal Clooney’s recent wedding in Venice, makeup artist Charlotte Tilbury created an entire wardrobe of matte lip looks to take her through the weekend’s events.”

“’Kendall is the new pop-culture model. She’s inspiring girls in the way Claudia Schiffer or Naomi Campbell did. They aspire to look like her.’”

“This asymmetric suede coat — sophisticated and of the moment — will score plenty of points at another kind of holiday tradition: taking in the New York Knicks vs. the Washington Wizards at Madison Square Garden on Christmas Day.”

On Foodies
“Scrolling through my Instagram feed, I see more and more cool girls finding inspiration in food — be it a green-juice hot spot or a new raw café.”

“But let’s be practical: What is it I’m really looking for? The culinary equivalent of a statement quote.”

“A passion for bone broth, sausage, and beef was not what I expected from model- and girl-about-town turned foodies, but as they passionately explain: ‘These cows graze only on the long grass of the moors, so omega 3, 6, and 9, plus minerals and trace elements and all that goodness, are passed on to us through their beef.”

On Gay Weddings
“While our federal government and more than 30 states now agree that a same-sex marriage is wholly equivalent to any other, the autumn nuptials of designer Joseph Altuzarra and his boyfriend, Seith Weissman, were evidence that things are still a bit different. Most bridegrooms, for instance, do not create mood boards for the hair and makeup of their ‘groomsmaids.’”

“Neither does the typical groom fret that a dear friend ‘is going to show up in leather shorts and a T-shirt,’ an anxiety much relieved by the sight of groomsman Alexander Wang wearing a tuxedo on the big day (sans bow tie, of course).”

“Even without a bride to speak of, there was still a critical dress moment.”

On the “Hip Renaissance” of Detroit
“I thrilled to the treasures of the Detroit Institute of Arts (thankfully rescued from the bankrupt city’s chilling deaccession scheme) and was moved by a tour of both the outsider art of the Heidelberg Project and, in nearby Bloomfield Hills, the Cranbrook Academy of Art, the high-style cradle of the talent that has helped define America’s design landscape.”

“Julie Taubman, meanwhile, hosted us for lunch in her 1925 Louis Kahn Normandy stone mansion, unexpectedly filled to bursting with an exhilarating mix of state-of-the-art design pieces created over the past six decades.”

“Fashion collector extraordinaire Sandy Schreier turned me emerald green when she brought out one jaw-dropping example after another (Poiret, Vionnet, Adrian, Yves Saint Laurent) from her fabled collection at home in Southfield.”

On Travel
“To hit the ground running, Manhattan dermatologist Lisa Airan, M.D., works a last-minute blow-dry into her calendar. The result after an overnight flight to Europe? Perfect second-day hair.”

“As artfully dressed visitors descend on Miami Beach for this year’s Basel — highlights about town include a Beatriz Milhazes survey at PAMM and Robert Wilson’s video interpretations of Louvre classics, not to mention performances by James Blake and FKA Twigs — they’ll have their pick of equally chic hotels.”