Despite the scorching summer sun,
a grand fireplace roared in Hollywood
as Kristen Stewart arrived, with her
dog Cole, at the Los Altos apartments for
her Vanity Fair cover shoot. It’s been
nearly a decade since Stewart’s first V. F.
cover, and photographer Alasdair
McLellan captured the occasion. “It’s
what I’ve always thought L.A. should
look like, like the film Sunset Boulevard,
and I could see Kristen hanging out
there,” says McLellan. “The location
has an exotic history—Bette Davis lived
there, even Hearst’s mistress.” (The
haunted house turned out to be fitting
for other reasons—read the profile
of Stewart on page 58 to find out if she
believes in ghosts.) Nostalgia inspired
the process, as McLellan photographed
exclusively on film rather than digital.
“There’s something exciting about
the delay—you can be more focused on
your subject in the moment.”
Back on the East Coast, V. F.
contributing photographer Annie
Leibovitz captured journalist and,
now, novelist Ta-Nehisi Coates, just days
after he made the powerful case for
reparations before Congress, in places
of significance: on the Prospect Lefferts
Gardens stoop of a friend from Howard
University; then at the Hungarian
Pastry Shop in New York’s Morningside
Heights, where Coates wrote much of
his forthcoming novel, The Water Dancer.
For the shoot, Coates dressed in the
same suit he wore to the hearing on the
Hill, and later an Ice Cube T-shirt of
his own, proving that power-dressing is
equal parts style and substance.
—britt hennemuth
PicturePagesTRUE BLUE
Ta-Nehisi Coates,
photographed
by Annie Leibovitz
in New York City.GLAM SQUAD
Left: Kristen Stewart,
photographed by
Alasdair McLellan
in Los Angeles.
Above: makeup artist
Jillian Dempsey,
hairstylist Adir Abergel,
and Stewart on set.From the Editors Behind the Issue