Ciara Serves Up Sun-Kissed Pregnancy Beauty—Just in Time for Summer

Considering that Ciara's January pregnancy announcement was defined by a strong stance—the singer posed on a rock formation in Turks and Caicos—it's only natural that subsequent images of her growing baby bump should feature an equally aspirational vibe. The pop star's latest share? A series of Instagrams showcasing a mane of wavy bronde hair, sun-kissed skin, and a bikini-clad bump.

In repose on a sunny lawn, Ciara's trio of photos—captured, as usual, by husband Russell Wilson—offered a beacon of both mother-to-be and summertime beauty, exuding an air of vitality and strength. And lest you think her time in quarantine has solely centered on photo shoots and at-home manicures, Ciara also shared a split-screen video with BFF Lala showcasing the same bikini and a mastery (or at least some learning) of Spanish. Whether she’s studying a new language or simply exemplifying a pregnancy glow, let Ciara guide you in a summer well-spent.

‘Nothing Will Ever Replace the Unity of Time and Place’—IRL Runway Shows Will Always Have a Place in Paris

When it rains, it pours—and the downpour we are currently weathering in fashion is the oncoming, if temporary, shift toward digital fashion shows. With travel mostly impossible and countries in varying states of lockdown, the international cycle of resort, men’s, and couture shows that typically takes place from May to July has ground to a halt. Well, almost. In London, Milan, and Paris, fashion’s governing bodies have unveiled plans for online fashion weeks. In London, content of all types will be aggregated to londonfashionweek.co.uk from June 12 to 14, organized by the British Fashion Council. In Milan, Milano Digital Fashion Week will bring together men’s and women’s collections as well as additional content to the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana site from July 9 to 13. Paris, where men’s fashion week and couture are usually teamed together with a short break in between, has announced a video week for the men’s shows from July 14 to 17, organized by the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode. Presumably it could create something similar for couture.

The Fédération’s president, Ralph Toledano, has a broad and quite passionate view of what his country’s first foray into digital fashion might look like. “In Paris, June is by nature dedicated to menswear spring/summer collections so, as usual, we will stick to this. Video is the final format requested,” he wrote Vogue via email. “However the creative content it will be made of is fully open and may be diverse (show, performance, animation, photo shoot), as long as it refers to a spring/summer 2021 collection. Paris is about creativity, diversity, and quality; we expect houses to express themselves in the same perspectives.”

In a normal season, menswear editors and retailers would flock to Paris to see what was new from headliners (Virgil Abloh at Louis Vuitton and Kim Jones at Dior Men) and inspiring new talents (Emily Adams Bode and Craig Green are recent adds). As of yet, many of these brands have not announced any firm plans for spring 2021. Dries Van Noten, for his part, organized a letter to the fashion industry demanding seasonal selling changes.

Still, Toledano and the Fédération are hopeful that Paris’s digital-facing fashion week will be a success. The Fédération, which is organized into three Chambres Syndicale that oversee menswear, womenswear, and couture, met on April 9 to discuss fashion week’s future and decided that a digital menswear week would be the best option for now. “Postponing the week [to July, instead of late June] was an operational decision to give houses extra time to organize their production,” Toledano says.

He continues: “Digital is clearly part of the shape of fashion to come and we will take it as an opportunity of innovation to complement tradition. This being said, [in the] last weeks behind our screens, we all felt that a dimension was missing: the sensorial one. This has tremendously reinforced our position that nothing will ever replace the unity of time and place. Shows are a major component of the fashion industry, and this will remain.... Physical events will always have our preference, but as long as there is uncertainty, there should be flexibility.” To those among us who revel in the sensory delights of Pierpaolo Piccioli’s featherwork, Sam McKnight’s croissant updos at Chanel, and the flutter of anticipation as a Dior couture bride hits the runway, the confirmation that some time soon physical fashion shows will continue presents a huge relief. It might not be in July—but at least the drama and performance of fashion week is promised to continue.

How to Make Weekends Feel Like Weekends When the Days Seem to Blur Together

One of the stranger aspects of life during lockdown is how legitimately difficult it is to remember what day it happens to be. (Is it Tuesday? Friday? Neither?) As the days roll unchangingly into each other, it’s hard to plan for—or even recognize—the weekend.

That’s a mistake, says Lori Gottleib, psychotherapist and author of Maybe You Should Talk To Someone. She cautions that in order to property recharge during these challenging times, it’s crucial to delineate your weekend. “I tell people, ‘try to make your weekdays look as much like weekdays as possible, and that includes looking forward to the weekend,’” she says. “You really want a little frustration of ‘Oh, I want to do that, but it’s not the weekend yet.’”

Wherever you can, she says, try and build in a little anticipation for the end of the week. “And it doesn’t need to be a big thing, it can be small things.” Gottlieb, a Los Angeles resident, has been hopping into her car every weekend for an exploratory drive with her fourteen-year-old son. “I have to drive my car once a week so my battery doesn’t die, so we’ve been going to all kinds of places that we would never go, which has been really fun.”

Save (and Savor) Everyday Experiences

I reserve movies I’m eager to see for the weekend, for no other reason than to have something to look forward to. (Reelgood’s free site features the latest releases from over fifty streaming services.) I’ll be devoting next weekend to the highly anticipated Love Fraud, the docu-series directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady. It follows Richard Scott Smith, who for two decades has preyed on vulnerable women for money, and remains at large. When his victims feel the law has failed them, they turn to a bounty hunter named Carla to track him down.

I also save takeout for the weekends, and order from (an open) restaurant I’ve wanted to try. Next up is Oaxacan mole rojo from Brooklyn’s Claro. They’ve begun offering organic stoneground masa flour on their menu so you can make your own tortillas at home. (Perhaps they’re the new sourdough starter?) I buy flowers, on weekends only, from my farmer’s market—blessedly still open on Sundays.

Try Something New

Gottlieb recommends creatively challenging yourself to come up with new weekend activities. Online offerings abound. Do a virtual museum visit, such as the stellar tour of Egyptian antiquities from the Louvre. Take comfort in the collective experience: online visitors have jumped tenfold in the past weeks.

Get Physical

Get moving with Lady Gaga’s former backup dancer Mark Kanemura, who hosts dance parties on Instagram every day at 5 p.m. EST. (At that time on weekdays, I’m inevitably caught up in a work project, so I slot it in on the weekend.) Kanemura says he plans on keeping the gatherings going as long as stay-home orders continue. “We've built this beautiful community that often reminds me that we are all in this together despite how alone we may feel during this time,” he says.

Alvin Ailey Extension does free live-streamed classes on weekends—and Sunday’s Beginner Horton class, taught by Terri Wright and featuring live drum accompaniment, is a generous hour and a half. Horton, a modern technique based on Native American dances, uses a whole-body approach including lateral stretches and deep lunges. (Simply sign up at least 30 minutes in advance through Mindbody, or on their app.)

Take Your Time

Seek out more time-intensive projects that you aren’t able to do during the week, from multi-phased beauty treatments such as Dr. Barbara Strum’s new seven-step The Glow Kit to cooking. I’ve been happily working my way through Yotam Ottolenghi’s more involved recipes on Saturdays.

The chef himself does the same. “Like many parents during the lockdown, I've become a tutor to my two sons,” says Ottolenghi. “As we're trying to keep some routine —some days more successful than others—I keep weekday cooking a little simpler; eggs and soldiers for breakfast or a quick lemon drizzle cake for an afternoon snack. The weekend is reserved for more ambitious efforts, like a roasted lamb shoulder, a gratin or a child-friendly trifle.”

Balance the Calendar

But even low-key pursuits should be actively planned, says time management expert and Oprah Winfrey favorite Julie Morgenstern. She says to envision the weekend as seven distinct units of time—Friday night, Saturday morning, afternoon, and evening, and Sunday morning, afternoon, and evening. Devote one or two distinct units to errands and chores, and don’t allow them bleed into the others, which should be reserved for more restorative activities like exercise, interests, or Zooming with friends and family.

It may seem counterintuitive to structure your weekends, says Morgenstern, “but without it, you waste a lot of time trying to decide what to do. Or you keep it too loose, and your weekend slips through your fingers.” This is an endurance game, she says, “and we need to be structured to refuel before we run out of gasoline—not do self-care when we have conked out and can go no further.”

And it’s okay, during these incredibly challenging times, to take refuge in pleasure, adds Gottlieb. “People are so afraid of experiencing joy in the midst of pain, or feeling guilty that they’re having fun,” she says. “Well, both things can coexist. Weekends have always been a time of anticipatory joy, and still should be. Just because we’re in a global pandemic doesn’t mean that weekends are cancelled.”

Paris Fashion Week Keeps Calm and Carries On Amidst Anxiety About Covid-19

Will there be moon-print respiratory masks on every seat at the Marine Serre show tomorrow morning? Probably not, though attendees at Paris Fashion Week are likely to see more of Serre’s masks—and plenty of other respiratory masks—during the shows this season. Following an outbreak of Covid-19, as coronavirus has been renamed, just outside Milan, the fashion community is taking extra precautions to protect itself from the spread of the disease. As Milan Fashion Week came to a close in a frenzy of worry, many guests changed their flights out of Milan in fear of a potential travel ban—at least 10 nearby towns were already on quarantine—while others resorted to other modes of transportation to Paris, whether by train (a cool seven hours) or by car (a much longer 10). That level of concern was spurred in part by Giorgio Armani’s late-night Saturday decision to host his Sunday fall 2020 show for an empty auditorium on account of the virus.

But such extreme precautions have not reached Paris just yet. As 10 days of shows begin tonight with Mame Kurogouchi and Kenneth Ize, Paris’s Fédération de la Haute Couture de la Mode is operating business as usual. A representative for the FHCM told Vogue Runway, “We are always in contact with health authorities and ready to follow any order they may give,” but as of yet there is nothing to worry about in the City of Light. Representatives for the major PR houses in Paris have also reported that all shows are going along as planned.

Still, as attendees arrive in Paris from Milan, worry is spreading within the fashion community about the potential of asymptomatic spread of Covid-19. Condé Nast’s Milan office has been closed and its employees advised to work from home, while most of our editors traveling have mostly sworn off greetings of the Parisian (air kiss) and American (hand-shake) variations. (This will be a long week of distant nods and smiles, for sure.) For its part, the World Health Organization advises people to employ standard practices: frequent hand-washing, not touching one’s face, and not coming into close contact with people with respiratory infections or with wild animals.

Even with no reported cases of the virus in Paris as yet, the ramifications of Covid-19 will still be felt during the shows. Last evening the Chambre Syndicale announced that planned PFW shows from Shiatzy Chen, Masha Ma, Calvin Luo, and Jarel Chan would be canceled, with the organization helping to support those brands via social media. Uma Wang has transitioned its scheduled runway show into a presentation. The Chambre Syndicale will also be increasing social media live-streaming and posting on its channels, including Weibo and Douyin.

Spot the Difference! This Season, Vetements Assembles a Cast of Celebrity Lookalikes

If you did a double take while flicking through the runway shots from the Vetements fall 2020 show today, well, you weren’t alone. Across the cast of models, there were several faces that seemed to eerily resemble celebrities. A woman dressed like Naomi Campbell appeared in look 11, wearing the supermodel’s signature fur coat and silver maxidress. In look 15, dressed in a bodyguard-style leather jacket and checked pants, there was a man that looked a little like Mike Tyson, complete with the boxer’s signature face tattoo. Further in the lineup at look 21, a model in a slinky, gold lamé slip dress was a Twilight Zone–duplicate of Kate Moss, even down to the runway veteran’s tousled and middle-parted hair. In look 22, a young man with hiked-up pigtails wearing a checkered coat, light-wash jeans, and shiny black dress shoes was a dead ringer for Snoop Dogg. It didn’t stop there: look 67 had an Angelina Jolie doppelgänger complete with her classic hand-on-hip pose and blowout, while look 69 showed a fierce Sharon Stone in a slick jacket-dress that appeared to be a riff on her oversized outerwear in Basic Instinct.

While Vetements has remained tight-lipped about these alleged parallels, it’s very much in keeping with the brand’s offbeat approach to casting. Its runway lineups typically include a mix of agency-plucked faces and everyday folk cast from the street, often including the label’s own friends and employees, like stylist Lotta Volkova and DJ Clara 3000. Now, with former creative director Demna Gvasalia no longer at the helm, Vetements appears to be continuing its philosophy of deviating from the typical route of model casting. Plus, it’s perfectly in keeping with the brand’s riffs on bootlegging over the years, with its designs often appearing as if plucked from a bazaar of counterfeits. If Vetements has proved anything over its six years in the industry, it’s that even if the product (or, in this case, the model) feels artificial, those witty meta moments can be even more magical than the real thing.

Last Week, Stars Were Decidedly Minimal and Definitively Glamorous

The countdown to the holidays needn’t require holly leaves and reindeer sweaters. One can be festive and cool...or so argue the world’s most stylish who last week managed to do just that on red carpets around the globe. For example, Brie Larson bloomed magnificently at a screening of Just Mercy in Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen’s floral dress in vibrant poinsettia hues. In Mumbai, Bollywood icon Deepika Padukone took a similar tonal route in a dramatic, magenta sari by Sabyasachi for the Lokmat Style Awards.

Of course, it wasn’t all hot pink on the scarlet runner. For a Little Women photo call in London, Saoirse Ronan’s wore a minimal LBD by Pierpaolo Piccioli for Valentino finished off with crystal-studded boots. Equally understated yet impactful were the black cape and white suit Charlize Theron chose for a special screening of Bombshell at Lincoln Center.

Elsewhere, holiday movie premieres yielded a few dazzling fashion moments. Opinion may be divided on Tom Hooper’s Cats, but Francesca Hayward’s beaded Miu Miu gown received only high praise. Likewise, Star Wars: Rise of the Skywalker gave Daisy Ridley an occasion to pull out an otherworldly Vivienne Westwood Couture. The corseted blue silk gown with its detachable train was thrilling, unexpected, and—let’s just say it—a force.

Swedish Musician Ecco2K Drops a Surprise Solo Album (and an Extreme New Look)

Zak Arogundade is a man in perpetual motion. “I kind of just accepted the fact that it’s never really going to slow down from here,” said the Swedish wunderkind when we caught up with him in 2016. That was an accurate prediction. At the time Arogundade was working as a designer for Eytys in Stockholm and performing as Ecco2K with the Drain Gang (formerly Gravity Boys). Since then he’s hit the road—and the runway, having been cast to walk for Alyx by Matthew Williams. “I first met Zak many years ago when he was just beginning making music,” the designer tells Vogue. “Zak has always been into fashion, I ran into him at fabric fairs in Paris and I loved his personal style, [which] was always unique and has lots of energy. We kept in touch and when we had our first runway show I invited [him] to walk.”

Having walked, Arogundade set out to roam. E, the surprise album he’s dropping today, was recorded in Stockholm, Berlin, Los Angeles, London, Falun, and Bangkok. The only geography Arogundade explores, however, is an internal one which is distinguished by dramatic peaks and valleys. “I still feel like a manic perfectionist,” the artist says, “but my idea of perfection has changed as I’ve gotten to know myself better. I let chaos back in. That’s what allowed E to happen.” The lyrics explore the differences between perception and reality and our social versus inner selves, topics that are particularly relevant to the moment. In “Security!” Arogundade poses an interesting question: “What would you ask if you had one wish? / If you could choose only one thing to fix?”

Arogundade is known for playing with his appearance and he says he uses fashion to project “outward what I feel inside. It’s real.” Asked what his style is, he replies, “[you] could call it Graceful Brutality or...Combat Ballerina.” It’s been a while since the artist traded his signature colored braids for a more streamlined look, complete with a shaved head. “I cut my hair off when I left my day-job designing shoes,” Arogundade explains. “I guess it was some kind of Britney moment. Also, I like the idea of remaining a blank canvas...all decoration is stripped off.” The album art takes that idea in a new direction—the artist looks like he’s dipped himself in plaster or white paint. While E touches on universal themes, it’s also an extremely personal album by an artist who is increasingly in the public eye. “People have always looked at me,” said Arogundade, who is of mixed heritage (his father is British of Nigerian descent, his mother is Swedish). “Growing up where I grew up, and looking the way that I looked, there was always a very obvious difference between me and everybody else who was around.” (“All of my friends have blue eyes,” Arogundade sings with some humor on E.)

Though he’s embraced difference as a strength, the artist reveals his vulnerability on these tracks. “I feel like I’m flying and sinking at the same time,” he sings as he explores his subconscious—a feeling that’s given sonic expression by executive producer’s Gud’s tinkling soundscapes (which will be familiar to fans of Yung Lean’s “Yoshi City.” Despite its “atmospheric production,” this isn’t music for somnambulists; there’s a sense of urgency even to the dreamy tracks. And there is variety. “Time, ” for instance, evokes the sweaty, beyond-tired feeling of a magical night fading into morning. “It’s pixie music,” Arogundade says.