It’s an amazing, almost inspiring thing, what happens when Zendaya steps in front of a camera.
Before visiting the filming of his British Vogue during the cover shoot at the end of January, I imagined her viewing the whole ordeal with gracious indifference. (The role model in my mind was Ingrid Bergman at the 1975 Oscars, dryly telling the audience after her third career win that it was “always very nice to receive an Oscar.”) Zendaya has, after all, been working in Hollywood since she was 13; she has been an ambassador for Louis Vuitton, Valentino, Tommy Hilfiger, Bulgari and Lancôme; and, at 27, she has already won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama twice. Surely posing for a magazine would be, dare I say it, a bit boring for her now? (Actually, two magazines: this month she becomes one of the few stars to cover the British cover Vogue And Vogue United States simultaneously – with two separate shoots and covers, directed by Carlijn Jacobs and Annie Leibovitz respectively.)
But in a nondescript studio in Aubervilliers, a northern suburb of Paris, what I discover instead is a possessed woman. Constantly jumping and twirling in youthful silhouettes from Vuitton, Erdem, Marni and Wales Bonner, Zendaya is, as they say, giving: face, movement, angles, legs. (Five foot ten bare feet, she gets them from her mother, who is six foot four inches tall.) From moment to moment, she transforms into Veruschka, Twiggy, Naomi, Linda. She even has Linda’s hair: after appearing that morning with micro-bangs and straight lengths for Schiaparelli’s spring 2024 haute couture show at the Petit Palais, she now sports a swishy little pageboy cut. The cries of approval – from Jacobs; from Zendaya’s stylist (or “image architect,” as he puts it), Law Roach; from his assistant – Darnell (“You look beautiful!”) – are out of breath, partly because they are having trouble keeping up.
The scene is fascinating, totally magical… but it all also seems quite exhausting. It is work, complete stop. Pausing to calm herself, she examines her results carefully, scrolling through images of Jacobs on a monitor. (Roach, hovering nearby in a bedazzled tracksuit, waist-length braids and a cream knit cap, leans in to confer with her, while Darnell – tall and finely groomed, with large white teeth and fine hair and twisted—managing the playlist, dancing to OutKast’s “Hey Ya!”) At these moments, Zendaya could be a scientist examining slides in a lab: variously identifying a strange shape she’d created with her neck, or determining that her hair should turn back. This manner rather than that, she is dedicated, present, completely precise. A pro, in other words.
Honestly, I shouldn’t have been so surprised. Zendaya warned me about this, the kind of creature she transforms when she has her photo taken. The day before the shoot, I was taken by his friendly security guard, Paul, to a vast hotel suite above the Place de la Concorde, wet that morning by freezing rain. I sit in a room where, from a small terrace, the Dôme des Invalides and the Eiffel Tower are clearly visible to the south and southwest. Searching through my personal belongings, I found nothing, only a plastic bag balled up in one of the matching armchairs.
Gn entert
News Source : www.vogue.com
