MODA Magazine: Spring 2013

MODASpring 2013

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You are never too young to start

developing your individual style. Take a look at the photos above if you’re unconvinced.

Our spring issue celebrates individuality and the people who are brave enough to embrace it. Bill Murray graced us with

his quirk in an interview about the importance of perfecting your own style in Hollywood (pg.18). His admiration of one-of-a-kind director Wes An-

derson inspired us to write our own ode to The Whimsical World of Wes (p.20).Terry Richardson has changed the way we see fashion with his harsh dismissal

of all that is subtle; photographer Cathryn Jijon captured his hit-and-run style in A

Tribute to Terry (pg. 39). Besides paying tribute to our favorite, daring icons, we inter-viewed one of our own: First-year Renata Horowitz surprised us with some serious life perspective when we interviewed her about her job at Vogue magazine (pg. 25). Working as Co-Editors of Moda has given us both the opportunity to express our individual styles throughout our college years—years that see us change and evolve the most. As we pass

grow and thrive as an outlet for you to do what comes most naturally—being yourself.

EDITORIAL  BOARDPHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR Charlotte Smith

LAYOUT EDITOR Rachel ScheinfeldFEATURES EDITORS Sara Hupp &

Alexandra McInnis STYLE EDITOR Tara AnantharamBUSINESS MANAGER Grace Lin

PR MANAGER Swara Saraiya

— Rachel & Caroline

MODA Staff 2013

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LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

WRITERS   RJ Gitter, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Kathryn Mitchell, Lena Sparks

PHOTOGRAPHERS Cathryn Jijon, Vivian Wan, Ivy Zhang STYLISTS Nina Coomes, Maura Connors, Lyn Han

MAKEUP  ARTIST Lucie FamaMODELS    Amanda Block, Aixin Chen, Alexa Daugherty, Trisha Gupta, Erik Landry, Alexandra Katarina Lee, Renata

Horowitz, Mesmer Rivers, Darrian Robinson, Emma Mahdieh Tehrani, Caroline Wegner

LAYOUT  TEAM Annina Christensen, Lauren Dietzel, Zelda Mayer, Cathay Zhao

CO-­EDITORS-­IN-­CHIEF Rachel Reid & Caroline Wang

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

MUNCH WITH MODA:The top 5 up-and-coming restau-rants in Chicago this year06

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MODA LOVES:Rachel and Caroline share their top picks of the season

CHRISTIAN SIRIANO:An inside scoop at the life and work of the Project Runway winner

STUDENT DESIGNER PROFILES: Meet three designers from this year’s MODA Fashion Show

VOGUE GONE ROGUE: First-year Renata Horowitz wears Madewell’s Spring Collection22

BILL MURRAY: The King of Deadpan talks about working with Wes Anderson18

22Spotlight: Renata Horowitz

UBallet Company at U of C 32

FASHION @ UOFC:Exploring individual style at the University of Chicago08

36DANCE AWAY: UBallet models clothing from Chicago boutiques32

A TRIBUTE TO TERRY:Inspired by the work of acclaimed photographer Terry Richardson.

Classic Mexican comfort foods with a

twist from A Toda Madre in Geneva, IL 06

10 THE DECLARATION OF FASHION:How clothing symbolizes more than just beauty

20 WES ANDERSON: A pro!le of Wes Anderson’s winning style

28 BARE NECESSITIES: A vision of black and white

CORRECTION: In our Summer 2012 issue, we mis-credited a sketch on page 10 as a design by Francisca Sondjaja. The design should have been credited to Wendy Wei.

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MODAloves

Co-Editors-in-Chief, Rachel Reid and Caroline Wang, share their current style favorites

In the Moment with Moda

Rachel Loves...

CATBIRD:     This Brooklyn-based company has all the charm of Williamsburg and almost none of the pretension. Catbird features local designers and sells everything from engagement rings to soap on their adorable, interactive Web site.

HELLO GIGGLES:    Queen of crafts and cupcakes, Zooey Deschanel, teamed up with two up-and-coming bloggers to create this girl-centric, contributor-friendly blog. The site’s topics include everything from advice posts to frappuccino recipes, but my personal favorite section is the one entirely devoted to livecams of baby animals.

SEE BY CHLOE AT MADEWELL: Chloe chose the perfect brand to team up with and market this new collection,

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MODAloves

Caroline Loves...

AROMA WORKSHOP: While studying abroad in India, I

based perfume. The oils have a purer scent, while also providing a longer-lasting smell. Not to mention, alcohol can be irritating for some people’s skin. Given my new obsession

Workshop in Chicago, where you can mix different oils to create your own, unique scent.

SWASH:   This London-based brand combines digital prints with hand-drawn and painted images to create my very favorite iPhone cases. These cases are not only fun to look at, but their unique texture also provides comfort and a good grip.

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CHANEL SKY LINE:on the Spring-Summer 2012 Haute Couture runway. The

I have never seen a nail polish with a comparable shine. It always scares me when cosmetics are “limited edition”; better stock up before you never ever see it again.

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Right across from Water Tower Place, Bar Toma grabbed the perfect spot to lure hun-gry shoppers. It has the vibe of an authentic Italian restaurant, with a bar, a case display-ing gelato and the smell of pizza wafting out from the kitchen. Sitting in the front section, near the windows, offers you the perfect spot

Italian specialties, including cold and hot an-tipasti, salads and pizzas. The arancini was perfect to share as a starter, and the pizza is about as close to real Italian pizza as you will

favorite). And while I have never been here

Expect to Spend: ~$20 per person (opened Nov 2011) 110 East Pearson Street, Mag Mile

Munch with ModaSpring is the time to venture out of Hyde Park and visit the shops and cafés around Chicago. When you get hungry, be sure to get a table at one of these recently-opened restaurants for fantastic food and a perfect ending to your day out.

1. Bar Toma

This one is more expensive, but if you need a dressy dinner spot, or a future Restaurant Week idea, then this one is for you. The space is chic and trendy, and the dishes are a mod-ern and fresh take on American standards. The wine and cocktail menu is fairly extensive while meat dishes comprise a major portion of the food menu. This is great for some, but evidently limiting for other diners. The white-

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entrées. I was disappointed with the desserts, but if you’re already in Lincoln Park, you may as well go out afterwards and forgo the des-sert for after-dinner drinks. Expect to spend: ~$30 per person (opened May 2011) 1800 North Lincoln Avenue, Lincoln Park

2. Perennial Virant

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text by kathryn mitchellphotography courtesy of restaurants

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3. RPM Italian Restaurant RPM opened with some lackluster reviews, but appears to have listened to critics, and has morphed into a perfect mix of contemporary and comfort Italian dining. The sleek décor makes it hard to determine if you’ve just en-tered a nightclub or a restaurant, but the lines are clean, and the restaurant has a classic ele-gance through the all black and white theme. Located just a block over from Hubbard

Street, RPM has a great location that can be easily reached by public transportation. The dishes are perfect to share. Ordering a few smaller dishes and a pasta or main, and then passing them around, make the price very reasonable. If you still have room for dessert, try the Tartufo. Expect to spend: ~$25 per person (opened February 2012) 52 West Illinois Street, River North

4. NellcôteThis hidden spot in the West Loop opened just a few doors down from the renowned Girl and the Goat. However, the two restau-rants could not be more different. The out-door patio, right on Randolph, is nice when the weather warms up. The interior is min-imalist with high seating, low lighting and an abundance of hanging chandeliers. Their

specialties are the small plates, perfect for sharing around the table. The eclectic pizzas are Nellcôte’s standout items—who would have thought that an egg on a pizza could work so well? They also have various unique cocktails for the 21 and over crowd. Expect to spend: ~$25 per person (opened March 2012) 833 West Randolph, West Loop

5. A Toda Madre Feeling adventurous? Want to get out of the city? Look no further than out in the western ’burbs. You can either drive (about an hour outside the city by car) or take the Metra (from Ogilvie it takes you out there in about 45 minutes). A Toda Madre is rather small, so reservations are a must, but the restaurant has a vibrant and homey feel, trendy but not over the top, and food that tastes straight out of a home kitchen. This is Mexican comfort

food made modern and slightly more upscale. The guacamole rivals any in the city. They do not serve very many vegetarian options, so be sure to go with carnivores for the opti-mum experience. The dessert menu pales in comparison to the dinner menu, but all in all, the dinner will be more than enough to sat-isfy you. Expect to spend: ~$20 per person (opened March 2012) 416 West State Street,

Geneva, IL

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1. The Mozzarella Tasting at Bar Toma is a delicious Italian starter. Photo courtesy of Galdones Photography 2. Perennial Virant’s chic interior provides a beautiful setting for a special night out. Photo courtesy of Perennial Virant 3. RPM has a classic black and white interior. Photo courtesy of RPM 4. A must-try at Nellcôte: any pizza with a fried egg on top. Photo courtesy of Nell-côte 5. For food and drinks outside of the city, visit A Toda Madre in Geneva. Photo courtesy of A Toda Madre

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Fashion @ UChicago

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Due purely to the fact that MODA exists on the University of Chi-cago campus, one might argue that there is a demonstrated in-

terest in fashion on the part of the student body. In an atmosphere chock-full of ac-ademic pressures, surely students can take respite in the sphere of the sartorial, right? Upon closer examination, however, it’s not quite that simple.

To truly understand fashion’s place at UChicago, we need not step into the closet of the average student but rather approach the topic as if in the classroom. Prior to en-gaging in meaningful discussion as to the role of clothing in the life of the student, we must have some idea of what exactly is meant by “fashion.” Is it that which is considered

Is it simply the pieces of fabric that we use to clothe ourselves? Or is it some way of ex-pressing to the outside world who we each are individually?

Fashion at the University of Chicago—in truth, it means many things to many people,

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text by sara huppphotography courtesy of MODA Chicago

Sara Hupp sets out to discover the ins and outs of the fashion culture at the University of Chicago

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and to some, it means nothing at all. But per-haps that’s the beauty of sartorial self-expres-sion here at UChicago: not knowing what the term means to the person standing next to you, you’re free to engage (or not engage)

In one way, choices of clothing and ac-cessories can—in the somewhat “cliché” sense—be used to express to others who we are or what we’re feeling on any given day. They are means of implicitly telling people,“I don’t submit myself to the mainstream” or “I’ve been in the Reg all night, so please don’t bother me.”

In a different sense, engaging with the sar-torial is a way of maintaining a connection with the world beyond that which is bounded by South Ellis Avenue and University Ave-

right now, burying yourself in the glossy pages of a fashion magazine can offer an es-cape from Durkheim reading and never-end-ing problem sets. Beyond this simple respite from the tangible pressures of the daily grind, though, taking time to lose yourself in

fashion provides a much-needed opportunity to think about none other than you—what you wish to convey to others (if anything at all) through your style choices.

And what about those who look at cloth-ing simply for its utilitarian value, devoid of any stylistic merits it could potentially pos-sess? There is certainly nothing wrong with that, and in a place like UChicago, no one will look down upon you for choosing to not engage with fashion.

That may just be the crux of what exactly fashion is at the University of Chicago: It’s personal. Opinions about style and its pos-sible value are as diverse as the students (not to mention their choices of clothing) that comprise the campus community. Even after much thought, making a broad, all-encom-passing statement about the role of fashion at UChicago is impossible, simply because no two students are exactly alike. What is common among all students, though, is an unparalleled desire to make use of their intel-lect and sense of creativity—whether or not fashion has place in that is up to the you.

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PERSONAL STYLE UChicago students add accessories to their out!ts in the Chicago winter, as featured on the MODA Chicago blog

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The Declaration of Fashion

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Through an exploration of what our clothing truly means and how that meaning came to be, RJ Gitter pushes us to see our fashion in a new light.

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text by rj gitterphotography courtesy of sofeminine.co.uk

Consider, for a moment, language. When we say that prose is beautiful, we’re saying that it looks good on a page, that it sounds good to say

aloud, to read in your head—but that’s not all we’re saying. The prose, poetry, comment in class or any spoken word: in order to be beautiful, they’ve all got to mean something, too, because ultimately, beauty is derived from tracing the paths of association, from the phonic contour of a word to the thing it

-tence to the scene it carves into the sand and washes away—because any poet out there stringing together words in the order that looks and sounds the most beautiful without regard to meaning, is not making poetry.

The same goes for fashion. It’s a language that is generally understood by everyone, spoken by those who care—but there are no words; the base units of representation are shredded jeans, gossamers of bleached hair and metallic green eye shadow. But the terms of use remain unchanged: an article of clothing isn’t cool or beautiful because it looks good, though it probably does. Rather, the clothing has meaning that can be traced back from the loose hanging strands of in-

by the context surrounding the garment up to the present. In the same way that a writer

should be preoccupied with the denotations and connotations of the individual words or turns of phrases he uses, so should a student of fashion with the meanings and contexts of articles of clothing or styles—otherwise how does he hope to formulate sentences of articles and accessories, paragraphs of

desire, feeling, or any kind of information?The vast majority of the clothing we wear

today were originally valued exclusively for their utility—as insulation against the ele-ments, or to meet the social requirement of clothing—but over time, in its association with its utility, the article of clothing is linked to new meaning, the set of values or feelings surrounding the utility. The article comes to be not simply associated with that new mean-ing, but to represent it, becoming a symbol for it. The way in which an article of clothing can come to mean something other than its physical shape or color, to have meaning apart from its utility, is what I like to call the process of abstraction. A given article of clothing can undergo abstraction multiple times, assuming new utilities and relinquishing them in favor of new abstracted meanings. Fashion, then, is to make a statement using a vocabulary of abstracted meanings—to construct a style using articles of clothing, or articles of cloth-ing out of stylistic elements—and to relate it back to oneself.

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meaning is abstracted. The social pressure to participate in the war effort, even on the home front, caused the coats to be admired, not for their ability to insulate a human body while allowing for better mobility, but be-cause they represented active involvement in the war effort. In an alternative and more en-during abstraction, the coats became symbols of the disciplined masculinity of the trained British soldier, and, in their great utility, sym-bols of utility itself, especially as manifest in the male body. Either way, the utility was washed away, and replaced with a new, ab-stracted meaning.

Unfortunately, there has always been, though I think now more than ever, an in-clination to wear clothing in a way that is so abstracted that the garment does not mean anything at all—for the meaning of a military jacket to be so far removed from its original utility that to wear it doesn’t make any state-ment other than that you like how it looks. And I’d posit that, just as the aforementioned poet isn’t making poetry by sticking together words that are no more than nice sounds, you’re not dressing yourself fashionably just by putting on things that you think look good together. So, I’ll ask you, next time you put on

tramping off to your Bio lab, to think about where they came from, and what it means for you to be wearing them.

Take, for example, the trench coat. De-signed at the turn of the 19th century by Thomas Burberry, it was submitted to the

exclusively with utility—cut from a tightly woven material patented by Burberry as gabardine, featuring d-rings for storage and

all this while preserving enough mobility for the wearer to clamber up out of the muddy trenches and make a wild dash across no man’s land. In fact, Burberry’s designs were so durable and so insulating that the coats

became widespread throughout the entire military hierarchy, and soldiers developed emotional attachments to the coats, weaving modern folklore around the seemingly inde-structible garments.

And here’s where the process of abstrac-tion occurs. Over the course of World War I, images of British soldiers in long, belted, what had come to be called “trench coats” were disseminated throughout the UK, and young veterans returned home, unwilling to part with the coat that had delivered them from the inclement battle conditions. The British civilian population, in their removed exposure to the coats, began to understand them less as a standard issue military jacket, and more as a symbol of laying down one’s life in the trenches, for England; thus the

The Declaration of Fashion

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TRENCH TRANSFORMATION  The changing form of the Burberry coat overtime.

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SirianoChristian From Project Runway to Fashion Highway

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text by sindu gnanasambandanphotography by vivian wan

Although up-and-coming fashion designer, Christian Sir-

-ized while he competed on Bravo’s hit series, Project Run-

way, it serves as the perfect word to describe his persona. He is 27 years old and hitting the fashion front hard; Siriano works tirelessly to put his name, face and one-of-a-kind personality out there for the public to soak up and love. At his trunk show in Lincoln Park, hosted by eDrop-off, he expressed his personable and quirky per-sonality to the many guests who came to see Siriano and his designs.

The room was swimming with women (and men) excited about his edgy yet wearable designs. Racks of clothing lined the

pumps. He offered advice on how to go about making purchases. “I think the best thing is you have to get your statement pieces,” he says. “It is easy to build a wardrobe around things that are ex-

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From Project Runway to Fashion Highway

“Every season you have to push yourself and try to develop things that you like and take risks.”—Christian Siriano

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citing, whether that is a statement pair of shoes or a really cool, interesting jacket.”

When asked about his inspirations for his designs, Siriano claims that they are “any-thing and everything” that do the job. For next season, he is planning to travel to Rus-sia, to create a “military Russian” collection.

Siriano studied design at American In-terContinental University in London and interned with Vivienne Westwood as well as Alexander McQueen. Through his studies and internship experiences, he began culti-vating his own personal style. “When I was in college in fashion, I dressed crazy,” he says. “I would wear all kinds of really inter-esting things and just kind of went for it.”

His public identity as a fashion de-signer debuted season four of Project Run-

way. As the series’ youngest winner to date, Siriano was only 21 when he starred on the show and entered the industry.

Since then, not only has he sold his de-signs at Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Av-enue, but he has also teamed up with brands such as LG Electronics, Starbucks and Victo-ria’s Secret to create Siriano-designed prod-ucts for a wide range of consumers. He even

for Payless ShoeSource, allowing women with a smaller budget to access his designs.

Siriano also continues to sell himself

the map: television and pop culture. Since Project Runway, he has made appearances on Bravo’s Make Me a Supermodel, ABC’s Ugly Betty, and even appeared in Estelle’s music video for “No Substitute Love”.

Siriano says his success stems from en-thusiasm for whatever he is working on. “You just have to kind of know that the most important thing is to not let anyone else get in your way,” he says. “You are your own worst enemy when you are young and my thing was that I was always really excited about what I was doing and if somebody didn’t like it, I always tried to just move for-ward.” Siriano’s motto and motivations can be summarized by the title of his 2009 book, Fierce Style: How to be your most Fabulous Self.

not gotten to him yet. “He is very level, down to earth, and relatable,” says Cori McFadden, owner of eDrop-off and friend of Sirano. For instance, Siriano’s “Major Moments of 2012” Tumblr post included the opening of

dressing three nominees at the Emmys, but also that he adopted a new puppy named Bear. This sentiment is a perfect example of Siriano’s character—a brand of person-ality that has met his fans halfway and has ultimately made him a fashion trail blazer.

>>TRUNK SHOW Siriano mingles with Corri-McFadden at a Siriano trunk show in Chicago, hosted by eDrop-O" in November 2012.

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Born to RunwayThe annual MODA spring fash-ion show is one of the biggest fashion events for UChicago students. Three of this year’s de-signers share their inspirations and processes behind what they plan to showcase on the runway.

text by lena sparksphotography by vivian wan & ivy zhang

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Lily Lai If anyone is thinking about how to make

you look better in a dress, it’s Lily Lai. She

effortlessly using the movement of fabric. Materials like chiffon, georgette and other

which are made to make girls look naturally taller and slimmer. “I want them all to be princesses!” she gushes with an easy likability. Indeed, her effortless dresses and bright per-sonality make it easy to forget the intensity of the work behind a collection. “Bending over the table for hours is tiring and frustrating,” she says, “but I have to keep going. The end is the inspiration.” Knowing that her efforts have a meaningful outcome – that they will

a major motivation for the designer. Up un-til her recent purchase of a body form, she was her own mannequin, and she constantly pushes the envelope on what she believes to be the biggest obstacle – her own skill set. Through all the hard work, she is simply hap-piest when she is sewing.

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Simmons

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Mary Ella

A veteran of the 2012 MODA Spring Show, Mary Ella Simmons returns to the catwalk with a collection in full

bloom. The Florida native is all about color but strikes a balance with her streamlined designs. This year, her crop of silky dresses echoes the structural and artistic beauty of

peony-inspired designs. Like her collection, the designer herself is a tour-de-force of personality and warmth—but also a keen ob-server of the subtleties of nature that inspire her.

“The tulip is a bright but not offensive red; the orchid white with purple,” she says. “I like simpler things.” Vibrant but clean, her designs indeed keep to an incredibly wear-

able and down-to-earth aesthetic philosophy. What less to expect from a designer who has gained experience over the years by making her own clothes? Since early days of spurning store-bought clothing and curling cardboard into a crayon costume one year for Hallow-een, Simmons has always taken charge of how she dressed. The pleasure of designing is, for her, the ability to make exactly what she wants to wear, to control exactly how it will turn out down to the last detail. She likes to work freely without a pattern, often begin-ning to make a garment from the point of inspiration. It’s a break from academic life, al-lowing her to use a completely different part of her brain. “It’s just problem solving,” she explains. “Designing is happy stress.”

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Simmons

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Harrison Yu isn’t afraid of a little col-laboration. Last year for his MODA collection, he spread production out,

over a long table in the middle of his residence hall, inevitably attracting the interest – and the help – of many fellow students. This interactive style is in fact part of his larger design process, one that is dynamic and intentionally unpredict-able. Claiming to be “not much of a drawer,” Yu rarely sticks to an original sketch and takes a sculptural approach to making clothes. “I start with a very loose concept in mind and change it as I go,” he explains. Because of the limitations of the fabric, a design will change radically from its inception as a sketch to its completion as a garment. Working from the quality of the ma-terial itself, Yu tries to capture something that is common and transform it into something ele-gant and wearable. This year, his collection uses airy fabrics such as tulle to channel the color and movement of smoke. Yu further strives to meet this artistic innovation with a leveling

designers these days focus too much on being avant-garde,” he always tries to keep the wearer in mind, to make clothes that are easy to live in. Inspired by the beauty of daily life, Yu makes clothes for the everyday.

Yu Harrison

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BILL MURRAYon being...Bill MurrayMurray discusses his acting style, Wes Anderson, and his role on the Anderson team

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Bill Murray is the king of deadpan-expression comedy, and more spe-

-can director/screenwriter, Wes Anderson. In a conversation about his relationship with Anderson’s work, Murray shared his personal philosophy on acting, as well as what he be-lieves makes Anderson an original.

Anderson is known for his consistency in working with the same actors and crew. Mur-ray joined the Anderson team for Rushmore in

Bottle Rocket. “It turned out that [Anderson] tried to get me to be in Bottle Rocket, but my agent didn’t want to send me to the screen

then, [Anderson] was a college graduate with

Ironically, Murray says he now “has the largest collection of Bottle Rocket cassettes in the world because people just keep sending them. “ I probably [have] 5 or 6 of them!” he says.

involved in Anderson’s work with Rushmore, Murray admitted that he was initially unen-thusiastic when the script was recommended to him. However, he changed his mind af-ter looking at the meticulous script. “Most people can’t write the kinds of descriptive instructions that are in Wes’ screenplays,” he says. “Everything he wanted to do was there.”

From a viewer’s perspective, Anderson’s

Murray’s comedic style of acting. Murray feels a particular connection with Ander-son’s scripts when bringing the words to life.

text by charlotte smith

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BILL MURRAYon being...Bill Murray

MODAinterviews

“When a screenplay is no longer a piece of paper with words, it enters the physical di-mension,” he says. “The thing that an impro-viser like myself can do is make an impact unaccounted for in the script.” How that im-pact is achieved, Murray explains, is through timing. “An actor feels, creates and ends a scene either with his voice, or with his body.”

For certain acting, Murray believes that focusing on the movements of the body is a crucial starting point. “It may not appear so, but my acting style is very physical,” he says. “I start from the body out. Mind and body are one…your emotions can’t work unless you’re present in your body. And because I’m available in my body, the same way [Ander-son’s] stuff is different and quirky, it works.”

Indeed, aside from his scripts, Wes Ander--

ical and full of cinematographic details. Ac-cording to Murray, timing is as essential for Anderson’s camera as it is for the acting in his scenes. “The camera moves as the silent eye—and [Anderson] does a lot of cutting with the camera,” Murray explains. Usually most of the cutting is done on a sound cut such as a spoken word or a door slam in con-junction with the visual cuts, which Murray believes bring a truly unique quality to the

Murray’s personal style as an actor, that the Anderson-Murray talent works as one.

Bill Murray’s latest role as Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Hyde Park on Hudson (2012) has received phenomenal reviews. As for Murray and Anderson, their next project is Grand Bu-

dapest Hotel, set for release in 2014.

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THE WHIMSICALWORLD OF WES

Wes Anderson has gone from oddball indie !lm producer to one of the most talked about names in contemporary cinema. Alexandra McInnis looks into the unique visual style that de!nes his current popularity.

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text and illustration by alexandra mcinnis

IAnderson? In terms of widespread critical acclaim, the past seventeen years

yielded hits (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums) and misses (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,

The Darjeeling Limited). His distinctive and

unique and groundbreaking as well as derided as self-conscious and contrived, depending

Moonrise Kingdom,

love on a small New England island, is his highest-grossing and best-received movie to date. In wake of this recent success, Anderson is currently working on The Grand

Budapest Hotel, set for release in 2014.Whatever it is that accounts for the

favorable or unfavorable responses to

Anderson’s work is elusive. It’s never the

brilliant actors, ranging from Gene Hackman to Cate Blanchett to Tilda Swinton, and of course there’s always the token Bill Murray role. But Anderson’s commitment to creating a unique and strong visual statement is infallible, and unarguably distinguishes him as one of the most visually innovative

To understand Wes Anderson’s visual style is not just a matter of discussing color

envision a world where children are wiser than their parents, and where characters respond to compelling news in a deadpan manner. Convention has been thrown upside down, but it is there that the logic to Anderson’s style begins to arise. We see his

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deliberate, fetishistic approach to objects where each mug or pair of scissors is shown to have its own nail on the wall to hang on, or a glove receives a special alteration diagram

Every frame is meticulously shot, with an unprecedented attention to detail. Indeed it seems borderline obsessive compulsive when two actors’ shirts in The Life Aquatic with Steve

Zissou color coordinate with a random van in the corner of the frame. Surely producing

The Fantastic Mr. Fox must have been a dream come true for Anderson, since the digital animation enabled total control over every visual aspect of each frame.

Regardless, the penchant for objects and details provides a sense of order in movies centered on the strange and chaotic lives of

children and parents run away from home, and disappointed characters embark on tumultuous journeys of redemption, all softened by muted tones and a fuzzy lens. Despite the gentleness, the element of surprise comes into play through primary colors or even cultural juxtapositions. It’s scenes where Margot Tenenbaum wears a Lacoste polo dress while sitting in her bedroom adorned with zebra wallpaper and African maks, or the sleekly-attired Whitman brothers in The Darjeeling Limited ride a dingy yet ornate train through India that constantly lend complexity and interest to Anderson’s

For all that is deliberate, Anderson

Moonrise Kingdom is set in the 1960s, but in general the settings and

era in modern history. Margot wears a fur coat and Hermès handbag, and Rushmore’s

Max Fischer sports a prep-school jacket, but all these clothes could equally be from last season or 30 years ago. The timelessness creates a sense of continuity, and the notion that all these tales could arise at any given year.

incite wild passions and love triangles with the men they share the screen with, but for

interesting how unremarkable the female characters appear. Think of Gwenyth Paltrow with her droopy kohl-rimmed eyes and somber expression in The Royal

Tenenbaums, or Angelica Huston, who is majestic but graying. Similarly Olivia Williams played a pleasant-looking but unglamorous kindergarten teacher in Rushmore, yet she inspired an all-out war between Bill Murray’s and Jason Schwartzmen’s characters. The Life

Aquatic featured a barefaced Cate Blanchett wearing frumpy safari clothes that looked like they were just pulled out of an Army Surplus store, but she appealed—pregnant nonetheless—to characters played by Bill Murray and Owen Wilson. Despite the layers

on the interior of his characters, rendering

viewers. It seems unlikely that Anderson’s

current success is due to pandering to more mainstream cinema or capitalizing on the current pervasiveness of indie culture. Rather, moviegoers are realizing that Anderson’s

get anywhere else. The irresistible charm of his work has the power to transport us to imaginary worlds yet grounds us in everyday

it’s a winning formula.

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VOGUE gone

ROGUEFirst-year Renata Horowitz gives us an insider’s perspective on just how many things are more important than working at Vogue. Horowitz models clothing from Madewell, in honor

of Madewell’s new Chicago downtown location.

text by rachel reidphotography by rachel reid

makeup by rachel scheinfeld

Re n a t a H o r o w i t z

stumbled upon a job at Vogue magazine the way that any other teenage girl might stumble upon

a decent prom dress or an especially great hair day. As a sophomore in high school, Horowitz was taking pictures of

her friends in Central Park for a class assignment when she was approached by a complete stranger and offered a career in fashion.

“While I was taking the pictures for class, a shoot that involved my leotard-clad dance friends at Central Park in the snow, a woman came up and asked about the shoot and then asked me to work for her,” she says.

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major, New York-based photo production company that has collaborated with house-hold names, from Annie Leibovitz to Ryan McGinley. “I had never thought about pro-duction, but was overwhelmed by the op-portunity,” she says. “I then began working

then spent my summer living with her in Montauk, back and forth between shoots. It

Vogue, who worked in international fashion accessories and wanted to introduce me to a different side of the fashion world.”

Horowitz continues to work mainly on editorial shoots, but now has her own Condé Nast credit card, and every advantage that goes along with working for Vogue. “Vogue is so incredibly fast-paced, and they have an ex-cessive budget which affords much room for creativity,” she says. “They have the money to do what they want, when they want to and

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hire as many hands necessary to make their visions exist.”

With these small (even if seemingly big) facts about Renata, one might imagine her dressed in designer clothes, with apathetic eyes and Anna Wintour-sized sunglasses bal-anced on her nose. In reality, the New York-

us for her shoot), with hazel eyes, a stud in her nose and a small shaved spot hidden un-der her wild brown hair. She dresses herself

-ries.

She cites a thrifted, oversize fur coat as her favorite thing that she owns, and regu-larly wears earrings that she made, herself, out of bullets, while working at a homeless

man’s jewelry stand. “I was walking in Union Square this past summer when I saw a man on the street making bullet jewelry,” she says. “He told me it was $18 a pair, and I told him I was a student and didn’t have $18 to spend on earrings, so he told me to pop a squat and that he would give them to me for two hours of work.” Horowitz then began to work for the man semi-regularly. “My pay is more of an exchange; I get to keep some of what I make,” she says. “Bullet jewelry is not a state-ment of violence; it is creating beauty from ugly objects. Something like, wear bullets, don’t shoot ‘em.”

This sometime, part-time job is more than making jewelry for her, though. It’s another experience that keeps her grounded, and helps her maintain a sense of balance. For

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over a decade, Renata danced with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, an experi-ence that she describes as “incredibly rich.” “Theresa Howard, my mentor and instructor, taught me intense discipline, gave me ability to emote and showed me the beauty in recre-ating classical steps as one’s own,” she says.

Horowitz’s life story paints a picture of a free spirit with a down-to-earth sensibil-ity that is generally considered to be sorely lacking from the fashion industry, making her presence there a sort of fascinating anom-aly. She spent last summer in Oregon, where her time revolved around storytelling, skinny dipping and farming. “What has always been strange about my life are the dichotomies,” she says. “This past summer I worked on a farm in Deadwood, Oregon for July and

worked at Vogue in August. I wore one out-

three times a day in August. A few summers ago, I spent a month on a Blackfoot reser-vation in Montana and another working at a Whiskey Distillery in New York. I love being able to transition between these two modes of being.” She says that she is able to transi-tion through these beings by keeping certain rituals consistent. “Yoga and photography are two prime examples of this,” she says. “Meditation is more vital to me than sleep.”

So what brings a New York dancer with a Condé Nast career to UChicago? “I want to be editor of The New Yorker—that requires a degree. Everyone I spoke to who came here liked a different aspect of the school—so I

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Bare Necessities

photography by charlotte smithstyled by nina coomesmodeled by trisha gupta & caroline wegner

Basic black and white is timeless

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ON CAROLINE dress, Topshop ON TRISHA both tops, G.U.

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en pointe

photography by vivian wanstyled by maura connersmodeled by amanda block, aixin chen, erik landry, alexandra katarina lee, mesmer rivers & emma mahdieh tehrani

The University Ballet of Chicago expresses classic beauty with an edge

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PREVIOUS PAGE ON MESMER skirt, Angelique’s Boutique THIS PAGE ON EMMA blouse and pants,

Angelique’s Boutique; skull bracelet, Akira NEXT PAGE ON AMANDA dress, Akira

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NEXT PAGE ON ALEXANDRA jumpsuit, bracelet and necklace, Akira

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THIS PAGE ON AIXIN blouse and skirt, Angelique’s Boutique; earrings, Akira PREVIOUS PAGE (left to right) ON AIXIN

dress, Angelique’s Boutique; ON EMMA dress, Angelique’s Boutique; ON ERIK model’s own;

ON ALEXANDRA jumpsuit and necklace, Akira

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TERRY RICHARDSON’S STRIPPED DOWN YET SENSATIONALIST STYLE REMINDS US OF THE VALUE OF BEING BOLD FOR SPRING.

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Credits: (left) (right)

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PREVIOUS PAGE ON ALEXA sweater, Scotch & Soda; shorts, American ApparelTHIS PAGE ON DARRIAN sweater, vintage

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