What's Contemporary Now?

Set and Production designer Shona Heath creates enchanting, dense, and detailed worlds. Dreams within themselves, her visions have been manifested across the pages of top publications, and in collaborative partnerships with the likes of Tim Walker, Louis Vuitton, Dior, Prada, Miu Miu, and SHOWstudio. Her style seamlessly blends contemporary and vintage elements, showcasing a unique, fantastical aesthetic—brought to life through paper sculpting, painting, photography, and prop-building. Most recently, her work on Yorgos Lanthimos’s 2023 film Poor Things won an Academy Award for Best Production Design. In an age of worldbuilding, Heath shares a journey from the countryside to imagining entire realms, underlining that creativity plays a role in designing our everyday lives.Episode Highlights: Growing up in the British countryside in a modern sixties home, Heath remembers an upbringing spent outdoors, where she became intrigued with visions of scale; her mother’s crafts were also a deep influence.  She started her career in costume design and was moved to create a set from paper for Dazed, which turned into requests for shop windows and later collaborations with Tim Walker.  Heath’s creative process begins with words or an image, but usually, the former encourages original image-making and visualizing. She sees tools like AI as potentially good research tools but detrimental to her own particular craft; its use depends on the artist and their authenticity. She recommends working independently rather than starting as an assistant to an established artist, as then you know how to forge your own path first.  Though she used to feel that she experienced “excessive input” when doing a project, she now feels she can better communicate her vision and appease clients and collaborators up front.  She prefers the immediacy and direct access of working in photography to working on film sets; Heath remarks she wouldn’t be interested in doing a period piece that didn’t have an added element of creativity like Poor Things—a film she worked on with James Price, whose decades of film expertise Heath leaned on.  Fashion’s tendency for retro revisits and zeitgeist trends plays well into her work (as opposed to interior design, which she says has more of a lag time between trends and the trend’s appearance in the culture).  Her work on Poor Things won her an Academy Award for Best Production Design. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dara is a model, stylist, and fashion director at Interview magazine. From her beginnings in San Diego to the iconic runways of New York, Dara speaks of a journey that is a testament to creativity and conviction. Recognized for her bold, visionary style, she views fashion as an art of crafting desire and glamour, where the method of persuasion is as crucial as the message itself. Her styling for Hunter Schafer and Troye Sivan highlights a unique blend of raw talent, intuitive expertise, and hard work. She’s walked the runways for Marc Jacobs, Kenzo, and Moschino; posed across the pages of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar; and styled for an impressive array of brands like Calvin Klein, Tom Ford, and Miu Miu. What she sees as contemporary now is everyday optimism—and fluidity in interpretation, just like images.Episode Highlights: Growing up in San Diego with a creative mother and a pop-culture-obsessed father, Allen recalls watching Disney movies, writing in cursive, immersing in arts and crafts, and wanting to be an animator.   She describes herself as a child being in her own “little world,” a feeling that contributed to her strong sense of self as an adult. With a level of conviction required for creative pursuits and an early interest in image-making, Allen cherishes the performative aspects of both modeling and styling. Her career in New York took off quickly, through connections to Candy magazine, the VAQUERA label, and stylist Ian Bradley.  Allen says the unique thing about her generation’s access to information—and noise—is “this real emphasis on understanding your history and the context and everything that kind of surrounds what we’re doing.”  Allen became fashion director at Interview magazine, thinking of the role as writing with clothes and writing with photos.  She recognizes a sense of absurdity in the fashion world and emphasizes the performative aspects of everyday life.  When asked what’s contemporary now, Allen says, “optimism; levity,” and speaks to enjoying even the challenging parts of the work, and fluidity.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Zoe Ghertner is a photographer renowned for captivating work blending art, fashion, and documentary storytelling. With a keen eye for detail and an innate sense of composition, Ghertner’s imagery transcends conventional boundaries. A New York native based in Los Angeles, her work often reflects the vibrant energy and diverse landscapes of Southern California. Ghertner’s portfolio includes collaborations with leading fashion brands, such as Miu Miu, Chloe, Wales Bonner, and Hermès, as well as publications, such as American and British Vogues, i-D, Self Service, and W. Through her lens, she invites viewers into a world where reality and imagination converge.Episode Highlights: Ghertner had a very imaginative childhood, where she learned the importance of positive, clear messaging.  Ghertner has partnered with Fee Steinvorth to create neoNutritions, a new vision of wellness rooted in spirituality and connection, with more of an interconnected focus on education compared to other health and beauty regimes. She sees what’s contemporary now as a sense of connectedness that resonates despite a modern overabundance of images.  Saying that photography and consumerism go hand in hand, Ghertner speaks to the struggle to achieve and sustain commercial success while also holding to the values deeply rooted in her work, such as unwavering attention to her subjects. Despite working with digital imagery and print media across personal projects and commercial collaborations, Ghertner says each effort informs another and that she’s a natural multihyphenate creator. Her first shooting of model Małgosia Bela was a breakthrough in “being able to work with someone with skills and ability.” She went through a phase of digging deeply into her subjects before garnering enough experience to represent that research and those conversations in the final imagery.  The support of women in the industry—such as Phoebe Philo, Miuccia Prada, Grace Wales Bonner, and Gabriella Hearst—has “allow[ed] me to grow and step into their worlds, which expands what my picture is about as well.”  Speaking to how images can traumatize or trigger elements of culture as a whole, Ghertner says her reaction to the male gaze and mental health advocacy are “a big part of the what and the why of how I’m making the pictures I make.” Having moved to warm and sunny California to experience a better quality of life, Ghertner experienced a shift in perspective akin to experiencing motherhood for the first time and creating a new body of work—and a new book.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Editor-in-chief of all la Repubblica magazines, Emanuele Farneti, is an influential figure in the fashion and design industries. Born in Italy, Farneti’s career trajectory skyrocketed as he took the helm of esteemed publications like Vogue Italia and L’Uomo Vogue. His keen eye for style, commitment to innovation, and passion for storytelling have propelled these magazines to new heights, earning him global accolades. A fusion of tradition and modernity characterizes Farneti’s leadership, analyzing the DNA of magazines to establish and evolve a language and direction better suited for contemporary society.Episode Highlights: He comes from a family of journalists who worked for Italian weekly “Panorama,” so he was “literally born within a newsroom” and has “childhood memories of the good old days of print media, where this group of talented journalists in their 30s, in the middle of the 70s were having a lot of fun playing poker and doing beautiful newspapers.”  Informed by a classical education, he studied law while training as a television and print media journalist, starting with sports before moving on to fashion. Known as “a true magazine maker,” Farneti knows the importance of working with a brand’s DNA, which he says can evolve but should remain true to itself.  Remembering Vogue Italia’s pandemic coverage, Farneti remarks that the ability to use fashion to address largerquestions and have a voice about what’s important is crucial.  As the director of D-la Repubblica, he’s adept at addressing a general audience with various and surprising topics united under the banner of good writing.  Focusing on making the most beautiful monthly-style, weekly-produced magazine possible, D sets itself apart for the quality and depth of its reporting in beauty, fashion, society, art, and lifestyle sections. The three limits of D as a print magazine: 1) it takes a long time to come together and is in circulation so briefly. 2) print quality and paper are low when working on a weekly basis. 3) there’s no international distribution.  One of the issues he’s more proud of came out last year and was completely dedicated to Afro-Italian or second-generation Italians, conceived, styled, and photographed by second-generation Italians themselves. The magazine is launching a men’s monthly on June 24. With D, Farneti oversees three different titles plus a newspaper covering the broader spectrum of fashion and beauty. When asked what’s contemporary, he says teamwork, and that his coworkers “are all bringing so many ideas, so many opportunities and such a good energy to the magazine.”  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Italian fashion designer Francesco Risso is renowned for his offbeat, innovative approach to contemporary clothing. He learned how to cut and sew from the age of eight with any fabric he could find, going on to study fashion at Florence’s Polimoda, New York’s FIT, and London’s Central Saint Martins. As creative director at Marni since 2016, Risso gained prominence by infusing the brand with vibrant colors, eclectic patterns, and playful aesthetics. His charming exuberance and unique ability to blend craft with modernity sets him apart and captivates audiences worldwide. What he sees as contemporary now is simple and uncontrolled by trends and a fast-paced industry: food and sex.Episode Highlights: Risso’s early years were spent not talking in a hectic and blended family home in Genoa, where he communicated by making things with his hands. At 8 or 9 years old, he began making clothes, scavenging clothes from his grandmother’s closet to cut and sew. Studying the classics and art, Risso “escaped” from his loud family by moving to Florence, knowing he would make clothes.  He found in the dance, clubbing, and rave scenes a way to escape from the constrictive traditional forces in Italy at the time when he considered himself goth and an outsider. “Provocative, and visceral, and obsessive.”: Risso talks about how he accepts a darker side of his outlook as a complement to his lighter and romantic side. He notes one of his mentors, Louise Wilson at Central Saint Martins, taught him to base a world around a garment without using typical fashion references.  Risso read a Virginia Woolf piece in which she invites her friends to the countryside and tells them not to bring clothes, as to leave behind a kind of social structure, and this inspired him to lose reference points.  On the secret of merging creative freedom with commercial success, Risso champions trust, pleasure, and courage,and living in the moment rather than for the final product. Marni Jam is one example of interdisciplinary creativity that Risso works into the brand, expanding music into fashion. To Risso, what’s contemporary now is “sex and food”—two exchanges he finds beautiful in that they build community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pierre Rougier, a distinguished fashion publicist and founder of PR Consulting, boasts a career spanning several decades. After studying political science in Bordeaux, Rougier honed his skills in Paris and London with Hermès, Yohji Yamamoto, and Maison Margiela before making his mark in New York in 1993. There, he directed communications while representing icons like Helmut Lang and Alexander McQueen. Establishing PR Consulting in1997, he catapulted emerging talents like Narciso Rodriguez and Nicolas Ghesquiere, then at Balenciaga, to prominence, also fostering brands like Proenza Schouler and Hood By Air. Renowned for discovering and championing young designers, Rougier continues to hold the opinion that a strong vision and sometimes counter-trending codes are often the precursors to a designer’s success.Episode Highlights: Rougier grew up far from the front of culture, and though his interests in fashion were indirect at first until he moved to Bordeaux—a larger city—to study.  He started his work in fashion boxing Hermes products before moving to London, still employed at Hermes, learning English and partaking in ’80s gay club culture there. Yohji Yamamoto employed Rougier to work a PR position, giving him his first taste of serious work and long hours associated with the industry. Using his London connections, he opened his own PR firm as the Antwerp Six were coming into the spotlight, and worked under Martin Margiela for four years, until he felt that his aesthetic and vision were too overwhelmingly connected to that one house. Moving to New York, Rougier worked as communications director for a company that held brands like Vivienne Westwood, Helmut Lang, and Michael Kors. Rougier speaks on learning that the antithesis of what's trending is always on the precipice of an arrival. He says the conversations in fashion are less now about what designers like and more about what designers find that works, and is successful.  Before the internet, there were few photos of shows and most people waited to see items in stores to determine the zeitgeist; now, Rougier says, the urgency of marketing makes everything “extremely transactional.”  He says it’s fair to say that in fashion, elitism has trended out with a shift to exclusive community identities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Willa Bennett, a trailblazing force in media, is the editor-in-chief of Highsnobiety, steering the publication to new heights of innovation and influence. A Forbes 30 Under 30 luminary, her journey began at Seventeen, pioneering its queer vertical before igniting social strategies at GQ, and championing diversity as Condé Nast's global co-chair. The American Society of Magazine Editors recognized her for social media excellence and video programming, and her leadership at Highsnobiety garnered recognition in the Digiday and Muse Awards. Highlighting the importance of authentic narratives in connecting with young audiences, what she sees as contemporary now is pushing the boundaries and shaping the future of media—even if that means tuning out the background noise and tapping into real community. Episode Highlights: Bennett grew up in LA, balancing two passions: masculine menswear magazines and hyper-feminine ballet practice. Talking about her early passion for vintage finds and retro styles, Bennett says experimenting with styling became another medium for her, “like writing.” She grew up reading publications like Teen Vogue, Seventeen, Nylon, and Dazed—publications she says understood young consumers and which she still keeps a few print copies.  Bennett moved up through various roles in the industry at a time when social media marketing was in its more raw, early stage. Her role at Highsnobiety gives her creative freedom in that it moves with the youth culture and its fast-paced, creative, adaptive, and reactive workplace environment. Bennett is ahead of the curve, balancing personal perspective with editorial consideration and curation. Her team at Highsnobiety pushes a particular and intentional editorial vision, championing designers and talent that they want to carve out a space for.  Some of Bennett’s favorite cover stars have been Billie Eilish, Andre 3000, and Pamela Anderson, though she felt strongly about the Dries Van Noten cover.  Bennett has spoken about forming real connections as a priority over solely professional relationships, despite how “transactional” the industry can be.  Under Bennett’s eye, Highsnobiety’s niche is to move in tandem with the zeitgeist instead of against it, never telling readers what to do or who to wear.  Bennett considers real-life events crucial to foundational community building, saying, “that to me is a way bigger metric of success than like any influencer with 16 million followers posting one slide that everyone’s going to skip over anyway.”  She’s published poetry collections benefitting The Audre Lorde Project for queer youth.   For Bennett, deleting social media is what’s contemporary now, surprisingly.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

FRAME cofounder and chief creative director, Erik Torstensson, is a pioneering figure in the fashion industry. He created Mr. Porter, co-founded and led creative agencies Saturday Group and Wednesday Agency, and co-founded and helmed Industrie magazine. With a keen eye for branding and digital strategy, Torstensson has successfully deployed unique marketing and communication approaches across his roles. He’s driven FRAME's global reach through culture-catching campaigns and collaborations, often fronted by top talents like Gisele Bündchen, Karlie Kloss, and Amelia Gray. As an outside-of-the-box thinker, he shares insights into conscious design, digital strategy, brand partnerships, and his recent obsession with AI. Consistently setting new standards for what’s contemporary, Torstensson advocates for curiosity, naivety, and the restless courage that comes from using an outsider's perspective to his advantage.Episode Highlights: Growing up as an only child on a farm in the Swedish countryside, Torstensson remarks on the importance of boredom to his creative development and the necessity of simply finding something to do.  Slow-paced life didn’t suit him. He began to enjoy traveling, dancing, and skateboarding, which held both collaborative and independent creative potential. After working at interiors magazine Wallpaper, Torstensson helped launch Industrie and Man About Town magazines—the former had cover stars like Anna Wintour, Edward Enninful, and Naomi Campbell.  Outside of quantitative efforts in brand identity, ad campaigns, and editorial work, Torstensson says, “It’s not really about you. It’s about who you work with, who you surround yourself with.”  FRAME was a community-led “passion project” stemming from Industrie. It was built not necessarily on denim but on the idea of perfecting any single product with a particular aesthetic in mind, in this case, “the FRAME woman.”  Working on a budget to produce and market FRAME’s aesthetic has led Torstensson to think out of the box. Torstensson discusses a brand’s life cycle and its different versions, from starting out as a hot newcomer to becoming more organized and productive to later cutting through the media landscape with more sensational marketing.  On the level of scale and production, AI gave Torstensson a great new tool he likens to Photoshop, making him quicker and more effective.  Having a strong team, a partnership with Jens Grede, and the luxury of slowing down have gone hand in hand with an increase in confidence in his work over the years. He foregrounds the importance of knowing your strengths and leaning into them, going with your personal passions—“Just do it.” Torstensson recommends reevaluating what’s contemporary and what will last every five years or so, not being afraid, and learning to evolve. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

James Harris and Lawrence Schlossman, hosts of the podcast Throwing Fits, are influential figures in menswear with decades of fashion and media experience. Hailing from New Jersey and Manhattan, respectively, Schlossman and Harris lend their understanding of men’s fashion to those in the know, with their podcast featuring guests discussing current fashion trends and personal style. As makers, they’ve begun designing sought-after garments like mesh shorts and cut-and-sew overshirts. Well-known for their chemistry, they describe themselves as yin and yang, with Harris joking and Schlossman sharing insights. Their personal styles reflect their expertise and passions—a sexy Scandinavian look for Harris and a unique take on heritage brands for Schlossman. They both value quality and investing in well-made items, and prioritize organic experiences, exploration, curiosity, and discoverability.Episode Highlights: Schlossman and Harris’s origin story of work and personal partnership was born of necessity and involved building a social calendar around whatever was available to them. They worked together at Complex, “failing upwards,” with a fashion video show that took off based on their dynamic before moving on to more strategic and brand partnerships roles. As they moved up the ladder, both felt creatively constricted by red tape and constrained by creating content that catered to advertising dollars.  Schlossman and Harris started their podcast in January 2020 with a sense of having zero stakes—and they say this mentality is what paid off.  Retaining their independence is important to them in a clinical media landscape; it keeps their listeners interested in their irreverence voice.   Now that they make their own designs and collaborate with their favorite brands, such as Our Legacy, Schlossman and Harris contrast their well-made designs with “guys who get dressed for the internet.”  Their audience is “incredibly enthusiastic and incredibly savvy and smart,” Harris says, and respects their underdog style and pursuits.  They cite a robust list of favorite brands, like Eckhaus Latta, Connor McKnight, Angelo Urrutia, Stoffa, Sunflower, and Our Legacy as references and masterful brands of the moment.  When asked what’s contemporary now, Harris offers “the fragmentation” and “the challenge of how people can eventually find their people,” while Schlossman says “motivation and doing things because they actually make you feel good,” which is inherent to his interest in dressing.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Robin Givhan renowned for her insightful fashion commentary, seamlessly integrates fashion into broader cultural discussions. She started as a writer on the Detroit techno scene beat before making her way into fashion journalism. Emphasizing the importance of being a generalist, Givhan talks To Christopher Michael about her early experiences in fashion and how they continue to shape her trajectory and approach today. She speaks of political representation and fashion’s crucial ties to identity, underscoring the need in today’s landscape for a higher standard of reporting in fashion journalism. By exploring the intersection of politics and fashion and the balance between storytelling and crafting, Givhan reveals profound insight and a unique perspective as an influential voice in journalism.Episode Highlights: Talking about her childhood in Michigan, Givhan loved reading and writing and stumbled unintentionally into the fashion sector after writing about Detroit's techno scene. Covering menswear was "a very gentle entry point" into fashion and allowed her to focus on the details, quality, endurance, and longevity of garments. Describing her entry into womenswear as marked by gatekeepers—who were frankly mean—Givhan was stubbornly determined and interested in the fashion scene's character-driven nature rather than its more consumerist elements. Givhan is careful to distinguish between general interest reporting and the reviewing that is natural to "a fashion ecosystem."  Givhan notes that she doesn't necessarily have a stake in what's happening, which makes her a good critic. There is a difference between social media influencers, who are engaging, and actual historians, who can give information to journalists, and critics, who can "connect the dots" for the public at large while being held to higher standards.  The way people consume media is changing, though Givhan is optimistic that voracious readers will always exist. She sees significant progress in some political realms; the pendulum always swings, oscillates, and zigzags.  Givhan outlines sociopolitical fashion as a tool for education, a kind of shorthand for identity, and a means of representation. Is fashion dependent on anchors or hooks from the culture at large? To Givhan, it's engaging enough to stand on its own, while fashion as an industry tends to rely on mainstream media for support. Givhan contrasts companies like Dries Van Noten and Versace, which remain inside the fashion realm, to labels that use celebrities to inspire growth. What's contemporary now is being comfortable in the gray spaces.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices