Originally published in the Obsession Issue, the Nov/Dec 2012 issue of Wonderland.

Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Liam Payne, together known as One Direction, are currently among the most adored individuals on the planet. Despite their astonishing global success (and many millions in the bank), they’re keen to hold on to their own normality. But the same can’t be said for their wildly imaginative, obsessive and transgressive fanbase. Or can it? Wonderland investigates…

“Zayn tastes like beer and chips and Liam drops the bag, effectively spilling the garbage he’d thrown in earlier, to cup Zayn’s jaw. He doesn’t know if it’s because he needs Zayn to be closer, or if he just needs something to hold onto. From the way Liam’s body is reacting, he thinks it might be both. For two blissful heartbeats, they kiss, and nothing – nothing – Liam has ever experienced can compare to this.”

Girls, boys, tabloid journalists, don’t get too excited. The above is not what happened when Wonderland met One Direction – you know, the biggest boy band on the planet right now. It’s the work of a 17-year-old American girl who goes under the handle of “Mindless Dreamer” on Onedirectionfanfiction.com. At the time of writing, this site hosts around 30,000 stories (over 200,000,000 words in total) featuring Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Liam Payne, the ex-X Factor pop idols who have become the show’s most astonishing success story. Mindless Dreamer is a finalist in four out of fifteen categories in the site’s inaugural best-of awards (best Louis, best Liam, best slash, best alternate universe), the winners of which should have been announced by the time you read this. She has about four long fanfics on the go, one of which, Drunk Texting (a story about Tomlinson accidentally texting a stranger’s phone whose number is similar to Styles’), is over 50,000 words long – and counting. Another, set in a different reality from our own, is about what happens when Malik, working with Tomlinson as an assistant to – wait for it – the grim reaper, is asked to collect the soul of Liam Payne on Earth. Seriously. In her bio she says: “I used to be a normal person. Then I started liking One Direction.”

A lot of “normal” people like One Direction. Yet, they do an awful lot of abnormal things. Recent press coverage of the boys, who according to a biography of Simon Cowell released this year, are now worth more than £100 million collectively, has been peppered with tales of how the band’s fans take to Twitter to issue death threats to their girlfriends, how they make up scurrilous rumours and rail bitterly at fans of other acts, viciously hounding any that would detract from their idols. As the boys’ fame continues to skyrocket (largely because, this February, they did the impossible and broke America, becoming the first UK act ever to debut at no. 1 in the Billboard album charts) the niche activities of their fans are making news of their own. At the beginning of October, the world was turned on to the burgeoning One Direction fan fiction community when 16-year- old Emily Baker had bagged herself a book deal by posting One Direction fanfic Loving the Band on web-publishing site movellas.com. But even this story only really scratched the surface of a fascinating, international online community that has its own laws, its own logic. Of course, illogical, mass-obsession about a bunch of cute guys who sing romantic songs is hardly new. But the buzz around One Direction marks something of a turning point in the history of pop culture. Suddenly, thanks to Twitter, Tumblr and all the internet’s other self-aggrandising personal broadcasting platforms, the obsessive imaginings of millions of lustful teenagers are being played out in a very public forum. Anyone is welcome to stare into the eyes of the madness.

Given that they are surrounded by such a level of hysteria, it’s a little surprising that, in person, the members of One Direction are so very normal. It’s actually quite disarming – each is so much like any regular teenage boy that our interview feels a little bit like hanging out in a sixth form common room. Malik and Horan flick through a copy of Teen Now, sniggering at a cheesy poster of rival boy band The Wanted. “I like to kiss this sort of thing,” says Tomlinson, sarcastically, “I think they look sick in it, don’t you?” Malik joins in, pointing: “Yeah he looks proper good there.” In-jokes fly around the room, causing Payne to chuckle between sentences as he answers questions. Horan fiddles with his phone a lot, and sings little snatches of Chris Brown songs. Styles is attentive but seems a little bit tired.

Actually, they all seem exhausted, like puppies post-kibble. “They’ve been long days these past three weeks,” says Payne, adding that they rarely finish doing interviews, photoshoots or recording sessions before 9pm. Of course, they try to actually live their lives too: “If you finish late, by the time you go home you can’t fall asleep, not ‘til one or two in the morning,” says Horan. (His nocturnal routine became apparent this September when he and Justin Bieber had a late night noodle sesh after the VMAs). Payne, who shortly after our interview, was reported to be going on dates with Leona Lewis, reckons he gets about five hours shut-eye a night. So does Styles, the ladies’ man of the group (but you can’t help suspecting that it’s rather less than that). Asked what they would do if they had any time off right now, they all reply, “sleep”.

Clearly a little weary of doing interviews, One Direction often get distracted and veer off-topic – one quasi-fruitful digression reveals their favourite club move is “the cardigan dance” – best executed, when “hammered,” by grabbing the lapels of your cardigan and pulling them about in time to the music. Sometimes it takes them a while to get to the point because they’re busy ribbing each other. Tomlinson farts about halfway through the session – all laugh.

This is not the kind of behaviour that’s particularly conducive to a good interview. But then again, it’s all part of the unashamed, run-of- the-mill adolescent schtick that has made them great. It’s got a market value – and the boys know it. When asked to what they attribute their massive success, Payne hits the nail on the head: “I think for us, the main thing is that we’ve just kind of been ourselves, that’s what people like. I think a lot of people get into [our] situation and you hear they’ve changed, but we‘ve just stayed ourselves.” Tomlinson agrees – he stresses that it’s important to them that they don’t dance, or all dress in matching outfits. “In the past, with previous boy bands, I think they felt like they had to meet a stereotype,” he says. “We’re just ourselves: stupid, immature and quirky.” (Meanwhile, as if to prove his point, Malik and Horan playfight on the other side of the room).

One Direction’s untrammelled boy-next- door-ish-ness is obviously one reason they’ve got so massive, why the obsessive fans find it so easy to identify with and fantasise about them. But another force in their favour has been Twitter. “I think [it’s] definitely helped us in terms of getting abroad – spread the word between people and their friends in foreign countries,” says Styles. Of course, it’s also changed the game for One Direction in another way, allowing the band’s followers (between six and seven million each) to have – or rather, perceive themselves as having – exclusive, instant and personal access to the boys. “Back when we were lads there were certain celebrities that we’d wanna get in touch with,” says Payne, reasonably. (True to public perception, he’s the most mature and Dad-like of the group.) “That’s why Twitter’s so useful,” he continues. “It’s nice that fans can get 135 close to us and ask us questions and stuff.” As a reward for the attention and loyalty, the boys often tweet back at their followers. How, when there are so many? “I just do it really randomly,” says Payne. “I dip my finger in and just kind of pick one.”

Unfortunately, One Direction’s Twitter following has not always been as “nice” as they might like: this summer, it began to seem like the fruits of the global obsession with the band were finally beginning to get to them. In August, Malik temporarily deleted his Twitter account, so enraged was he at comments (concerning his relationship with girlfriend, Perrie Edwards) posted by trolls on the social networking site. A month later, Louis Tomlinson lost his cool when his mother was abused by out-of-control fans on Twitter. “Can I ask why this is ok?” he tweeted, “To think someone would speak to my Mum like that sickens me. Grow the fuck up!” Shortly afterwards, Payne split up with his girlfriend, who, apparently, had been troubled by the negative comments she was receiving on social media as a result of being in the relationship.

Does it bother them – the fact that what seemed like the perfect marketing tool for One Direction has actually backfired a little bit? Surprisingly, only a little. “Twitter sometimes becomes a place for people to give opinions on stuff which, sometimes, you don’t really need,” says Payne. Tomlinson chips in: “Sometimes you want to say ‘Have you quite finished?’” At the same time, he maintains, no amount of backchat will make him be too self-conscious about what he puts out there via social media. “You have to be completely yourself,” he says, reinforcing the band’s WYSIWYG stance. “If the papers are going to write something about it, at least you’re being who you are,” he says. The boys show a similar stubbornness when I suggest, perhaps, if they were a little less public about their girlfriends (boybands like Take That, for example, were always encouraged by management to be perennially single in public), then maybe their partners would not have to endure so much attention. “That’s shit,” says Louis. “That means you don’t lead a life that’s real. You wouldn’t be able to go out anywhere publicly with your girlfriend.”

When One Direction do go out in public, they, naturally, get mobbed. They’re obviously very bored of talking about crazy things their fans have done (a couple of days after our interview, theyinfactgetinabitofbotheronaNew Zealand radio show by including this in a list of 12 topics they would rather not be asked about), but they feed me a couple of good stories. There’s the legion of bare breasts that assailed their car on a recent trip Sweden. There’s fans who took Tomlinson’s hat, others who nearly pulled Payne’s hands off, another lot who, when he lost a shoe, bought it back off the tramp who picked it up, and gave it back to him. Alongside the fans, there’s the paparazzi, but they don’t seem to mind that. “We kind of get on with them,” says Styles. “If you just be nice to them, they’re really nice to you,” says Horan.

I ask them if they read the mind-boggling stuff written about them online. Malik says he tries not to. Tomlinson gets a bit agitated again: “Some people just literally make up stuff that’s not true. When do you just sit there and think ‘You know what, I’m going to make up a really horrible rumour.’” Payne is drily understated about the fan fiction and the blogs: “Some of those are quite naughty. Quite graphic.” He’s not lying. Among the innumerable One Direction blogs out there, most of which are hosted on accessible microblogging site Tumblr, many simply collect animated GIFs of the boys looking especially cute, but a sizeable amount are also about catching them out in what looks like rampant homoerotic flirting.

The idea of them all getting it on with each other has almost universal traction among fans, with a slew of blogs devoted exclusively to coverage of hypothetical One Direction pairings (not to mention many, many “slash” or boy-on-boy erotic stories). “Larry Stylinson”, the descriptor for the imaginary relationship between Tomlinson and Styles (which Tomlinson has vigorously denied in the press, claiming that such talk has damaged his relationship both with his girlfriend, Eleanor Calder and Styles himself) is the most popular topic. However, every permutation – whether it’s Lilo, Zarry, Larry, Niam, Ziall, Nouis, Narry, Zouis or Ziam – has its own niche following.

A lot of the blogs are aggressively sexy: the description on DedicatedToZiam.tumblr. com reads “Basically just two teenage girls releasing their One Direction sexual frustration and impatiently waiting for the Ziam sex tape.” Another Tumblr, Shower of Cunts (a reference to a derogatory remark Horan made to some fans in July at Dublin Airport), opens with: “I just want to fuck the shit out of Harry Styles and Niall Horan… :)) That’s pretty much what this blog is about.” On the same site, a section collects images of the band that have been overlaid with animated images of stick figures performing sex acts on the boys (each one is labelled with an arrow and the caption “ME”).

Other blogs can just seem plain odd to outsiders, in particular, those that focus on romantic, literary creations. On these, bloggers write short “ships” (in which they pair a fan with a member of the band, detailing why they get on and what their favourite song is), or “imagines” (more extended colour pieces envisaging fantasy situations), and their readers send in requests to be featured in specific scenarios. Some requests are straightforward, such as “my first date with Niall”. Others are bizarre – on theWonderfulWorldofUs.tumblr. com there’s a short story about Horan helping his (imaginary) wife through a traumatic miscarriage.

What motivates this strange behaviour? I manage to get in touch with a couple of the girls who run these sites, and of course, like the boys, they seem pretty normal too. Harsharan Malinao, the Virginia- based 18-year-old who operates “Shower of Cunts” is blasé about her purple prose. I ask her what she’d think if One Direction actually had a look at her blog. “Oh man, haha, I’d be a bit embarrassed,” she writes. “I try not to put anything too weird on there. It doesn’t really matter though because it’s all just for fun haha.” Does she think it’s OK to objectify these boys? “I don’t try to objectify them,” she replies. “And if someone ever did accuse me of aggressively objectifying them I wouldn’t really know what to say besides ‘I’m Sorry.’”

Seventeen-year-old Canadian Blogging duo KandM, who take requests for ships and imagines on “The Wonderful World of Us”, are more philosophical. Why do they think people ask them to write these stories? “Because they want to feel included in the boys’ lives in some way. Through requesting things like ships and imagines, it brings you a little closer to the boys because you are a character in the same story as them.” I have to bring up the story about the miscarriage – it’s pretty gruesome. Isn’t this supposed to be about wish fulfilment? “I guess the whole reason why we chose to write that one was because people need to know that life is not all perfect and it doesn’t always go the way we want it to go,” they say, speaking as one via email.

Every fan I write to is united on one front, that One Direction’s unique appeal is their approachability. “There’s a feeling when you watch the boys that makes them feel like your friends,” says Alice Crosbie, an Australian fan. “They’re relatable and they don’t act like they’re untouchable.” Malinao agrees: “I really like how they seem so genuine and they’re just weird and funny.” I ask the boys if they, in turn, feel close to their fans. “Definitely, yeah,” says Styles. “There’s fans that have been coming to see us since the first week on X Factor that we still know now. It’s nice seeing them on a first-name basis and having a chat with them.” In their experience, what do the fans want from them? “A [Twitter] follow,” says Styles. “I think they just want to be noticed,” adds Tomlinson. Payne remarks “I think there’s a bit of competition between all the fans as well…”

It’s easy to get absorbed in the weird and wonderful world of One Direction’s obsessive fanbase and forget that what they’re famous for, ostensibly, is music. Their new album, Take Me Home, is out early November, and, judging from the success of lead single “Live While We’re Young,” is going to be huge. They recorded the record in “three weeks” (according to Styles, “a month” according to Payne), and say the intense experience made sure the album is all killer, no filler. “There were tracks that we thought ‘oh it might be ok, it might be really bad,’” says Styles. “But because we didn’t have time we could just focus on the songs that worked. Now, looking at the album as a line-up, we’re really happy with every song.”

After the album is released they’re going on tour for most of 2013. This pretty much derails the question “Where do you want to be in a year’s time,” so I try for 10. “I don’t know,” says Styles. “If someone had asked us two years ago, I don’t think we’d have imagined we’d be doing this now.” Does the adulation vary from country to country? “To be honest it’s surprising how similar the fans are in different places,” says Styles. “You’d expect there to be a bit more of a change. [They’re] really supportive, everywhere and they’ve been amazing everywhere we’ve been.”

Having sifted through the blogs, the fiction, the “bullshit” trolling, the counter-bullshit (there’s a Tumblr group called “Directioners Against Bullshit,” which Malinao is a member of), it’s not exactly clear how much the fans care about the reality of the boys, what they’re actually like. Instead, images of these gleeful, shiny-eyed individuals have become a platform for a global, unadulterated fantasy that, as it gets more and more extreme, gets more and more fascinating. Given that the boys swear all they want to do is present themselves as honestly as possible, is there a sense that some fans have missed the point? “I think there’s a lot of things that the fans don’t know about us,” says Payne. “I think our relationship doesn’t really play out as much as people think. People still ask whether we really get on or not, and we genuinely do. A lot of people don’t believe that, they think it’s some fake thing where we have to get on because of the position we’re in.”

Overall, the most surprising thing is how little One Direction are bothered by the extent to which their images and personalities have been manipulated, reappropriated and dissected by their fanbase. But then again, they’re part of a generation for which all this kind of life- as-brand activity is thoroughly normal. In fact, let’s be honest, it wasn’t so long ago that they were X Factor-watching superfans themselves. “If I was a fan and found out that I’d been lied to the whole time… it would be like, ‘how do you believe anything they say?’,” says Payne, justifying the carefree way in which the group live very public private lives. “We’ve always, from the start, wanted to show the fans us, as people,” says Styles. Presumably, there will come a point where they’ll have to be a bit more careful, a bit more afraid. But, then again, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen any time soon.

One Direction: This Is Us premieres worldwide Friday, 30 August.

Words: Adam Welch
Images: Michael Hauptman
Styling: Julia Sarr-Jamois

The post Flashback Friday: One Direction – They Call It Puppy Love appeared first on Wonderland.

When Ciara Princess Harris was a little girl growing up in Austin, Texas, she didn’t just want to be a popstar. She didn’t want to just be a model or just an actress either. Sure, she’d become inspired to sing songs in front of her bedroom mirror after watching Destiny’s Child perform on television, and it was the profession she later wrote on a piece of paper when she graduated from Riverdale High School in 2003 – a goal she efficiently went out and achieved. But she always wanted something bigger.

Born a “military brat” – her father was in the army, her mother the air force, she zigzagged across the world before she finally settled in Atlanta – in childhood it was “her inspiration”, the entertainment, merchandising and licensing colossus that was Michael Jackson, who stoked the fires of her ultimate ambition. Like Jackson strived for and grasped, what the young Ciara wanted to be was Coca-Cola, or Chanel, or Disney – a global name.
Ciara didn’t just want to be an artist; she wanted to be a brand. The 24-year-old’s new album Basic Instinct is the next phase in that pursuit of that goal.

“I care about the music, that’s my passion, sure it is” says the singer, when questioned whether such a commercial pursuit is of detriment to her art. “But whenever I speak to my team I tell them to go out and get the money. I’m serious! I want to create a Ciara brand that will be here when I’m not, that will feed my family and create a legacy they can live on, bringing money in to the people I love…”

Ciara: a brand build upon 50% ego, 40% good heartedness, 10% forward thinking (she doesn’t yet have children). Established October 25, 1985.

“I felt like I moved away from that a bit on Fantasy Ride,” she says, “and while I really like that record, I wanted to get back to the real sound of me. Which is bass and strong hooks. That’s what I went for on the record. It’s the purest sound of me yet, I’m going back to basics.”

The records title takes itself from Ciara “beginning to trust her first instincts – not just in music, in love, life, everything!”, and sadly not the film of the same name (she laughs, “no, I’ve never once picked up an ice-pick”). It’s an assertiveness you can hear in the sultry You Can Get It, which sees her subverting the jaded male bravado which dominates urban music and all its variants, and says, ‘yeah, I’ll have a little bit of what the boys are having…’ Ciara: “I actually played that song in a meeting, and all the girls were laughing and the guys were saying ‘uh-huh’. I want the girls to be saying ‘uh-huh’ too”.

She certainly needs to keep the cash coming – in July she admitted to spending $11,000 a month on shoes – yet the Ciara brand is growing thanks to her multi-million dollar deal with the modeling agency Wilhelmina Models; last November she modeled for the German edition of Vogue, in May she did the French edition. There’s the endorsement deals too: Verizon’s smartphone the LG Chocolate Touch (which featured her dancing to an old single called Touch in the commercial), her role as spokesperson for the new Adidas Originals campaigns…

Then there’s the acting, the singer debuting in the MTV films picture All You’ve Got in 2006 and next appearing in Mama, I Want To Sing!, the cinematic adaptation of the off-Broadway gospel stage musical. “Am I more passionate about music, films or fashion?” she says, “I’d say I was most passionate about Ciara. I’ve been lucky enough to achieve everything I’ve wanted to do so far.”

Executive produced by Tricky Stewart and The Dream, Basic Instinct is released towards the end of the year and beyond that Ciara says she’d “like to get to the UK more – stick around for a little bit, that would be fun”. Last album Fantasy Ride was her highest UK charting album to date, but there’s some way to go in achieving the same sort of success she’s achieved in the U.S. on British soil. Beyond that it’s growing the brand, making the money, seeing how big this thing can really get. After all, this is the story of the little girl got big who didn’t just want stardom and didn’t just want respect.

Then as now, Ciara Princess Harris wants the world.

The post Flashback Friday: Ciara appeared first on Wonderland.

This interview first appeared in Issue 31 of Wonderland, Sept/Oct 2012

While most of her contemporaries were filling out their UCAS forms – yawn – Kaya Scodelario was studying at her own division of the university of life – aka the set of Skins. Not content with stealing the hearts of half of teendom playing that show’s most memorable bad girl, she’s fast becoming one of the UK’s most promising young actors, taking her talent for trouble to the big screen, where she undoubtedly belongs.

Playing tween femme fatale Effy in Skins, Kaya Scodelario seemed wise and wicked beyond her fourteen years. Later, in Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights (2011), she smoldered her way through one of the most heartbreaking dramas in literary history with impressive gravitas, given that at that point she was only just old enough to get into a nightclub. In the flesh, at 20, however, Scodelario feels somehow more youthful than she does onscreen. She’s tomboyish, open, chatty – and unlike many actors has no apparent wish to control her image: what you see is what you get.

Scodelario’s difference to her screen personas is a testament [to the talent of the London-born star, who joins fellow precocious talent Dakota Fanning this September in Now Is Good, playing feisty best friend to Fanning’s spirited young cancer sufferer Tessa. Scodelario’s rebellious, impetuous Zoey encourages Tessa to live her short life to the full, having sex and taking drugs. It’s another “troubled” role for the star. “I seem to be drawn to that sort of stuff,” she tells us. “I think directors think I’m a bit fucked up!”

Scodelario’s exotic looks come from her Brazilian mother and English father, who left when she was one year old and died in 2010. After growing up in a council house with her mother in London, the actress now lives in Manchester, home to boyfriend Elliott Tittensor (Shameless) and regularly visits family in both Brighton and Brazil.

As anyone who’s seen Kaya’s frank Twitter feed will guess, she’s something of an interviewer’s dream, sharing her honest thoughts on everything from her relationship with Tittensor to snogging Billie Piper in True Love. Wonderland has never before been the bearer of a celebrity marriage proposal, but there’s always a first time for everything, right?

Is it fair to say you grew up on screen?

Skins was like our University experience. It was fun and crazy and dramatic and terrible but I wouldn’t swap it for anything. They wanted us to be real kids going through those things. Everyone was falling in love for the first time or having their heart broken or having family problems or leaving home. It was a way of understanding all the shit going on in our lives. We were like, ‘It’ll be OK in the end, ‘cos in the end of this episode, it’s fine!” And Effy holds a special place in my heart. She’s coming back, we are doing a final episode next year.

It must have been a contrast working with Dakota Fanning on Now Is Good…

Dakota is probably the most professional person I’ve ever worked with. She knows all her lines, she’s there on time every day and she’s fully prepared. I really respect that but I really need the social side as well. I think I’d go crazy if I was working constantly. But filming Now Is Good was a great experience. I got to wear some really cool outfits and run around Brighton, one of my favourite places in the world. All my family live on the South Coast so they got to come down and watch me film. My Nan is in the back of shot. We’re on the pier and she’s behind, hobbling along!

And you’ve just filmed Paul Abbott’s thriller Twenty8k…

Yes, I like Paul a lot and I got to work with someone I really admire which is Kierston Wareing. The way she can be so dramatic and put herself in such a depressing state and really break herself down, I think that’s really brave and seems to be something she can do really easily.

Is that something you feel you can do?

Yeah, I try to get into the head of the character. If I’m on screen or in a character I find it a lot easier to cry than I would in real life. I was the shyest person ever in school but the one thing that I would always put my hands up for was acting things. It was never about showing off but it just felt comfortable whereas social situations didn’t.

Did you feel comfortable filming in LA for Emanuel and the Truth about Fishes with Jessica Biel?

LA is crazy. You get there and think, wow, England’s tiny, our industry is so small compared to theirs. It was great, I got to learn to do an American accent. Jessie was gorgeous and she’s engaged to Justin Timberlake – when I was 10 years’ old he was my life! I was freaking out the moment I saw her.

Did you get to meet Justin?

I went to his house for his birthday! It was incredible but just one of those moments where I needed to ring someone and say, “AAAARGH! Guess where I am right now?” Yeah I rang everyone. I rang my Mum.

When you’re not working, what’s a typical day for you?

God, I’m so lazy! We live in Heywood in Manchester where there isn’t a thing to do. Farmland. I live with my boyfriend, his twin brother and two of his friends so it’s a very male house, I get on better with boys than girls. We’re very chilled. We play Mario Kart, we go sit on a field to have a drink and talk. I love to cook, it’s how I connect with my Brazilian roots. Elliott bought me a pressure cooker recently which I’m really excited about but also really freaked out by. If he gets me a Hoover for Christmas I’ll kill him!

You’re a fan of music festivals, aren’t you?

I love festivals. I love the idea of being in a crowd, feeling like everyone’s watching the same thing, feeling the same thing. I went to Glastonbury when I was 16 and it was like a religious experience. I can’t remember most of it but I know it was really, really good. I love live music, I’d much rather go to a pub to see a live band than a club.

Are you feeling a bit clubbed out?

Yeah definitely. We did a lot in Bristol before we were even legally allowed to! The clubs in Bristol were amazing. There was a drum’n’bass club and they never ID’d anyone which is why we all went. It was a complete shithole but we all loved it, it became a tradition for the Skins cast and crew at the end of the week we’d all go down there, fill up the place and dance ‘til 6am.

When you’re out and about, do you get approached by fans?

When Skins was on TV, a lot more. I think the boys had it worse, boys don’t like boys that are successful. They can be really violent. But [with] the lesbian storyline with Lily [Loveless] and Kat [Prescott], they had so many young girls come up to them and say because of them they had the courage to come out. You look at things like that and that’s gotta outweigh all the negative stuff by a mile.

Which neatly brings us to your lesbian role in TV’s True Love with Billie Piper…

Ah, yes, well done! I planned that. It was all improvised, there’s no script. You hear about me and Billie’s storyline and think, “Oh, lesbians,” but it’s not about that, it’s about the connection of two people. Yes there’s an age difference, yes they’re the same sex but you don’t focus on that. It was me wanting to push myself, having to tell my Nan that I was playing a lesbian. She was actually really cool about it. I was like, “Go on Nan!”

How was it with Billie?

it was weird the first day because the first album I bought was hers, when I was about 10 years old! But she’s a beautiful woman obviously so it isn’t difficult to have to understand why someone would fancy her. She’s very intelligent, knows the industry really well and was good for advice.

OK quick quiz time. Where do you think you will be in ten years?

I’d like to be able to get my Mum a nice house, she lives in council flat right now. And I’d like to be married. [Dramatically] Elliott Tittensor: Marry me!

As an actress, do you ever feel your looks can work against you as well as for you?

I’ve never thought of myself as the pretty girl. There are lot of actresses who will only go up for parts where they have to look pretty. I would happily shave my head for a role, I’d happily burn my face if I had to. I’ve never been a girly girl. I’m not delicate in any way.

How would you describe your style?

Camden Market is my shrine of fashion, I like mixing and matching. I love being from London. You walk around Soho and you’ll see ten different looks, someone wearing a binbag but they still look cool. I dyed my hair purple last week and got a bollocking, my agent nearly killed me!

Denim or leather?

Leather.

Acting or Modelling?

Acting, definitely 100%.

Britain or Brazil?

Oh you can’t do that! Oh no! Brazil. There’s a beautiful energy, music, life good food, good conversation, being on a beach… and the weather!

An Arnold Schwarzenegger movie or EastEnders?

ARRGH!! This is horrible! [squeals]. Arnie. I love him so much. I turn into a six year old every time I think of him. He made me want to get into films.

Do you fancy him?

No – in True Lies he looked hot. I would have then. But not now! No no no no no.

Ever met him?

No. I would actually die. I don’t like thinking about it now, I get excited. I found out he was following me on Twitter and I screamed the house down. Elliott was like, “Who died? What’s happened? “I was like, “Arnie’s folllowing me!”. I was crying and everything, I’m so obsessed.

Did you message him?

Yes. I said, “I love you.” I think I just kept it at that, nice and simple.

Did he reply?

No.

Words: Anna Smith

Images: Mark Kean

Fashion: Julia Sarr-Jamois

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Lana Del Rey and I are perched on the curb trying to light cigarettes with a novelty lighter shaped like a gold bar. Tiny, encased in a leather biker jacket and skintight jeans, her soft brown curls cascading over her shoulders, she finally beats the breeze with the diminutive flame that pops out the top.

It has been a whirlwind year for the 25-year-old NY native, who has been splitting her time equally between Brooklyn and east London’s Kingsland Road (couch surfing all the way). Like Willow Smith, SuBo and, er, Boo the dog, she has achieved that dubious accolade of “internet sensation” status and is in the process of turning her hit ‘Video Games’ – seemingly everywhere at the moment, from the Christopher Kane show this September to the latest episode of Made In Chelsea – into a proper chart topper.

To be fair, the song does its own PR pretty well. It’s one of those niggling tunes that lodges in your head, both because of its simplicity (the main refrain is just four notes, mirroring the slow march of the backing chords) and a more complex, displaced sense of nostalgia, full of odd contrasts. Lyrics like “I say you the bestest/ Lean in for a big kiss” have a sad, faded coquettishness to them, while the chorus (“It’s you, it’s you, it’s all for you”) blaze with naïve sincerity. Then there’s the repeating full stop of ‘Video Games’ – which seems both weirdly out of place and suitably childlike in the midst of it all.

Del Rey’s heart-stopping voice – think Mazzy Star with Stevie Nicks’ vocal range and Nancy Sinatra’s fragile strength – stands a mile out from the other stuff in the charts. There’s no Auto-Tune or expensive video or banging remix. It’s just Lana, and some harps and a bit of piano, creating a spooky, swirling filmic atmosphere.

I expect her to be like her songs, a bit sad and introspective. She’s not. She’s giggly and full of beans. She jumps up to talk to various other people that walk past, proclaiming her love for them. She flutters her eyelids, which are thick with eyeliner and falsies, and twiddles with the tassels on her purple slippers.

Lana (born Lizzie Grant) started to make music when she was 18. “I was always writing little songs, but nothing I liked then. When I left school I wanted to do music because I thought I was good at it and I wanted to do something that I loved. So my uncle taught me to play guitar and I did these little shows, just me and my guitar, singing and playing the five chords that I knew.”

I mention how that’s quite punk, that Patti Smith famously only knows three chords, and she laughs, “I’ve got two up on you, Patti!” That might not be the only similarity either – Patti famously plugged away until the world sat up and took notice of her. “Yeah, there were so many times when I didn’t think ‘it’ would happen. I just carried on living my life, you know?”

Raised in Lake Placid, upstate New York, Lana listened to Eminem as a kid (“Everyone listened to him, it was the 90s”) until she discovered Bob Dylan, Nirvana and Frank Sinatra, “the masters of all genres. Does their music inspire mine? They inspire me in life and my life inspires my music, so I sort of think they have influenced my music.”

I’m trying to imagine how the Dylan/Cobain/Old Blue Eyes triumvirate permeates her life on a day-to-day basis – her hair is perfect, her face is perfect, she’s not wearing a suit or a holey old sweater: she looks like an escapee from Valley of the Dolls meshed with, as one blogger put it, a blow-up doll version of Natalie Portman.

Maybe it’s in her old-fashioned Hollywood pizzazz that so many aspire to and even more fail at. And this in turn might be the crux of some of the Del Rey backlash that has surfaced online – that her lips are fake and that she originally recorded under her own name. Neither things are new or surprising with many other pop stars, but with Lana it has caused a Marmite reaction.

“Yeah,” she sighs, “my mood changes about it depending on the day. In general, you don’t want anyone to say anything bad about you. I think when anything gets popular quickly there is always scepticism, but I don’t think that’s grounds for being rude or cruel. I’m sure it wouldn’t have happened if I were a man. I personally don’t believe in expressing a negative opinion, just because I’m not interested in it. Life is so short in general – the more negative energy you put into the world is just time-wasting.” She takes a long draw on her cigarette and adds, fixedly, “What other people think of me is none of my business, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt my feelings.”

The dilapidated glamour of Del Rey’s aesthetics is part of the reason we love her. Her DIY videos, made with her sister holding the laptop to film her, and spliced in with old clips from YouTube, are part of what has gotten her to this point. No marketing man or video director could have faked the naivety and enthusiasm she’s poured into them.

“Yeah,” she bursts, “I’ve made all the videos so far – it’s expensive and I had no budget to ask anyone else. I think when you really want to make your own world around you, you just do what you can with what you have. And I didn’t have that much. Building my visual world was something that I transitioned to because I had done everything I wanted to do sonically – I’d finished my first record and I needed to get the pictures around it and, again, I was just guided by my own intuition, for whatever that was worth.”

We shoot the breeze for a while, talking about boarding school (she went, she was an outsider, although she wouldn’t want to put it like that), stylists (she has one, it’s more of a gay-best-friend-who-helps-her-find-the-right-frock-for-events scenario), where to get the best manicures (she has huge acrylic nails) and where she’d like to call home (“New York. Or Paris. I don’t know.”).

Listening to Del Rey’s music, it seems incongruous that someone so chirpy could make such sad songs. “I’ve been happy and sad; I’m not sad anymore. It doesn’t have anything to do with the music; it has to do with enjoying life, on life’s terms, and finding peace with yourself. I’ve been happy for a real long time – seven or eight years.” Is she happy because she makes the music she wants to? “Yeah,” she beams before saying, dogmatically, that she believes “it’s important to walk along a path towards something that makes you happy career-wise. And if you’re not happy, you can’t tell yourself that you are.”

Has having four million hits and counting on ‘Video Games’ made her happy? “I am happy with the way things are,” she says, “but I was happy with the way things were. I could be doing anything but I am doing what I love, and not doing things I hate.” There must be parts she doesn’t favour? She grins. “When I thought it was never going to happen, I stopped doing it and just lived my life. I haven’t been on stage for two years… so I’m not too sure how that is going to work – I’m not a natural exhibitionist.”

This much was evident during Del Rey’s recent appearance on Later… With Jools Holland. Dressed all in white, with huge hoop earrings, she shuffled uneasily from side to side, her eyes cast down and her voice perhaps even more fragile than usual. But somehow it ended up being all part of the charm – the rapt silence in the room was palpable.

She lights another cigarette and stirs at the gravel with her toe, hands neatly folded in her lap. What will happen next to the girl who reminded us that pop can be crafted and beautiful, whose favourite records are Lil’ Wayne and the American Beauty soundtrack? Whose big hit that was made at home on her laptop went viral quicker than you can say “Bieber”? “This afternoon I’m off to work with Bobby Womack,” she laughs. So, she’s right. There’s something to be said for gentle persistence.

Words: Hanna Hanra
Images: AJ Numan
Styling: Julia Sarr-Jamois

The post Flashback Friday: Lana Del Rey appeared first on Wonderland.

THREE’S A CROWD
PHOTOGRAPHER: Terry Gates
FASHION EDITOR: Carlos Nazario
HAIR: Nicolas Eldin
MAKE-UP: Morgane Martini
MODELS: Binx, Clarice and Lida Fox (Next)

SAME OLD CHIC, DIFFERENT DAY
PHOTOGRAPHER: Dima Hohlov
FASHION EDITOR: Grace Cobb
HAIR: Peter Gray
MAKE-UP: Ariel Yeh
CASTING: Nic Burns
MODEL: Patricia Gardygajlo (Next)

I WANT THINGS, A LOT OF THINGS
PHOTOGRAPHER: David Schulze
FASHION EDITOR: Anthony Unwin
HAIR: Rudy Martins
MAKE-UP: Hung Vannago
CASTING: Nic Burns
MODEL: Ruby Aldridge (Next)

TALK TO THE HAND
PHOTOGRAPHER: Dancian
FASHION EDITOR: Julia Sarr-Jamois
HAIR: Karin Bigler
MAKE-UP: Lucy Bridge
MODEL: Maria Loks (Next)

PRIMUS INTER PARES
PHOTOGRAPHER: Rory Payne
FASHION EDITOR: Stephen Mann
HAIR: Nao Kawakami
MAKE-UP: Jenny Coombs
MODELS: Joe Brotherton (Models 1) & Jamie Kendrick (FM)

YOU SAY RUDE, I SAY HONEST
PHOTOGRAPHER: Nicole Maria Winkler
FASHION EDITOR: Matthew Josephs
CASTING: Eddy Martin
HAIR: Rozanne Attard
MAKE-UP: Daniel Sallstrom
MODELS: Troy Copeland (AMCK) & Tim Schuhmacher (Supa)

THE NEST
PHOTOGRAPHER: Nick Haddow
FASHION EDITOR: Andrew Davis
GROOMING: Lee Machin
MODELS: Lukas Katinas (Elite) & Tyler Maher (PRM)

The post 14 Images From Our Biggest Fashion Section Yet appeared first on Wonderland.

Photographed by Tung Walsh and styled by Julia Sarr-Jamois, Taylor stepped into a dress by Dior for her front cover and a series of outfits from Chanel, Prada, Simone Rocha and this very fetching floral print dress from Versus, above. And those shades? Courtesy of the Giles for Cutler and Gross collection. Take it from us, Tay Tay wears clothes well – she’s been 5″10′ since she was a teenager belting out country ballads, after all.

Stay tuned to our site tomorrow, where we’ll release a special sneak peek from the interview and a selection of unseen pictures!

Green Big Daisy dress by Simone Rocha, white leather handbag with red leather flower motif by Prada and white leather loafers by Church’s.

Blue and pink cashmere cardigan by Chanel and white leather skirt by Christopher Kane.

The post What Taylor Wore appeared first on Wonderland.

Here at Wonderland, we go to a lot of store openings. Here’s what usually happens: people mill around, necking champagne and feigning a socially acceptable measure of interest in the clothes.

Not so at the & Other Stories launch party last week. We’ve never seen so many people in line for the changing room. Earlier that day, its e-store otherstories.com crashed from the sudden spike in traffic. “I finally got online and said, ‘I want that, that, that and that,” we heard  woman said to her friend, plucking another impeccable silk blouse from the rack.

& Other Stories is a concept store for the girl who wants Acne and Isabel Marant at Topshop prices. It doesn’t do trends (at least, not consciously) – as the name implies, it’s in the market for stories. Walk into its two-storey flagship on Regent Street and you can find everything from foundation and nail polish to heels and hats for you to complete your personal style odyssey. You’ll find everything from APC-style boatnecks to the & Other Stories take on the 3.1 Philip Lim neoprene clutch to nudge you on your way. Think a younger version of Cos and you’re halfway there.

& Other Stories has the commercial clout and vision of a commercial high-street retailer – it has owner Hennes & Mauritz to thank cheap auto repair for that – but with the thoughtfulness of a much more exclusive boutique. They’re not just throwing clothes out there and hoping something sticks – each garment is classed into one of four mini-collections (sporty and sculptural, preppy and classic, etc). Hero pieces? The holographic clutch sold out pretty much within a few days, and we spotted our fashion editor Julia Sarr-Jamois in the Nike Free 5.0 V4 trainers.

The Regent Street launch is the first part of an ambitious Europe-wide roll out, with store openings planned in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Paris, Milan, Barcelona, and Berlin. It’s the newest addition to the high street, and trust us: we think it won’t be too long till it’s a wardrobe staple.

Words: Zing Tsjeng

The post & Other Stories Store Opening and Review appeared first on Wonderland.

“I’m quite embarrassed to tell you this and have you write it in an article and have people look at it,” Willa Holland is telling me over the phone from Vancouver, laughing and talking in a rush like we’re in the back row at school. Her secret? She sings and plays ukulele on the soundtrack to the new Spike Jonze skateboarding film, Pretty Sweet. “It’s seriously such a rough edit; it’s insane. I couldn’t believe he put it on iTunes. I was like, ‘Are you kidding? Oh my god!’ My voice sounds so bad.”

This isn’t exactly the confession I was expecting from a polished starlet who’s been acting and modeling for high-end brands since the age of seven, encouraged by family friend Steven Spielberg and introduced to agencies by her stepdad Brian de Palma, who directed Scarface and Mission: Impossible. Holland’s made her name playing a string of troublemaking teens – she wreaked havoc on The O.C. for two seasons as Marissa Cooper’s little sister Kaitlin – and now she’s playing another angsty party girl on Arrow, the CW series based on DC comic book Green Arrow. But, despite being sick with food poisoning (she’ll never send out for Chinese food on set again, she vows), she’s as sunny and thoughtful as her best-known characters are sulky and reckless.

“I do get called an old soul a lot,” she says. “I think that living in Hollywood my whole life has helped hone that. I’ve dealt with a lot in my 21 years.” Born to an actress and a cinematographer, she grew up on movie sets, and while she was excited about working in the business as a kid, she also says that she “wasn’t really aware what i was getting myself into”. At 14, when she became part of The O.C.’s ensemble, she could relate closely to her rule-breaking, attention-seeking character. “I think I was right there in that stage of life where Kaitlin was,” she admits. “It was very obvious to me why I got cast in that role at that time.”

During breaks from The O.C. she worked on other jobs, “so it’s not like I really had a summer,” and when the show finished a couple of years later her gruelling schedule continued. she flew straight to Italy to play Colin Firth’s daughter in the michael Winterbottom film Genova, and then bounced around London, Sweden, Louisiana and Mexico making films of varying quality and success with the likes of Susan Sarandon, Paul Bettany and Ray Liotta. more recently, she had a recurring part on Gossip Girl as a bratty model and played the lead in a film adaption of the Judy Blume novel Tiger Eyes. “I was literally non-stop for three or four years from about [the age of] 14 to about 18, 19,” she says, “and then right before I turned 20 I was like, ‘I need a break.'”

She took a year’s sabbatical “to figure some things out” and try her hand at some new hobbies. “I spent a lot of time putting myself back into being a kid again. I [had been] forcing myself to grow up a lot.” Every weekend, she’d drive to San Diego, where a gang of her high-school friends

were living, and “we would go skate every day, I’d take photos every day, we’d play music all night, and barbecue, be together, have good times, and it was just awesome. There was no care in the world for a little while.”

‘Pretty Sweet Song’ came out of this period, and it’s a lot better than she’s making out. She speak-sings lines such as “I used to think my troubles were life-long” and “it’s a bitter life but pretty sweet” in a world-weary sigh that evokes hazy, hungover afternoons in LA. (She asks me to mention that the “Euro-pop kind of vibe” the Italian producers added to the track wasn’t her idea, though.) Since then, she’s been working on some covers and original songs that she’s planning to put on Soundcloud, and, while Twitter and Facebook “scare the hell” out of her, she has also been sharing some of her photography on Instagram, posting dramatic skyscapes and snapshots of friends.

Idyllic as that year off was, as Holland sighs, “you can’t live like that forever,” and she’s currently filming the second half of Arrow’s first season, and enjoying the daily routine of a TV set. Her character, Thea Queen, is turned from a brainbox into a rebellious socialite when her playboy brother disappears for five years. After he unexpectedly returns (and becomes a green-hooded vigilante by night) he becomes protective of her, and they butt heads. Many hints suggest that Thea, a character who was never in the Green Arrow comics, is destined to become the superhero’s bow-toting sidekick Speedy (move over, Katniss Everdeen) but holland says she hasn’t done any fight training yet. “We want to develop the characters for a nice length of time,” is the way she puts it, “before we take them out of this world and throw them into another.”

Real life has definitely resumed, but Holland’s keen to keep stretching herself. “A little peeved” that she’s still constantly offered Kaitlin Cooper types, her ultimate aim is to direct and star in her own film, drafting in screenwriters she trusts and possibly acting as producer, too. It will be based on the “crazy, romantic” story of her mother and father meeting for the first time on a boat in the Caribbean, which is “definitely a juicy one,” she says. “When my mom told me, I was like, ‘if there’s any story that I was born to tell I think it was this.'”

Photographer Michael Hauptman
Fashion Editor Julia Sarr-Jamois
Words Jessica Holland
Willa Holland wears checked silk cropped top and mini skirt both by LOUIS VUITTON

The post WILLA HOLLAND: Interview appeared first on Wonderland.

(1) Special K: Kaya Scodelario for Wonderland

Featuring Kaya Scodelario, dressed in Dolce & Gabbana. Styled by Julia Sarr-Jamois and photographed by Mark Kean.

(2) The In Crowd: Young Hollywood

Featuring Ambyr Childers, Chris Zylka, Haley Bennett (seated), Analeigh Tipton, Shiloh Fernandez, Brie Larson and Tyler Posey (all wearing Prada) as the next big things of Tinseltown. Styled by Grace Cobb and photographed by Bjarne Jonasson.

The new issue of Wonderland is out on Friday 31st August. Buy it from WH Smiths and select newsagents or on sale internationally at magazinecafe.co.uk.