Stars Aligned Archives | Wonderland https://www.wonderlandmagazine.com/tag/stars-aligned/ Wonderland is an international, independently published magazine offering a unique perspective on the best new and established talent across all popular culture: fashion, film, music and art. Thu, 23 Sep 2021 19:55:13 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.3.1 Stars Aligned: Winnie /2016/06/07/stars-aligned-winnie/ Tue, 07 Jun 2016 12:03:09 +0000 http://www.wonderlandmagazine.com/?p=71218 Model citizen, reluctant spokesperson: welcome inside the complex world of Winnie Harlow.

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Model citizen, reluctant spokesperson: welcome inside the complex world of Winnie Harlow.

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Stars Aligned: Grimes /2016/06/01/stars-aligned-grimes/ Wed, 01 Jun 2016 12:14:31 +0000 http://www.wonderlandmagazine.com/?p=70726 After the success of her self-produced, self-penned and self- illustrated fifth album Art Angels, Grimes is enjoying the biggest high of her life. Taken from the Summer Issue of Wonderland “Once, a girl was so wasted she fell into my equipment, and knocked everything over, and started puking onstage.” Claire Boucher, AKA Grimes, is reminiscing, […]

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After the success of her self-produced, self-penned and self- illustrated fifth album Art Angels, Grimes is enjoying the biggest high of her life.

Taken from the Summer Issue of Wonderland

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“Once, a girl was so wasted she fell into my equipment, and knocked everything over, and started puking onstage.” Claire Boucher, AKA Grimes, is reminiscing, via Skype, about touring on a shoestring budget. In the gap that followed her fourth full-length Visions, released in 2012, there was no money to fly in the professional dancers she now tours with, so “we’d hire dancers in each city, it was insane. Some people would be stripping, or whatever, and it all went downhill very quickly sometimes.” An ever-shifting roster of dancers wasn’t her only problem. Boucher found the very act of performing live highly traumatising. “When Visions came out, I literally wouldn’t leave this 4×4 [ft] area where my samplers were. It took me two years just to walk to the front of the stage, I was so petrified. So yeah, things have probably changed a lot.”

Obviously it’s an understatement. Despite being recorded in Grimes’ apartment over three weeks using Garageband, Visions won Grimes fame and critical acclaim in the form of places near the top of “Album of the Year” lists from The Guardian to Pitchfork to NME. With the success of Visions came three years of intense press scrutiny whilst Boucher worked on the album’s follow-up. “That whole thing with the ditched album, it’s not even true,” she tells me. “It was like: ‘She has an album, now she doesn’t, it’s a huge problem.’” In reality, Boucher was touring constantly, honing her stagecraft both as support act for Lana Del Rey and on her own terms. It took a year to make Art Angels. “A year of like, every day. I took a break in between to do the tour opening with Lana, which really helped. There was like pre and post [Lana]. I also took a break to do the ‘REALiTi’ video.Those two things really helped. It just became, I think, so much of that album was about how stressed I was making that album!”

Whilst the lyrics on Visions had been almost inaudible, on Art Angels, Boucher’s words are more obvious, easier to hear over the swooning musical backdrop. It’s something she’s clearly conflicted about. “There’s things individually in the songs that I wanted to say – I wanted the songs to be about stuff. Like all the songs are about something explicitly or obtusely. Some of the stuff I hated about my earlier music, retroactively, was there was just stuff that was just sound design, no lyrics. Which is cool in its own way, but I dunno – I was just tired of people being like ‘What’s this song about’. And me being like, ‘nothing.’”

So, her songs are now about something. What that something is though, she’s not so keen on sharing. “Like everyone thinks ‘Flesh Without Blood’ is about the media, or a boyfriend, but what people think things are about is insane sometimes!” She’d prefer if people attached something of their own to her songs.“I do think a great pop song, you can ascribe your own meaning to. Any great pop song could be said to be about love even if it’s not. This is so dumb, but there was a song last year which I thought was a love song but was about someone dying. I mean!” Art Angels contains that same looseness: songs which, for the most part, could equally be about love or dying. Art Angels wasn’t always meant to be a pop record though.“Basically, I made a bunch of stuff, then the last couple of months was refining – like a lot of these songs used to be seven minutes long. But you kind of make these soundscapes, and fuck around with them, and then at the very end I came in and ruthlessly took out everything.”

That sense of ruthlessness explodes into her music videos. In “Flesh Without Blood”, Grimes is filmed wreaking havoc at California’s iconic Madonna Inn, dressed in a cowboy hat, a Marie Antoinette outfit, and fallen angel garb. “Kill V. Maim” meanwhile serves a kind of post- apocalyptic street fighter fantasy in the subway. When we talk, she’s just finished filming another video, this time for “California”, perhaps the most upbeat track on Art Angels. “California” she sighs. “It’s kind of a nightmare… I guess for me, it’s just not a song that needs a video. It’s a self-contained song, I have no visual inspiration from it whatsoever. It’s not very vibey! I’m not hating on the song, it’s just hard to make a music video with something, that’s not – you would never have a song like ‘California’ in a movie.” She’s wrong – “California” could definitely soundtrack a movie — just probably not the kind of twisted fashion fantasy that Claire Boucher would want to direct.

The day after we talk, Grimes is set to go on tour again. This time however, there’re no strippers dancing on stage with her. Not that her dancers don’t have a sharp edge. “The girls I auditioned, I asked to improvise. And the girls I chose did the craziest, weirdest improvisations.” Surrounding herself with the frenzy of physical activity makes her feel safe. “I always liked having dancers because it’s straight-up more entertaining. I used to have this band that were unplugged, because my [male] booking agent at the time insisted ‘You need a band onstage’. And I was like, ‘If I’m paying people to perform, let’s get actual fucking dancers!’ Everyone prefers dancers to watching some guy with a bass that’s not plugged in!”

Grimes is a self-produced, self-written, self-directed, self-every- thing-ed project. Art Angels is an album which pays testament to that, a homage to her growing confidence. “I felt like there were a couple of years where I’d become so much better technically as a musician than where I was with Visions, but Visions was the thing standing in culture, dictating how people saw me. But it’s nice to get all that out, because now I feel more relaxed.” Here Grimes stands, at the very front of the stage.

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All clothing and accessories by LOUIS VUITTON SS16

Photography: Joyce NG

Fashion: Danielle Emerson

Hair: Rick Gradone using R+CO at Atelier Management

Makeup: Kelsey Deenihan mark. Celebrity Makeup Artist at The Wall Group

Fashion Assistant: Abigail Hazard

Words: Jack Sunnucks

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The Summer Issue /2016/05/31/summer-issue/ Tue, 31 May 2016 12:27:51 +0000 http://www.wonderlandmagazine.com/?p=70568 Sweet Summer Sixteen. The Summer Issue is here! Featuring Grimes, Zendaya, Winnie Harlow, Sasha lane and more. Across our summer issue, the stars align and whether they’re established or emerging, they all have something to say — and more importantly — something worth listening to. In the aftermath of her fifth album, we dressed up pop music’s […]

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Sweet Summer Sixteen. The Summer Issue is here! Featuring Grimes, Zendaya, Winnie Harlow, Sasha lane and more.

ZENDAYA

Across our summer issue, the stars align and whether they’re established or emerging, they all have something to say — and more importantly — something worth listening to.

In the aftermath of her fifth album, we dressed up pop music’s most avant-garde asset, Grimes AKA Claire Boucher for a Louis Vuitton feature, shot by Joyce NG. The artist talks about the evolution of Art Angels with Jack Sunnucks via strippers, surrealist music video sets and learning how to tour alongside Lana Del Rey.

We catch up with Disney’s most clued-up kid, Zendaya Coleman, the teenage actor turned activist who’s schooling the world wide web on the media’s mistreatment and misrepresentation of women and teaching us all general good manners. GQ Style’s resident Fashion Editor Gary Armstrong sent the young role model clambering up a tree in Ashish all in the name of style.

Also stateside, we turned to photography icon Deanna Templeton to help us introduce actor Sasha Lane to the world for her first ever feature, ahead of her debut on screen appearance as Star, in Andrea Arnold’s American Honey.

Our Fashion Editor Matthew Josephs and his Sovereign collaborator Phoebe Collings-James get information and get in #formation, taking inspiration from pop’s newly politicised powerhouse Beyoncé and presenting a portfolio of talents and beauty from people of colour. Expect enlightening opinions from the likes of spiritual and political activist Jay Kirton, photographer Ronan McKenzie, poet James Massiah and musician Gaika who warns, “We’re celebrating the destruction of ourselves.”

Inside, Winnie Harlow unshackles herself from the “spokesperson” tag she’s been labelled with and explains her involvement in Lemonade that almost didn’t come to be. We delve deep into Hedi Slimane’s final fantasy, tracing back over four years at the top and talk to his clan of cool kids about their most treasured Saint Laurent moments. The designers breathing a new lease of life into New York’s fashion landscape have their say and we analyse how Vaquera NYC, Gypsy Sport and Ottolinger are stirring up the US style capital’s stagnant scene. Finally, the Famous Five, Fifth Harmony relive X Factor drama and tell us about their trip to the White House.

Wonderland Summer ’16 is on shelves this Thursday.

GRIMES

SASHA

JORDAN

WINNIE

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Stars Aligned: Sasha /2016/05/31/stars-aligned-sasha/ Tue, 31 May 2016 12:20:51 +0000 http://www.wonderlandmagazine.com/?p=70584 In her first ever interview, Wonderland meets actor Sasha Lane as she begins life as Hollywood’s golden child. Sasha Lane didn’t esteem Hollywood actors, not before becoming one. The stars she always looked up to were sky-bound. In Dallas, Texas, where she grew up, and San Marcos,Texas, where she went to school at Texas State University, she […]

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In her first ever interview, Wonderland meets actor Sasha Lane as she begins life as Hollywood’s golden child.

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Sasha Lane didn’t esteem Hollywood actors, not before becoming one. The stars she always looked up to were sky-bound. In Dallas, Texas, where she grew up, and San Marcos,Texas, where she went to school at Texas State University, she says:“You can lay back, look up, and see stars — not so much here.” Pollution masks the stars here in Los Angeles, where Lane now lives.The 20-year-old Libra (born September 29) lives downtown in an old friend’s condo, on the 29th floor of a new high- rise that’s designed like a hotel. An eery collection of purple,teal,and crystal clear humanoid heads greets you in the lobby, followed by the front desk personnel, who’re similarly decorative. If you make it past them, there’s complimentary coffee and tea and a fridge full of round ice, next to more obscure art, and two elevators that ascend so fast my ears pop. Lane says the place “isn’t really her style, but the view—”. She’s got panoramic windows, out of which you can see all the way to Vernon, where the last season of True Detective was set, and Compton, where Kendrick Lamar grew up. LA’s South Side — vast, industrial, and full of cars, like a Hot Wheels dream.That’s how it looks, from this height. At night, Lane says: “it’s beautiful, so lit.” She says she loves to sit on her window sill, “and read, colour, and chill.” She hasn’t had much time to lately, though, as she’s gearing to trip to Cannes, France, where she’ll see screened, next week, for the first time in full, a feature film she stars in. American Honey is its name. In it, Lane plays a young American woman named Star.

It’s Lane’s first acting gig, and the character is based, in part, on her. That’s how English director Andrea Arnold, best known for her 2009 film Fish Tank, wanted to work: she cast non-actors whose
backgrounds were similar to the characters she wanted to portray. Lane calls them, “castaway kids, the ones people discard; they’re from broken homes, or living on the street.” Lane’s Star is, like Sasha Lane, originally from Texas, a change Arnold made because of Lane’s dreadlocks; the director didn’t feel they were believable on a girl from Oklahoma, as Star was first scripted.“As she was meeting everyone,” Lane says,“Andrea would kind of write the script around them.” Since Star is the heart of the film’s plot, she had to be a bit more fictional, to move it along,“but a lot of it was still me— the spirit, the energy, my tattoos, everything.”

Andrea Arnold cast Lane on a beach in Florida during spring break 2015. Arnold was out scouting with her assistant and casting director, and Lane was a little intoxicated. She was with a group of friends when Arnold and co came up and told her they’d been watching her for awhile. “They were like: ‘You’re such a free spirit, you’re so beautiful, we’re doing this movie and want to talk to you.’” One of Lane’s friends dismissed the pick-up as being for porn, a common troll on spring break beaches. Everyone else was curious, though, so they listened, and that night, Andrea Arnold came by Sasha Lane’s hotel to tell her more about the movie. The next morning, Lane was supposed to go back to Texas. Arnold requested that she stay the week, to ensure the casting was right. Lane agreed, though not without some worry. As she was moving her suitcase from a friend’s into Arnold’s car, Lane remembers telling the filmmaker, “If you’re going to kill me, everyone knows where I am.” Sasha says she had “a good vibe” about Andrea (and she’s “very into vibes,” the word is even tattooed on her), but there was a fear — felt expressly by her friends and family — that Sasha may be getting sucked into the very scam Arnold claimed to be making a movie about.

Mag crews. Bands of mostly underprivileged youth who travel the United States selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door in mostly affluent neighbourhoods. It’s an exploitative business, hierarchical and abusive, so much so some consider it human trafficking; there are pending lawsuits, criminal investigations.Youth are recruited off the streets, some from halfway houses. They’re promised money, travel, and food. Party, drugs, and community are bonus, part of the adventuring atmosphere. It’s a real phenomenon. The companies who run mag crews tend to change their names often, to evade fraud charges. It’s tricky to track, as most companies only accept cash, which the hired youth but briefly touch. They hand it off to their superior managers, who are usually former sellers (you work your way up), and who may beat or otherwise punish their underlings if they don’t comply. There are many reported cases of mag crew employees being physically beaten, verbal abused, and/or forced to work excruciating hours until they fulfil their daily sales quotas. That, and there’s the threat of being fired and left stranded in whatever place the crews happens to be in, a serious scare for those without means. It’s the kid’s lack of means — impoverished backgrounds, broken homes, criminal records, substance abuse issues — that these companies exploit.The youth are coached to recount pitiful personal stories to the homeowners they meet, who so buy subscriptions as charity, out of guilt. All this and the youth sometimes never get a paycheck; the companies “hold” their workers earnings, deducting room and board from them. If you don’t sell enough, you can accrue a debt.

“You get sucked into this world,” Lane explains. She says she recognised “the life of not having a lot of money and never knowing what you’re gonna do next.” She grew up poor, in what she calls “the hood.” There was “Beauty in the streets, kids playing all over,” and a “loyal and loving” community. “We all looked out for one another.” But there was also drugs, violence, poverty. Lane says her upbringing accounts for her free spirit,“because when you grow up like that, you kinda just have to go for things. People either get really scared and stay or they find ways to get out.”

Sasha Lane never imagined a movie would be her way out. She was, “always told Hollywood and actors were not something you wanted to be.” In Texas, she says, “we would watch actresses, the glamour, it’s as if they don’t have any problems. I was like, that doesn’t sound like what I want to do with my life.” Since making American Honey (it was a two-month shoot, road-tripping, like mag crews do, across America), Lane is open to more. She’s got an agent, manager, and a set-up in LA. She’s reading scripts and working, with actor Riley Keough, who’s also in American Honey, on a documentary about a Native American population they met whilst on set. Lane says she wants to continue in film for,“the art of it, for craft,” and for people. “I’m really into people,” she says, more luminous than ever. “I think people are the most beautiful, crazy things ever. I get intrigued by them, just watching them interact, freestyle, and talk about their culture, I’m like: ‘Ahh, you’re so beautiful!’”

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Photography: Deanna Templeton

Fashion: Maggie Fox

Hair: Amber Duarte using ORIBE

Makeup: Silver Bramham for Art Department using HOURGLASS COSMETICS

Words: Fiona Duncan

Special thanks to Sofie Howard

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Vaquera NYC /2016/05/30/vaquera-nyc/ Mon, 30 May 2016 14:26:20 +0000 http://www.wonderlandmagazine.com/?p=70536 Vaquera NYC are here to “dissolve current fashion tropes based on gender, physical location, race and monetary value”.  

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Vaquera NYC are here to “dissolve current fashion tropes based on gender, physical location, race and monetary value”.

 

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Gypsy Sport /2016/05/30/gypsy-sport/ Mon, 30 May 2016 14:19:37 +0000 http://www.wonderlandmagazine.com/?p=70533 Fall into the galactic and genderless world of Gypsy Sport. Alex wears Cream wool jumper and joggers both by GYPSY SPORT Gypsy Sport’s Rio Uribe says that everything he makes is unisex. It’s a statement that makes sense when you consider the label closed their New York Fashion Week SS16 catwalk with a pregnant model, […]

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Fall into the galactic and genderless world of Gypsy Sport.

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Alex wears Cream wool jumper and joggers both by GYPSY SPORT

Gypsy Sport’s Rio Uribe says that everything he makes is unisex. It’s a statement that makes sense when you consider the label closed their New York Fashion Week SS16 catwalk with a pregnant model, and their AW16 show with the same woman carrying her newborn. It’s a detail that tells you everything you need to know about the label: in Gypsy Sport’s world, wit is just important as — if not more than— looking good and how you should look isn’t determined by your gender.

One NYFW season down with that ethos cemented already, Gypsy Sport and its synonymous planet symbol has risen astronomically to become one of the most unique young brands in the US. Their galactic logo, which is splashed across “I Heart NY” bric-a-brac on the Gypsy Sport E-commerce store, from condoms to mugs to garish sweatshirts — exhibiting more of the brand’s signature wit — samples the otherworldliness exhibited on the catwalk. Never alien but ignoring convention, the online collection is like looking at the imagined future of 70s films, a vintage view of utopia.

Meanwhile, AW16 saw granny-curtain lace stitched onto basketball tunics, bandeau crops pour homme, some serious metal headgear, Fear and Loathing orange sunnies and an intriguing patchwork pattern. The print was comprised of squares in the skin tones of Rio Uribe’s family and friends, balancing the brand’s flamboyant aesthetic with a heartwarming metaphor, Gypsy Sport have trickled their philosophy down right into the anatomy of their designs. Not content with dissolving gender barriers, Uribe’s next stop is race.

Here in London we’re blessed with more young designers than we know what to do with, New York’s talent pool has sometimes had the tendency to stagnate. Luckily, Gypsy Sport has arrived, kicking, splashing and grinning from ear to ear.

Photographer: Tyler Mitchell

Fashion: Toni-Blaze Ibekwe

Photographer’s assistant: Ilya Bronchtein

Fashion assistant: Jacqueline Moore

Lighting technician: Akaylah Reed

Model: Alex Ordonez @ D1 Models

Words: Lily Walker

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Ottolinger /2016/05/30/ottolinger/ Mon, 30 May 2016 14:14:54 +0000 http://www.wonderlandmagazine.com/?p=70530 On the other side of the pond, Ottolinger are shaking up New York’s fashion landscape. Veronica wears black leather coat, yellow cotton jumper and black leather trousers all by OTTOLINGER Christa Bösch and Cosima Gadient of Berlin-based label Ottolinger are vehemently opposed to labels.“It’s always interesting to hear an opinion and see how people interpret […]

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On the other side of the pond, Ottolinger are shaking up New York’s fashion landscape.

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Veronica wears black leather coat, yellow cotton jumper and black leather trousers all by OTTOLINGER

Christa Bösch and Cosima Gadient of Berlin-based label Ottolinger are vehemently opposed to labels.“It’s always interesting to hear an opinion and see how people interpret our collection, what they think when they look at it, or how they feel when they wear it, but we don’t want to feed our generation of references,” says Bösch. “If we name anything, we are likely to be far too much associated with them.” Of course, that makes the designers instantly more compelling, and caught the eye of VFiles, who gave them a prized spot at their crowd-sourced AW16 NYFW show.

The duo’s brand of low-tech engineering is all about subverting couture tropes. Raw jersey, denim and lace are stitched together into exaggerated shapes then shredded further. “We like that the pieces never feel finished,” explain the designers. “It’s about mixing what came before us and what we know, because nothing is original,” they’re quick to add. One label they won’t be able to shake for now is “pyrotechnic designers”, having burned holes and raw edges into the collection for their VFiles debut which had judges Virgil Abloh and Harold Koda in awe. “It was pretty radical and could have gone really badly,” they admit. “But we wanted to change the structure of something that’s normally treated very delicately, so it’s an interesting combination.” They don’t rule out making it an Ottolinger motif.

Bösch and Gadient met at industry-favourite Basel School of Design in Switzerland, where three years being disaffected “misfits” with the same sense of humour gave birth to Ottolinger (“the name on our neighbour’s doorbell at our first studio”). They run their current studio out of Berlin purely for economical reasons but insist that today you don’t have to be based in one particular place to run a brand. “The beauty of everything existing online is you don’t have to be tied to one place.” They’ve put on a DIY presentation in London’s ICA and are planning on showing in Paris next. “There really is no plan,” confess the designers, who use each other as creative springboards. “The only thing we live by is — would we wear it ourselves?”

Photographer: Tyler Mitchell

Fashion: Toni-Blaze Ibekwe

Photographer’s assistant: Ilya Bronchtein

Fashion assistant: Jacqueline Moore

Lighting technician: Akaylah Reed

Model: Veronica Gebremariam @ D1

Words: Modesta Dziautaite

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Stars Aligned: Zendaya /2016/05/30/stars-aligned-zendaya/ Mon, 30 May 2016 12:00:46 +0000 http://www.wonderlandmagazine.com/?p=70518 All singing, all dancing Disney-kid Zendaya is more than the sum of her impressive CV. Disney stars. They get a bad rap, really. The 90s saw most of the squeaky-clean Mousketeers emerging out the other side of Disneyland with platinum-selling records before inevitably descending into drug addictions, divorce, lawsuits, failed albums and mental health issues. […]

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All singing, all dancing Disney-kid Zendaya is more than the sum of her impressive CV.


Disney stars. They get a bad rap, really. The 90s saw most of the squeaky-clean Mousketeers emerging out the other side of Disneyland with platinum-selling records before inevitably descending into drug addictions, divorce, lawsuits, failed albums and mental health issues.

Enter the fresh wave of Disney graduates, of whom Zendaya, at 19 years-old, is currently the most famous.They’re a new breed; composed, sober and engaged, they’re even more heavily surveyed by the media, but shrouded by PR and management teams.We track their virtual lives on Snapchat and Instagram, but what of the real people behind the zany talk-show appearances and “in-depth” interviews? Largely their lives remain a carefully curated digital construct. Zendaya, however, is a little different. She’s quickly garnered a fanbase that extends beyond her Disney audience, and far beyond that of her peers, for her outspoken and deft dissections of mainstream media’s mistreatment and misrepresentation of women. She is wise beyond her years and her fans love her for it. “Whatever you see on Twitter, that’s all me. There’s nobody behind it.There’s nobody telling me what to do. I choose what I do, because I have a brain.”

Zendaya assures me that her life has always maintained a “level of normality. It’s just not that crazy”, acknowledging that this grounding, in part, comes from “living at home, with my parents”. She grew up in Oakland, which she reluctantly concedes has a mixed reputation. “I think there are young people who fall prey to the negative aspects of a town like Oakland. It’s a rough neighbourhood, and not the easiest place to grow up.There’s a lot of violence, but there’s also a developing arts scene. I want to send the positivity back to where I’m from.” She attended Oakland School for the Arts and was auditioning for her first Disney role come 10th grade.“There were times when I would get a call back for an audition and I’d drop everything I was doing, go and get my homework from my teachers and my dad would have to drive me up and back from Oakland to LA multiple times a week. Both my parents are teachers. It wasn’t a lucrative exercise.” She takes a moment.“It was hard and it was a financial stress and a burden and more importantly, a risk. An audition is just an audition, it’s not a role.” At 13, she bagged her first job at the Disney Channel and moved to LA:“That was the big break really.” I believe her when she says she just “knew” her career would take off.“Miley Cyrus and that group of people were already grown when I started Disney. I definitely remember watching Hannah Montana, and thinking ‘Man, I really want to do that.’” Despite every insistence of a very “normal childhood”, and despite her unnerving maturity, I push her on how “normal” an upbringing that consists of relentless auditions can really be: “Some people just have ‘yes’ men around them: people who are just there to say: ‘Yes, yes, yes’, but I have the people who are going to be real and honest with me. Mostly all my friends are from childhood. Even when I do have new friendships it’s very, very few.”

Isn’t she desperate to move out of home? “I’m not that teenager that’s like, ‘I hate my parents, I’m moving out!’ They have my best interests in mind.You have to be really cautious as to who you have around you, for me, it’s for security reasons, I need to be protected all the time.” I detect in her voice some gravity when she talks about her personal “security”, not paranoia, but certainly an urgent desire to be autonomous. Has anything happened to make her feel threatened? “There’s only been a couple of times where things have gotten weird,” she says casually.

Things did get a little weird for Zendaya last year and not for the happiest of reasons.After wearing her hair in a dreadlocks on the Oscar’s red carpet, Giuliana Rancic, a host on American TV show, Fashion Police, suggested that her hair looked as though it might smell “like patchouli oil. Or, weed.” Suddenly, Zendaya’s physical appearance was the talk of the internet. I ask her about the furore that ensued. “I could have easily said the first thing that came to my mind. It’s easy to be upset and lash out. It takes courage to take a moment. I stopped myself from doing something dumb or rude and I wrote something that I felt was worth people listening to.” She’s referring to an Instagram post that she penned after Rancic’s offensive slur, which read:“There is already harsh criticism of African-American hair in society without the help of ignorant people who choose to judge others based on the curl of their hair. My wearing my hair in locs on an Oscar red carpet was to showcase them in a positive light, to remind people of colour that our hair is good enough.” Suddenly Zendaya was more than a Disney star; she was a role-model of empowered bi-racial beauty and strength. An activist.An antidote to the passive selfie-taking young stars of today. “I consider myself, as Tupac said, to be a ‘real model’. I don’t feel like I’m pretending to be anything that I’m not. I have young nieces and nephews and I have a lot of people who look to me for inspiration and so I have a responsibility.” She coolly cites the incident as, “an educational moment, where I could shed light on an issue about hair and acceptance. It became about something bigger than me. People think it’s ok to adopt certain aspects of different cultures without educating themselves or really having respect for that culture.”

Her rise as a style-icon has been rapid (there are Tumblrs dedicated to her “looks”) undoubtedly aided by her beauty, which is partly down to her Celtic mother and Nigerian father’s heritages. In fact, her career really began as a youngster modelling for Macy’s.“My interest in fashion was not overnight. I have been working with my stylist since I was 13. It just took a long time for people to care or to notice.” She changes her hair as frequently as she does her shoes (she wore a very major mullet to the Grammy Awards) and, with her six foot waif frame to drape clothes on, she’s very much wearing the clothes and not the other way round. It has also meant she’s being increasingly photographed for glossy magazine covers, and with that, she’s found herself yet again having to fight to maintain control of her own image. I’m talking about Modeliste magazine’s quite major blunder when they attempted some very heavily photoshopped images of the teen, who, before they had a chance to intervene, had posted the un-retouched images alongside the barely-recognisable retouched ones. “We all know about Photoshop. Sure, you edit some stray fly-away hairs or a pimple out” she laughs,“but that’s very different from changing someone’s body-shape.” Needless to say, Modeliste ran the originals. Once again, we’re back to discussing the sense of duty she feels to call these industry habits out:“It was a very strange decision to slim me.Thankfully I don’t have any body issues but I know too many people who do. I owe it to the women around me to not perpetuate those standards.”

Through all the criticism she seems to emerge, ironically, with not a hair out of place.“Oh, I mean sometimes I’ll respond to a troll. If I can make people laugh and in turn educate someone, that’s great.”Things were less clear cut when in 2014 Zendaya exited, seemingly abruptly, from her first lead-movie role, a Lifetime production about the 90s R&B star Aaliyah. I ask her to set the record straight: “I felt like it was being rushed, it didn’t have anyone who really knew her on board or part of the project, it didn’t have the blessing of anyone and I felt it’s production value wasn’t as high as it should have been. I’m too much of a fan to do something that I felt wasn’t worthy of her.”

This year, her focus has been elsewhere. She’s busy generating her second solo record and has been holed up with legendary songwriters and producers BabyFace and Timbaland in the studio, making music that she’s “very proud of” that’s all about “growing up.” If she could work with anyone though it would be “Beyoncé, she’s top of the list. Who wouldn’t want to work with her?” I ask her if downtime is ever an option.“I don’t get as much time to myself as I would like, but yeah I get time to chill.There are some months where it’s non-stop and it’s exhausting. I think for me that comes with the territory and I’m fine with it.” She says she loves to travel because it “makes you feel very small in the best way — you realise what a small little piece you are in the entire world” and that she can “sleep anywhere.” Zendaya resting? I’m not sure I can imagine it.

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Grey cotton t-shirt by NOON GOON, black and white cotton top by ISA ARFEN at SELFRIDGES, white tulle skirt by MIU MIU, blue denim jeans by LEVI’s by REDONE

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Blue and white checked cotton shirt and purple and yellow printed silk dress both by MIU MIU

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Red and rose heart printed lurex pleated skirt by GUCCI and black cotton trainers by CONVERSE

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Red printed cotton dress (worn underneath) by CHRISTOPHER KANE, pink and sheer embellished silk dress by PRADA

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Grey cotton t-shirt by NOON GOON, black and white cotton top by ISA ARFEN at SELFRIDGES, white tulle skirt by MIU MIU, blue denim jeans by LEVI’s by REDONE

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Grey cotton t-shirt by NOON GOON, white silk embellished dress by ASHISH, blue denim jeans by LEVI’S by REDONE

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Pink printed silk dress by SIMONE ROCHA, silver jewellery worn throughout Zendaya’s own, cherry plastic earrings worn throughout Petra’s own and white cotton socks by TOPSHOP

Photographer: Petra Collins

Fashion: Gary Armstrong, Law Roach

Hair: Shlomi Mor

Makeup: Allan Avendaño at Opus Beauty using COVER GIRL COSMETICS

Fashion Assistants: Abigail Hazard and Georgia Medley

Words: Nellie Eden

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Stars Aligned: Jordan /2016/05/28/stars-aligned-jordan/ Sat, 28 May 2016 13:28:38 +0000 http://www.wonderlandmagazine.com/?p=70494 Meet our cover star and model of the moment, Jordan Barrett. Khaki green wool jumper by TOPMAN and black and gold leather embellished bracelet JORDAN’S OWN Grey silk shirt by LANVIN Light brown fur coat by LANVIN and black and leopard print silk boxers by ED MARLER Photographer: Christian Oita Fashion: Matthew Josephs Grooming: Stephen […]

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Meet our cover star and model of the moment, Jordan Barrett.

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Khaki green wool jumper by TOPMAN and black and gold leather embellished bracelet JORDAN’S OWN

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Grey silk shirt by LANVIN

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Light brown fur coat by LANVIN and black and leopard print silk boxers by ED MARLER

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Photographer: Christian Oita

Fashion: Matthew Josephs

Grooming: Stephen Beaver at Jed Root using BUMBLE & BUMBLE

Photo Assistant: Dan Douglas

Fashion Assistants: Toni-Blaze Ibekwe and Mason Galloway

Model: Jordan Barrett @ IMG London

With special thank to The Queen Adelaide

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