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Zendaya Is British Vogue’s May 2024 Cover Star

BY CHIOMA NNADI

This month marks just the third time in recent history that the covers of British and US Vogue have been simultaneously dedicated to the same personalities – a fact that goes some way towards explaining what a moment this is for May’s all-conquering cover star.

Step forward Zendaya, whose megawatt stardom now stands as tall and singular as a solo initial. Earlier this year, at a photo studio on the outskirts of Paris, I was fortunate enough to witness Z’s force of nature in person. If it appears as if her feet aren’t touching the ground in the resulting images – shot by photographer Carlijn Jacobs and styled by her longtime friend and collaborator Law Roach – it’s because for most of the day they basically weren’t. As you’ll discover in Game, Set & Smash, the actor danced through each outfit change with spellbinding ease, possessed of the same chameleonic magic that has earnt her a reputation as a shape-shifting style dynamo. Some of her latest fashion moves have, in my opinion, been truly out of this world. On the recent press tour for Dune: Part Two, for example, she practically crash-landed onto the London premiere red carpet. In a Mugler couture cyborg suit from the autumn 1995 collection, she appeared as an exquisitely dressed creature from a faraway galaxy.

Zendaya’s two distinct transatlantic cover shoots this month sit at opposite ends of the fashion spectrum – couture on the one hand, sports-luxe on the other – and speak to the range of her talent. For British Vogue, Zendaya channelled the spirit of Tashi Duncan, the fiercely competitive tennis star-turned-coach she plays in Challengers, Luca Guadagnino’s much-anticipated sports drama-meets-love triangle, costarring Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist, and released in cinemas this month. Tashi would no doubt be quite at home in the Wales Bonner track jacket, shorts and trainers featured on the cover – which happens to be a first for the British designer. (If you’ve followed the seemingly unstoppable rise of the Adidas Samba, then you’ll know that Wales Bonner’s version of the classic sneaker has a lot to do with it.) As a fashion writer working at US Vogue a decade ago, I remember the young Grace roaming the halls of the magazine as an intern. Discreet yet impossible to ignore, she had impeccable taste even as a teenager, each detail of her daily outfits studied and deeply considered. I’ve collected her clothes obsessively in the years since she launched her brand exactly because they bring a sense of the extraordinary to the everyday.

Speaking of extraordinary, there is no better way to describe the ascent of Amelia Dimoldenberg, the endearing Chicken Shop Date host and red carpet reporter who has Hollywood bewitched with her humour and warmth. So too Marina Wheeler, the esteemed KC recently appointed by Labour to advise on protections for women against workplace harassment. As Boris Johnson’s former wife, she tells writer Afua Hirsch how her mission is driven by a newly discovered purpose post marriage. A riveting read.

I write this letter with a new vantage point on the Houses of Parliament: British Vogue’s new offices at The Adelphi, which boast sweeping views of the Thames. And yet I’m ashamed to admit that, several weeks into our move, the walls of my office are still quite bare. If, like mine, your interiors could use a little zhuzhing, then fret not. This month, interiors maestro Jermaine Gallacher publishes a new column. His focus for May? Murals. And if fashion can rival art, photographer Steven Meisel’s exquisite images of some of the archival treasures that will feature in this year’s Met exhibition in New York, entitled Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion, are living proof.

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