I love paintings when it feels like you're intruding," says Anok Yai.
We are standing in front of Kerry James Marshall's Untitled (Studio), which hangs in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. The painting is a glimpse into an artist's workspace, with a model seated, her head in the hands of an artist's assistant who is staring at the viewer.
It is as if you've disturbed something-or maybe the viewer is the artist, about to tackle the half-completed canvas that sits to the left of the frame.
"I fucking love this," Yai says and immediately sits on a bench in front of the painting. It makes sense she'd be drawn to it. In addition to being that rare cultural phenomenon-a bona fide supermodelYai is also an artist. She taught herself oil painting a few years ago.
"I started off painting a portrait of myself," she explains. "Every month, I would add a detail." She describes the work as "a time capsule in a painting of myself."
Yai chose an extraordinary period to document herself across.
Over the past six years, she has climbed to the top of the modeling industry. She is the second Black model, after Naomi Campbell in 1997, to open a Prada show. That assignment is a coronation for a model, and Yai has accepted the crown. Since then, she has walked for Louis Vuitton and Mugler, and she's also been featured in short films for Chanel and Saint Laurent and campaigns for Estée Lauder. This spring, she became the face of Mugler's fragrance Alien Hypersense. "They gave me a lot of artistic agency on the shoot," she says. "I think the stunts were supposed to be CGI, but I asked, 'Can I do it for real?"" And so there she is in the ad, scaling a wall with ease.
That kind of success could easily be overwhelming. Yai says her love of art, though, is "part of what has kept me whole..... I didn't feel like I was really losing myself as I got into the fashion industry."
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Tipping POINT
When the PROGRESSIVE A-LIST CLIENTELE of the fashionable workout BALLET BEAUTIFUL learned that its FOUNDER was MARRIED to an ARCHITECT of the MAGA BLUEPRINT to impose an ultraconservative social agenda, PROJECT 2025, many felt SHOCKED and even BETRAYED
SABATO's Way
hor GUCCI creative director SABATO DE SARNO, remaking the storied Italian HOUSE for a NEW ERA isnt about OUTRUNNING its PAST. ts about MAKING some HISTORY ofhis OWN.
Inner DRIVE
KENDRICK LAMAR has consistently PUSHED the ART of HIP-HOP to NEW HEIGHTS. In advance of his SUPER BOWL performance, he gets PERSONAL with friend and fellow artist SZA
NECK Tech
When it comes to COSMETIC TREATMENTS, the face may get all the attention, but the NECK deserves love too. Novel TECHNOLOGIES that go beyond creams deliver LIFTED, SCULPTED necks—WITHOUT SURGERY.
PLAN de PARIS
EXPLORE the CITY of LIGHT through the eyes of our FASHION EDITORS
FREE Spirits
BOHO is BACK in a big way. We tapped some of the ARCHITECTS of the STYLE's REVIVAL over the past three decades to tell us HOW WE GOT HERE.
Like a VIRGO
This month, our columnist DEREK C. BLASBERG talks to poet CLEO WADE and reality icon NICOLE RICHIE about the mysteries of the ZODIAC, the power of the INVISIBLE, and why having a VOICE starts with being a good LISTENER
This Is HOW YOU #WINWITHBLACKWOMEN
The BLACK WOMEN who organized the HISTORIC 44,000-person fundraising Zoom for KAMALA HARRIS explain how COMMUNITY, FRIENDSHIP, and a SHARED SENSE of UPLIFT got the job done
EMPIRE STATE OF MIND
Channel the boldness and dynamism of the city that never sleeps with the Twilight high jewelry suite by MARLI New York.
PLAYLIST
“I have a 10-HOUR PLAYLIST of all the songs that have ever INSPIRED me,” says SZA, “that over TIME have SHAPED me and played a part in BUILDING my IDENTITY.”
