FACES IN FOCUS: THE CREATIVES

Cora Corré is a British model and activist who carries the torch lit by her late grandmother, the great Vivienne Westwood, advocating for humanitarian and environmental change via The Vivienne Foundation, which the pair launched together. Punk runs in her blood: Corré’s raised her voice against war, capitalism, and climate destruction, from Sudan to Palestine to Ukraine to West Papua, and beyond. She’s animated by the unexpected: “Not always knowing what’s next is exciting.”

Bliss Chapman’s father, the artist Jake Chapman, just gave the model her first tattoo. It’s his name scrawled along her finger—and he’s got hers to match. It’s a strange first to share with your dad, she says, but a good one nonetheless. At 18, Chapman finds herself on the cusp of many firsts: trading the countryside for bustling London, starting university, jumping headfirst into a modeling career via Kate Moss’s namesake agency. She’s hungry for it all.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist and MacArthur Fellow, Lynsey Addario is no stranger to conflict. Published by the New York Times and National Geographic, her work captures wartime and humanitarian crises across the world, focusing on the plight of women in wartime. As documented in her 2015 memoir, It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War, Addario never shies from the ethical complexities that come with her line of work. With her work, she challenges both her audience and herself. “I hate the jungle, I hate bugs, I hate being wet all the time,” she says. “But I’m lucky to be in a profession where I’m constantly pushing myself out of my comfort zone.”

Dame Harriet Walter is fluent in theater, especially Shakespeare. Her early career was drenched in sonnet, inevitable tragic romance, and hidden innuendo. After years on Broadway and in the West End, Walker moved to the screen and earned international recognition for her roles in The Crown, Killing Eve, and Succession—always carrying herself with a no-nonsense air of grace and humor. She’s optimistic for the future. “We’re hearing more voices and stories from places we don’t normally go to,” she says. "It is very immediate. It reflects the world that we’re in—–the world we need to be in.”

Dubbed the voice of their generation by the late Virgil Abloh, Kai Isaiah Jamal is a spoken word poet, model, and trans visibility activist hailing from South London. “I lean into chaos,” Jamal says of their approach to their craft—and life. Their work tackles masculinity, racial discrimination, and queer family structure, adopting verse as a means of self-exploration above all else: the poet laureate of young people all the way across the identity spectrum.

Chinese-born novelist and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo came to Britain in 2002. A decade and some change later, she won the National Book Critics Circle Award for her memoir Nine Continents. The question of transnational identity arches gracefully over her literary and filmic oeuvre, weaving in and around themes of language, migration, alienation, and personal memory. Today, Guo is acknowledged as one of the most exciting voices in English and Chinese publishing alike.

At 11, Celine model Lyra Westecott wrote a poem about a cat that sat on a mat that ate a rat. More recent work finds her revisiting that same subject, with a bit more dexterity: “He pulled out one small silver smelly raw herring / Oh, what more morsels might he be bearing? / Oh, that herring did stink but the cat did not care / He didn’t care who brought it, how they’d got it, or where.” In recent years, Westecott has taken up painting and posing, nurturing poetic malaise all the while.

After being detained for no apparent reason in an Italian airport over Milan Fashion Week, Kukua Williams wrote an open letter to the fashion industry, detailing her experiences with bullying, tokenism, and racism. She speaks out bravely, demanding and modeling the behavior of a kinder future. How she does it? “Not being scared to say what I believe in and standing by that.”

As Helen is to Sparta, supermodel Cecilia Chancellor is to the British capital. The living embodiment of the so-called London Girl started modeling in the 1980s, posing for Steven Meisel for the cover of Vogue Italia. She was propelled into the international spotlight—the face of renowned fashion houses; the namesake of a Marc Jacobs handbag; the subject of greats like Mario Testino, David Bailey, Patrick Demarchelier, and Irving Penn—and remains there still today. And she’s stepping behind the lens, too. “I’m making a film for the first time,” she says, “and putting together footage I took in the ’90s backstage at fashion shows.”

Angelica Jopling is no stranger to the art world, though her recent undertakings mark a firm departure from her parents’ (White Cube’s Jay Jopling and director and photographer Sam Taylor-Johnson) spheres. Inspired by the experimental energy of Gertrude Stein’s salons, she founded a community gallery called Incubator on London’s Chiltern Street—a space for emerging artists to come together, laying their work down on the map.

One of London’s stand-out it-girls, Penelope Tree catapulted to icon status as David Bailey’s muse and the face of the swinging ’60s. John Lennon described her well: “Hot! Hot! Hot! Smart! Smart! Smart!” She’s jumped from cover to cover, runway to runway; she’s a novelist, a practitioner of Zen Buddhism, and an advocate for women’s education. At 74, Tree leaves no time wasted, introspection pushing her further. “We all need to get into our bodies and watch our thoughts as much as possible,” she muses. “It starts from there.” For her, that’s resulted in a debut novel, Piece of My Heart, which chronicles the decade she helped define.

Mouchette Bell launched into the world of fashion in the 1970s, as a model championed by then Editor-in-Chief of Italian Vogue Franca Sozzani. Quickly, she pivoted to magazines—becoming the first Black Fashion Editor to work with Anna Wintour at Condé Nast. She went on to edit and style for publications like Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, and Vanity Fair, among others, cementing her status as a bona fide editorial powerhouse. Recently, she’s come full circle, walking and posing for big-name brands well into her 60s. “Most of the restrictions we used to have of age, race, and gender have been lifted quite substantially,” she says. “I’m excited about the freedom and longevity that that is going to bring.”