Raven Smith

1 month ago | vogue.com | Raven Smith

Ladies, start your engines! Vatican City is popping off this week as the 133-strong College of Cardinals gathers in their infamous 800-year-old conclave—a lock-in where phones are confiscated, the Sistine Chapel is bug checked, and all windows are covered—to decide the next bishop of Rome (also known as the pope). After this morning’s mass at St. Peter’s Basilica and a quick vow of secrecy (thrillingly dramatic!), the papal conclave is officially on.

1 month ago | vogue.com | Raven Smith

Happy 1997, everyone: Christina Aguilera is 17 again. On Monday, Carcy magazine debuted a cover that featured the 44-year-old looking remarkably not 44, apparently Benjamin Button-ing. Which is to say: Xtina looks young—extraordinarily young. Suspiciously young. Her cheeks sculpted, her buccal fat forgotten, her body snatched. Online, guesswork erupted as to how the “Dirrty” songstress attained her timeless physique, beyond makeup and retouching and Skims.

1 month ago | culturedmag.com | Raven Smith

Julianne Moore wears a coat and pants by Phoebe Philo, and earrings by Cartier. Gloves and shoes are stylist’s own. CULTURED’s second annual CULT100 issue spotlights 100 names across five generations who are shaping our culture in real time. Some members of the list are household names; others have been working behind the scenes to make possible the encounters that stop us in our tracks. They are all thinking big, sharing generously, and embodying courage.

1 month ago | vogue.com | Raven Smith

Yesterday, an Amazon package was successfully delivered to the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space: The prime delivery, from Jeff Bazos’s Blue Origin space tourism program, saw his fiancée, Lauren Sánchez, and an all-female crew—including singer Katy Perry and TV host Gayle King—rocketed to space for a three-mimute float (and a rousing rendition of Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” by Perry).

1 month ago | 5063.substack.com | Raven Smith

I was on the tube with that guy smoking crack and it was fine. Rubber stamps are a commitment—a refusal to amend or postscript. We are, as a society, too dependent on ephemeral tech, backspacing our mistakes, deleting our failing posts. If I learned anything from Terminator Two: Judgement Day, it’s that nothing good comes from a reliance on machines. Sometimes I just want to go back, if not to medieval times, then to simpler, less computer times. Back to drinking cosmos as a sign of genuine class.