Harper's Bazaar

Versace Wool coat; silk scarf, both from a selection; latex top, about £1,275

Lanvin Geometric print coat-dress; matching sandals, both from a selection; sheer high socks, £90

Max Mara Mohair top, £885; wool trousers, £510; cashmere hood, £150 ERIK MADIGAN HECK



Etro Velvet blazer, £1,670; matching trousers, £1,525 ERIK MADIGAN HECK

Balenciaga Asymmetric pleated crepe dress, about £2,465; matching head-to-toe bodysuit, £2,720

ERIK MADIGAN HECK

ERIK MADIGAN HECK

Alberta Ferretti Felt coat, £2,925; merino wool jumper, £435; felt hat, £425

Dolce & Gabbana Eco-fur coat, £4,200; matching boots, £1,500; matching hat, from a selection

ERIK MADIGAN HECK

Hermès Leather dress, £6,000; knit jumper, £1,400; silk and mesh socks, £1,200; velvet boots, £1,400

ERIK MADIGAN HECK

ERIK MADIGAN HECK

Gucci Embroidered tulle dress, from a selection; lace tights, £185; lace gloves, £835; leather platform boots, £1,400

Miu Miu Embroidered lace and organza dress, £5,600; satin slip top, £520; matching satin shorts, £580; cashmere socks, £280; leather boots, £1,600 ERIK MADIGAN HECK



Giorgio Armani Embroidered dress, from a selection ERIK MADIGAN HECK





Salvatore Ferragamo Knit crepe top, £1,505; cotton and silk trousers, £1,120; leather flats, £685 ERIK MADIGAN HECK

Prada Jacquard jumper; embroidered silk, organza and tulle skirt; leather boots, all from a selection

ERIK MADIGAN HECK

Celine by Hedi Slimane Silk dress, from a selection ERIK MADIGAN HECK

Chanel Embellished cashmere coat, £9,855; jersey top, £1,415; matching trousers, £1,500

ERIK MADIGAN HECK

Givenchy Silk dress, from a selection; bubble ring, about £315

Fendi Silk dress, £2,250; knit gloves, £540; silk bra; matching knickers, both from a selection. Hair by Hiroshi Matsushita, using Oribe. Make-up by Andrew Gallimore at Of Substance, using Dior Capture Totale Super Potent Serum and Dior Forever Foundation. Stylist’s assistant: Gal Klein. Production by Lucy Watson Productions. Model: Bette Franke at Viva London. Shot at Carskiey House, Campbeltown, Argyll ERIK MADIGAN HECK



All prices throughout, from a selection. THIS PAGE: Winona Ryder wears dress, Carolina Herrera. Ring, Cartier. Trainers, Converse. OPPOSITE: jacket with waistcoat; trousers, both Salvatore Ferragamo. Necklace, Cartier

The age of experience Stranger Things’ Winona Ryder on coming to terms with the past, making sense of the present, and what to do when you find yourself in the Hollywood version of the ‘Upside Down’ By Heather Havrilesky Styled by Caroline Newell

WHEN WINONA RYDER WAS A CHILD, SHE DAYDREAMED An intensely scrutinising, particularly nasty brand of tabloid culture about movies – not starring in them, but watching and making them. sprang up in the early Nineties. The prevailing notion then was that Her parents, who are both writers and editors, moved to a commune fame and money insulated you from emotional hardship. ‘I know it’s on the Northern Californian coast when she was seven, and though kind of like, “Oh, poor Winona,”’ she says. ‘But when you’re in pain, there were no TVs, her mother would put up a sheet on the side of a pain is pain. That [realisation] took me a while.’ barn to show old films. ‘I was in heaven,’ Ryder says. After her family The pressure on young film stars – female ones in particular – to moved a few years later to Petaluma, a city in the San Francisco Bay cement their place in the firmament, against the backdrop of an era Area, she would try to view the world through the camera’s lens. ‘I’d when leading men were routinely cast with love interests two sort of walk and force myself to see things in black and white, like decades younger, must have been crushing. ‘This business is brutal,’ a movie,’ she says. ‘I created a kind of fantasy world. There was an Ryder says. ‘You’re working constantly, but if you want to take a old theatre I loved, and I used to fantasise about living there. Like, break, they tell you, “If you slow down, it’s going to stop.”’ ripping out the seats and having a bed and a bathtub and a bike and She pauses. ‘And then it did slow down. So you’re hearing, “It’s watching movies all the time.’ going to be impossible to come back.” And then that changes to It’s telling that Ryder’s childhood daydreams were the products “You’re not even part of the conversation.” Like, it was brutal.’ of an expansive, freewheeling imagination. Her knowledge of film, Nevertheless, many of us haven’t forgotten that, in the late music, books and pop culture is sprawling. ‘It’s kind of epic how wild Eighties and early Nineties, Ryder was the conversation. She seemed her mind is and how it goes to all these different corners,’ marvels to embody the essential spirit of Generation X, an unruly mob of David Harbour, who plays the former police chief Jim Hopper, Ryder’s idealistic slackers and secretly starry-eyed cynics. No one captured would-be love interest on Stranger Things, the nostalgic sci-fi Netflix the troubled-but-hopeful vibe of the child of the Seventies quite series set in the 1980s that recently returned for its fourth season and like she did. Her most memorable roles back then – in Beetlejuice, has catapulted Ryder back into the spotlight. He says that while they Heathers, Edward Scissorhands, Reality Bites – share the same tensions were shooting, she would sometimes point out minor historical mis- between disillusionment and exuberance, eye-rolling and open takes that the series creators, Matt and Ross Duffer, and writers had longing. Her porcelain-doll features and expressive, silent-film-star made. ‘She’d tell them, “This song actually came out in ’85, and you face telegraphed one part lost girl, two parts blasé teenager. She have it in ’83.” She knew all of these minute, tiny details they didn’t managed to appear at once vulnerable and completely over it. even know, and they had to change things in the script based on that.’ And when she fell in love with Johnny Depp in 1989, they were My own encounter with Ryder’s wild and curious mind begins like a dark fairy tale come to life: two moody, exquisitely beautiful when she emerges from a car driven by her boyfriend of more than young people haunting the red carpet with the graceful nonchalance a decade, Scott Mackinlay Hahn, who works of Old Hollywood movie stars. The pair got in fashion. Dressed in a low-key white T-shirt ‘This business engaged after just five months and broke up and black dungarees, Ryder, who turned 50 is brutal. You’re after four years. Depp’s ‘Winona forever’ last October, looks innocent and nervous, working constantly, tattoo eventually changed into the far less like a child being dropped off for her first but if you want to romantic ‘Wino forever’, echoing the disso- day at school. After locating a relatively take a break, they lution of an entire generation’s swagger. private table on the patio at the Four Seasons tell you, “If you in Beverly Hills, we settle into a conversation slow down, it’s Since then, Ryder has kept her personal that lasts four hours and covers everything going to stop”’ life mostly out of view. But she does hint from The Americans (‘I still haven’t finished that the ferociousness of Hollywood culture the last season because I don’t want it to in the early Nineties made things far darker end. So I’ve saved it’) to a South Carolina for her than anyone knew. ‘That was my Girl, artist named Ment Nelson, the Australian Interrupted real life,’ she says, referring to film-maker Jennifer Kent and the actress the 1999 film she executive-produced and Laura Dern (‘She’s so grounded and smart’). starred in about a young woman in a psychi- atric hospital, for which Angelina Jolie won The one subject Winona Ryder doesn’t the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. She want to talk about is Winona Ryder. Every credits ‘an incredible therapist’ for encour- time I bring up an aspect of her career, she says a few words and aging her to imagine being gentle to a younger version of herself. then diverts to some other artist or actor or writer she loves. This ‘I remember, I was playing this character who ends up getting tor- seems less like a defence mechanism than a sign of her genuine tured in a Chilean prison [in the 1993 drama The House of the Spirits],’ interest in a wide range of people and things. she says. ‘I would look at these fake bruises and cuts on my face When we finally land on the high-pressure zones of her earliest [from the shoot], and I would struggle to see myself as a little girl. brushes with fame, she becomes quieter. ‘Being talked about, being “Would you be treating this girl like you’re treating yourself?” reviewed… realising that someone could pause you, could rewind I remember looking at myself and saying, “This is what I’m doing to you? It was so overwhelming,’ she says. myself inside.” Because I just wasn’t taking care of myself.’ Ryder landed her first film role, in the 1986 adolescent rom-com Ryder says that one of her co-stars in 1993’s The Age of Innocence, Lucas, at age 13. By the time she was 18, she was a household name. Michelle Pfeiffer, supported her, reminding her that everything 200 | HARPER’S BAZAAR | September 2022 www.harpersbazaar.com/uk