T Magazine: Editor's Letter

From top: Cedric Buchet; William Abranowicz (2).In this issue of T, Halle Berry shows off this season’s jackets and jeans (top right) and the jewelry designer Gabriella Kiss (bottom right) lets readers see her workshop (left).

As the editors of T were sending this issue to press, we found ourselves thinking about the idea of women’s beauty that runs through its pages. Could there be a more pervasive, and loaded, topic? At a recent dinner party, as the talk turned to politics, in no time did Michelle Obama’s fingernail color at the Democratic National Convention enter the conversation. The substance of her speech seemed only to be amplified by the notion that she told her manicurist, What the heck, let’s go with gray.

Nail polish is, of course, less on our minds than the fascination with how a person chooses to display herself. Though make no mistake: with the help of T’s indefatigable beauty and style director, Sandra Ballentine, you’ll find plenty of information here about how women are deciding to make themselves look lovely — from how they part their hair (in the center) to how they treat their skin (just please don’t overpeel) — and to feel like self-determined participants in our quickly changing culture.

Isn’t that what we really talk about when we talk about beauty: keeping up with the pace of change? Not just deciding when to jump on the color wheel — electric pink glitter eye shadow? Why not — but also retaining some measure of grace and poise as wrinkles come, relationships go, and time, in its messy, wisdom-bestowing way, marches on. One day you might be one of “The In Crowd,” figuring out your style and forming fast friendships in Tyrone Lebon and Sara Moonves’s playful fashion shoot; the next you may be the jewelry designer Gabriella Kiss, who’s created her own incredibly stylish universe out of a lifetime of work, family and gorgeous things.

There are few women in the public eye who have more elegantly embraced the passing of the years than Halle Berry. Some of those years, by her own account, haven’t been easy. But as Joyce Maynard’s thoughtful profile of the actress shows, Berry has turned obstacles into the building blocks of a remarkable life as a movie star and as a mother. And if Berry has her way (is there any doubt?), her 4-year-old daughter will grow up knowing what truly makes her beautiful, no what matter what color nail polish she chooses.

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