An amazing thing happens when Zendaya gets in front of a camera.
At a studio space in Aubervilliers, a northern suburb of Paris, on her cover shoot for British Vogue, I discover a woman possessed. Endlessly leaping and twirling in youthful silhouettes from Vuitton, Marni, Bally and Wales Bonner, 2024’s undisputed queen of the red carpet is, as they say, giving: face, movement, angles, legs (five foot ten in bare feet, she gets them from her mother, who stands at six foot four). From moment to moment, Zendaya morphs into Veruschka, Twiggy, Naomi, Linda. She even has Linda’s hair: after appearing that morning in micro-bangs and pin-straight lengths for Schiaparelli’s spring haute couture show at the Petit Palais, she now sports a swishy little pageboy cut. The cries of approval – from the photographer Carlijn Jacobs; from Zendaya’s longtime stylist (or “image architect” as he prefers it), Law Roach; from her assistant-slash-hype man, Darnell (“You look beautiful!”) – are breathless, in part because they can barely keep up with her.
In truth, who of us can? The day before the shoot, I am led by her friendly security guy, Paul, into a sprawling hotel suite high above the Place de la Concorde, dampened that morning by freezing rain. I settle in a room where, from a small terrace, the Dôme des Invalides and the Eiffel Tower are plainly visible. Casting an eye for personal effects, I find nothing – just a balled-up plastic bag in one of the matching armchairs. As is often the way in her life, Zendaya is on the road.
After 10 minutes or so, she sidles in to meet me, Darnell trailing behind her. She’s a different figure from the whirling dervish in Aubervilliers. Fresh-faced, with her naturally curly hair – lately an auburn-brown colour – pulled back, she’s dressed in a dove grey cashmere jumper, pleated black trousers, black socks and brown slippers, a yellow silk scarf slung about her neck and a silver watch hanging from her wrist. The impression is cosy, quiet and immediately disarming, as she greets me, sweetly, with a hug. Also jet-lagged – she’d arrived in Paris late the night before and had been in fittings all day.
“She’s a different being that comes into me – my own Sasha Fierce,” she explains, by way of Beyoncé’s famed alter-ego, of her energy on yesterday’s shoot. For Zendaya, who would otherwise be “regurgitating the same sweater-slack combo” day to day, shoots and red carpets are like film or television sets, in that they all demand commitment to a character. “I have to buy her,” she says. “I have to buy that this woman exists, or that this fantasy exists.”
We meet before her globe-spanning press tour for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two, where, through the weeks of February, that fantasy took myriad forms: Barbarella-worthy vintage chrome-and-plexiglass bodysuit from Thierry Mugler (for the premiere in London); a marvellously draped and knotted top and floor-length skirt by the ascendant young designer Torishéju Dumi (for a photocall in Mexico City); or a long-sleeved Stéphane Rolland dress with a cut-out stretching practically from her sternum to her kneecaps (for the premiere in New York). January’s Schiaparelli couture show couldn’t have been a more fitting precursor. (There, Zendaya donned a silk crêpe polo-neck with knotted silk “spikes” and a silk-faille column skirt – an ET-meets-War Horse situation that managed to look devastatingly cool.)
