Zendaya, an actress and producer, was perusing a picture of a glamorous 1950s beauty wearing classic resort attire while standing by a large, vaguely Grecian swimming pool in a Beverly Hills estate on a bright, sunny day. C.Z. Guest, a very tan, very blonde socialite, became the embodiment of money, position, and luxury in that famous photograph by Slim Aarons. Zendaya’s longtime stylist and partner Law Roach was standing next to her, sporting a respect the sexy baseball cap and a denim Prada trenchcoat. They had looked at other well-known photos on Roach’s phone, including those of Elvis with a seductive Priscilla Presley sitting on his lap, Serge Gainsbourg kissing his young girlfriend Jane Birkin, and a beautifully coiffed model surveying the grounds of the Hôtel du Cap on the French Riviera, but they kept coming back to Aarons’s portrayal of Guest.
“That’s the mood I want,” Zendaya, bundled up in a white terrycloth robe, said definitively. Her goal for this W shoot was to replace the conventional idea of white society in Aarons’s picture with the more modern concept of a Black couple who live in a similarly grand house with an equally alluring swimming pool. “That life, but reimagined for now, with the look of then,” she explained as Roach nodded. “Doing a Slim Aarons shoot, but with Black actors,” Roach said later. “The visuals matter. The way change happens is when people can see wealth and grandeur in a way that they are not used to seeing it.”
In order to do that, Zendaya and Roach sought a home with a magnificent entry flanked by white marble columns, a big circular driveway, and a bubbling fountain. John David Washington, Zendaya’s on-camera spouse for the pictures and her co-star in Malcolm & Marie, arrived as she was making her way to a space set aside for her hair and beauty team. They welcomed one another warmly and Zendaya stated that the idea behind the shoot was for his clothing to match hers in terms of color. For example, if she was wearing a lime green scarf, he would be sporting a polo shirt in the same hue. Washington nodded in agreement and proceeded to check his clothes.
Zendaya seems quite joyful; she enjoys metamorphosis. She was ready to begin filming the second season of Euphoria, in which she portrays a young girl dealing with addiction and mental health concerns, when the world fell into lockdown last year. She rapidly grew restless because she missed interacting with different realities. She frequently donned various wigs from her extensive collection to satisfy that desire, drawing inspiration for her characters from them. She was able to change into a flitting runway model thanks to a sharp red haircut, and a goth youngster with long, black curtains of hair.
When Zendaya attended the Academy Awards in 2015 sporting a slinky, off-the-shoulder Vivienne Westwood gown and cascading dreadlocks, her hair started a difficult dialogue that eventually resulted in good change. Except for a dedicated tween fan following that obsessively followed her on Disney Channel episodes like Shake It Up, Zendaya was relatively unknown back then. Roach, who has worked with Zendaya since she was 14 years old, painstakingly planned her outstanding wardrobe. Similar to the Aarons-inspired photo session, Zendaya’s outfit combined classic splendor with a surprising element.
Shortly after Zendaya walked down the red carpet, Giuliana Rancic, then an E! news anchor, made a thoughtlessly hostile—and racially loaded—comment. “I feel like she smells like patchouli oil,” Rancic said. “And weed.” Zendaya responded on Instagram with: “There is already a harsh criticism of African-American hair in society without the help of ignorant people who choose to judge others based on the curl of their hair.”
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