Emma Watson Covers Harper's Bazaar U.K.
Photos: Alexi Lubomirski / courtesy of Harper's Bazaar U.K.
Double threat: Emma Watson’s two Harper’s Bazaar U.K. August covers
As her term as Hermione in the blockbuster Harry Potter franchise comes to a close, actress Emma Watson takes on a double role for the August issue of Harper’s Bazaar U.K.
The cover girl casts a spell in a good girl/bad girl fashion spread. She also speaks her mind about Hollywood, fashion, and other post-Potter bubbles.
For the magazine’s photo shoot, the coming-of-age star hums the songs of both innocence and experience. Half of the photos show her in sun-dappled white dresses, her freckles shining through. Then the switch flips and she appears in daringly sheer black, with crimson lipstick. (Lancôme, of course, since Watson is now a spokesmodel for the brand.)
In her more familiar “good girl” role, Watson relaxes among flowering Queen Anne’s lace, looking like a puff of milkweed in feathered gowns by Versace and Oscar de la Renta.
She admits that the edgier looks “didn’t come naturally at all.” In her July Vogue cover story, Watson was able to grin through her high-gloss vamping. Bazaar took her to a darker place. In the opening image, for instance, Watson stands fiercely behind an iron gate, wearing Christian Louboutin ankle-strap heels and an Antonio Berardi minidress with a sheer lace bodice.
Photos: Alexi Lubomirski / courtesy of Harper's Bazaar U.K.
Good girl gone bad: Watson plays both sides in the August issue of Harper’s Bazaar U.K.
For other wicked shots, Watson dons a porter’s hat from the subversive Louis Vuitton fall collection. In a burnout-velvet and lace Pucci dress, her bright-eyed sexiness conjures up Louise Brooks crossed with a young Judy Davis.
Those femme fatale expressions are all an act, though. Watson tells the magazine that it’s difficult for her to give in to passionate anger: “I feel unleashing it would be the scariest thing—and to let myself be powerful, sexy, all those things, it’s scary for me.”
While Watson can now fulfill any stylish wish, she remains wary of the fashion world. “It can be savage,” she believes, “and cruel, in that it’s prescriptive—you have to look a certain way and fit a certain mould—but also in the way it’s made.” Her concerns about fabric processing and the working conditions in clothing factories led her to collaborate on fair-trade collections with People Tree and an eco-friendly line with Alberta Ferretti.
She’s similarly cautious about life in Hollywood. “LA scares the crap out of me,” she confesses. “I feel if I have to work out four hours a day, and count the calories of everything I put in my mouth, and have Botox at 22, and obsess about how I look the whole time, I will go mad, I will absolutely lose it,” she declares.
Now that the demands of shooting the Potter films are over, and she’s taking a break from Brown University, will the former sorceress learn to relax? “My mother has been reminding me that happiness is important,” she says. Hmmm, may we suggest a summer road trip, with plenty of stops for pie along the way?
And see who landed on the August cover of U.S. Harper’s Bazaar.
