Employment. Retirement. Muscles, physique. Multi-lingual. Multi-platinum. Multi-hyphenate. Multiple orgasms. Followers. Likes. No allergens, no GMO. Recess. Unlimited refills. Wrinkle-free. Replenished ozone. Nacho cheese. 10,000 square feet. Tropical, sub-tropical, tropically-themed. Hammocks. Oily orgies. Youth serum. Serotonin. Gender equality. Massages. Unlimited ammo. God for all. Open bar. Distribution of wealth. BYGO. Free delivery. Brad Pitt. A bathtub of butter. Clean water. Debt-free. Velvet robe, satin sheets. Bugatti Chiron. Free education. No hate. Bug-free. Clean needles. Rollercoasters. Baby-back ribs. A lift. A tuck. A book deal, a movie deal, a fair deal. Crypto millions. A womb state. A second home. No shame. Unlimited game. Sunsets. Timepieces. True love. Loyal children. No cavities. Snow days. Audemars Piguet. No speed zones. Clean oceans. Space travel. Cancer cures. Time with the kids. Immortality. Fearlessness. Rest. There’s so much to fantasize about. See, months back we’d been remarking on the evolution of fantasy in fashion photography. What some would call a devolution… a sort of return to less. Elaborate sets, wondrous transformations, and character play have seemingly been eschewed for “realness,” intimacy, and stripped-down scenes. Not ubiquitous, and nothing all that inventive, but certainly more prevalent. You see it in castings. You see it in photo formats. This then begged the question: are we still aspiring toward the same things? Is fantasy, that elusive otherworld, as it’s always been? Fractiously attainable and decadent by design, yet uniformly agreed upon as something to long for? Perhaps not. Perhaps the cacophonous, messy, high-velocity world we’re trudging through, Louboutins or non, has reached a tipping point whereby the new fantasy is the absence of fantastic convention. Time is the real luxury, as they say, and friends (regardless of the odd sexual fantasy) are more important than ever. So we piled some friends into the Flaunt clown car and made our way from LA to Paris, from Mexico City to Montreal. See meditations on the proletarian anti-fantasy of unending physical labor with up and coming artist, Minerva Cuevas (page 96). Consider how SZA (page 200) has conquered the aforementioned contemporary oversaturation (read: blues) with meditation. Witness Charlie Heaton of fantastical smash hit Stranger Things encounter a flower garden of freaky, hooded mystics (page 208). Swim in the Hollywood Hills with trans actress and mermaid Hari Nef as she trades her runway for the lot (page 218). Imagine OG fantasy dealer Kyle MacLachlan playing street sweep on your local block, just because he can (page 144), and finally, sharpen your tacks on our essay piece, “All One Wants Is a Nice Life, a Nice Wife, and a Little Money in the Bank,” (page 172) which unravels the Work, Play, Love construct most of us couldn’t separate from the pit if it were an overripe avocado. Enjoy The New Fantasy Issue, and keep your feet in the clouds. Sincerely, Matthew Bedard
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