Vogue Magazine presents “Custom of the Country”, an 18-page spread with photos by Annie Leibovitz, styled by legendary VOGUE Creative Director Grace Coddington, in the September 2012 issue of VOGUE. The feature includes an essay by award-winning novelist Colm Toibin about Edith Wharton and her complicated love triangle with Morton Fullerton and Henry James.
The sixteen-page fashion spread was informed by historical photographs taken during the ten years Wharton called The Mount her summer home. VOGUE inspired casting of Wharton’s close circle includes: supermodel Natalia Vodianova as Edith Wharton; writer Jeffery Eugenides as Henry James; actor Jack Huston as Wharton’s lover Morton Fullerton; actress Juno Temple as Wharton’s secretary and companion, Anna Bahlmann; actor Elijah Wood as Cook, Wharton’s chauffeur; actress and Meryl Streep’s daughter Mamie Gummer as Wharton’s niece Beatrix Farrand; writer Junot Diaz as Walter Berry; writer Jonathan Safran Foer as architect Ogden Codman, Jr.; actor Max Minghella as painter Maxfield Parrish; artist Nate Lowman as sculptor Daniel Chester French; and actor James Corden as Teddy Roosevelt. The models and actors who participated in the shoot share their stories in a“Behind the Scenes” piece.
And in a piece entitled also “The Custom of the Country,” Hamish Bowles writes about The Mount, deeming it a “uniquely seductive manse that Wharton herself considered a masterwork.”
