January isn’t my favourite, as months go. Although I’m desperate to embrace all the shiny new possibilities of the new year, my inner Eeyore tends to rear its ugly head in the days after Christmas, thwarting my best intentions for a fresh start before the NYE countdown has even begun. (Quite predictably, this miserable spiral usually ends with me burying my woes in a pile of discounted mince pies.)

Needless to say, New Year’s resolutions are not my thing. A dear friend of mine did introduce me to the idea of vision boards about a decade ago, however, an annual ritual that seems to have stuck. Admittedly I was resistant at first – how cringe would it be if a new boyfriend saw my board, I wondered. In the end, the promise of a home-cooked meal and a good chat was enough to lure me to her house in Brooklyn on New Year’s Day. It was, to my utter surprise, a completely transformative experience. What I took away from it was this: even if the concept of manifesting spooks you or just seems plain silly, an afternoon of creative play with your mates is good for the soul. Moments of levity like these, however brief, have consistently proved to be an antidote to my own sense of world-weariness at this time of year.

“Emerald Wants It To Be This Generation’s Titanic”: Margot Robbie Is Betting Big On Wuthering Heights

By Radhika Seth

I was reminded of this by chef, author and longtime Vogue contributor Tamar Adler as this issue was coming together. She has written many terrific books on the topic of food, though her latest is far more personal and confronts her decades-long struggle with depression. For Adler, the practice of keeping a daily gratitude journal specifically focused on food proved to be an unexpected lifeline. “I only know that I learnt a strange lesson,” she writes on page 60, “that when depression is at its clawing, gnawing worst, the simplest acts of cooking and serving contain in them the magic to momentarily alleviate it.” Food for thought, indeed.

Elsewhere in the issue, we go inside the otherworldly home of the inimitable painter
Rose Wylie as she prepares for a landmark retrospective at the Royal Academy of Arts. At 91, Wylie has the kind of boundless energy of someone half her age. Vibrant and iconoclastic, her work is supercharged by a spirit of rebellion, one that’s positively uplifting. As Charlotte Jansen puts it in her profile of Wylie on page 112: “hers is a kind of magic that can’t be explained”.

Equally impossible to define: the exquisite cool of Adwoa Aboah. Having taken a brief hiatus after the birth of her daughter, Shy, almost 18 months ago, the 33-year-old model and actor is back on the runway and more grounded in her extraordinary beauty than ever. In this issue, she wears the season’s sharpest tailoring with a complete sense of ease and realness.