Six Best Bits From Lena Dunham’s Vogue Cover Feature

Back in 1998, an 11-year-old Lena Dunham and her Brooklyn primary school classmate (and future Girls co-star) Jemima Kirke appeared in Vogue in a spread about “a New York pack of fashion-conscious kids”, where she said things like “I find Calvin Klein really hard to respect because he’s everywhere. I view him as a clothesmonger…”. Almost exactly 16 years later, Dunham is gracing the magazine’s esteemed cover, shot by Annie Leibowitz for their new issue.

In a wide-ranging feature, the magazine’s reporter Nathan Heller followed Dunham to an L.A. fashion show — punctuated by quotes like “I’ve always loved Comme des Garcons; I’ve always loved Yohji Yamamoto; I’m into Charlotte Olympia flats…” (which might mean something to you) — and dropped by the Girls set as she shot a scene from the show’s Season Three finale. Let’s see what else we learned…

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1. Girls‘ Season Three finale will apparently feature a gag about “chromosome sorting”

Sure, this is a vague detail, but it’s never too early to start speculating:

“This morning, they are shooting a bedroom tête-à-tête. Over several takes, Dunham and Williams embellish the script with improvisations, trying to catch each other off guard. At one point, Dunham adds a laugh line about ‘chromosome sorting’. At another, she dreams up a gag about adopting chinchillas.”

Is Hannah pregnant? Is Marnie thinking of adopting? It’s definitely something involving babies, right? RIGHT?

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2. Lena Dunham spent much of her time in high school writing plays about girls in abortion clinics

She was basically Max Fischer from Rushmore.

“As a teenager, Dunham wrote poems, short stories, and what she calls ‘virtually unperformable plays’, some of which were staged through the school’s drama program. ‘All my plays were about abortion clinics — girls waiting in an abortion clinic, trying to make the Big Decision,’ she says, an irony because, erotically, she was still naive. (Dunham’s first knowledge of sex came from A Fish Called Wanda.)”

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3. Her house in Brooklyn Heights sounds really nice (especially the hot-pink Hello Kitty microwave)

Besides the Golden Globe wins and Emmy nominations and constant cultural write-ups, the surest sign of Dunham’s success is probably the fact that she got to move into the building her dog used to pee in front of everyday when she was just a kid. (“I used to walk my dog by this apartment building in high school. I was always getting in trouble for my dog peeing in the courtyard, which is technically illegal. I’m like, ‘Someday, I’m going to live in that building!’”). The rest of it sounds pretty nice, too:

“Dunham’s apartment is quirky, well appointed, and concertedly unostentatious. There’s a small galley kitchen, hung with a fading schoolhouse photograph of her grandmother in Connecticut and pepped up with a hot-pink Hello Kitty microwave… Nearby, Dunham has arranged what she refers to as her ‘salon wall’, a small selection of professional-type artifacts: fan letters from Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks; a portrait of Zosia Mamet by Jemima Kirke; and other cherished works. Much of the furniture in the apartment Dunham took from the Girls set.”

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4. She feels like an outsider in Hollywood…

And it’s pretty much all because some dog wore a bow tie at a party once.

“I went early on to a party at a really famous person’s house. They had a private chef there making pizza, and I remember the dog was wearing a bow tie. Every time I looked around, it would be like, is that someone I know from camp? No, that’s Ashton Kutcher. It was such a weird scene. I remember thinking, I don’t feel at home here, and no matter how long this is my job, I will never feel at home here. And if I do start to feel at home here’ — her brow furrows — ‘someone should really worry about me.’”

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5. She and Girls co-creator Jenni Konner see the show ending within “the next three years”…

They’re just not sure how it’s gonna happen yet (although, obviously, the answer is “hellmouth“).

“Over poached eggs and quinoa at Soho House in West Hollywood, Jenni Konner tells me that she and Dunham have spent some time dreaming up various flamboyant ways for Girls to end. ‘We were at South by Southwest, in separate rooms, talking on the phone to each other, lying in bed, and I think we were just trying to figure out how everyone died — like Six Feet Under?’ she says. In more earnest moods, they wonder about Hannah’s fate in life. ‘I go back and forth constantly about whether I think Adam is right for her,’ she says. ‘As he’s evolved, he seems righter for her. But would we really wish a crazy actor on anyone?’

Dunham says, ‘I do want to see the characters into a new phase — from early 20s into late 20s seems a good chunk of time. But I have no interest, at this point, in marrying them off or seeing their children.'”

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6. They’ve also started working on some interesting new projects

Dunham and Konner are launching their own production company, called A Casual Romance, and already have two projects lined up, as Heller reveals.

“First up is a documentary they’ve been making about Hilary Knight, the 87-year-old writer and Eloise illustrator, and a new TV series for HBO based on the life of Betty Halbreich, the pioneering Bergdorf Goodman personal shopper, who is also in her 80s.”

Old people, yeah.

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Read the full article here, and see some pretty pictures of Lena Dunham wearing crazy clothes by Alexander McQueen, Prada and Celine, while Adam Driver has to wear jeans and sit in a bathtub.

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[all images via Vogue]