Fitting.

Byline: ANNA WINTOUR

Shoulders are back. In this issue, our annual celebration of shape (and therefore silhouette), Patrick Demarchelier and Grace Coddington bring us a terrific story about the return of T-definition in jackets, shirts, and dresses. It was an emerging spring trend; having just watched the New York fall collections, I think we can safely say that we'll soon be flooded by shoulder pads and flashbacks to the Reagan years. My two cochairs for the Costume Institute ball at the Metropolitan Museum this May are both on board. Marc Jacobs gave us a highly amusing tribute to those glamorous linebacker girls of the Mudd Club; and Justin Timberlake, in his William Rast collection, even padded the shoulders of simple T-shirts.

BeyoncA[c] Knowles is too young to remember Alexis Carrington and Sue Ellen Ewing. But from an early age her shoulders have carried with great poise the peculiar burdens of outsize talent and outsize fame. She dropped by my office the other week, and Hugh Jackman's name came upand then a week later I learned from Jackman that he and BeyoncA[c] were going to team up for an Oscars show-tune medley. Nothing inspires like serendipity: The director Baz Luhrmann's snapshot of the pair rehearsing makes a nice garnish to Mario Testino and Tonne Goodman's beautiful portfolio of the young diva.

BeyoncA[c] is joined in these pages by some of the most original and modern women we could hope to feature. Polly Mellen, the great VOGUE editor and one of my favorite colleagues, can still, at 84, outrun, outswim, and outstyle any of us. I'm thrilled that we are offering a glimpse of her inspiringly vital life in Connecticut. Then there's 20-year-old Adele, with her 20/20 musical vision. Hamish Bowles's account of attending the ...