Celebrities can be difficult to pin down for an interview. Some refuse point blank. Some will only do it if you put them on the cover. Others will only agree if they have a project to promote.
But ask them to talk about their dogs and it is a very different story.
When Vogue was thinking of ways to fill the quieter summer months, the team decided to try photographing half a dozen “celebri-dogs”. To their surprise, every single one of the owners said yes, from Mariah Carey to Demi Moore, Billie Eilish to Tim Walz.
Each was given a front cover of an online edition of the magazine called — of course — Dogue.
Chloe Malle, editor of Vogue.com, said: “I have never in 15 years of working with celebrity publicists seen such enthusiasm and high check-in rate about when a shoot would be going live.
“These dog parents were stage moms of the highest order, using treats and baby voices to get the best camera face from Pilaf, Tank and Brisket [belonging to Moore, Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell]. I am now fully convinced that canine nepo-babies are the best kind.” A nepo-baby refers to those whose success is perceived to be due to family connections.
In the feature, Moore reveals that her chihuahua — full name Pilaf the Little Mouse Moore — has been everywhere from Broadway shows to the French Open with her. During the Vogue shoot she gushed over how well the purple background complimented her dog’s fur, saying: “Look at how pretty the purple is for your hair colour … I think she looks like a cross between a goldfish and Bette Davis.”
“They’re not just my best friends but my protectors as well,” Carey said. “They’re like my bodyguards, following me everywhere I go!”
The singer Missy Elliott’s Yorkie dog is called Fendi and she also takes her everywhere. Fendi typically waits in her dressing room during performances, often decked out in a bedazzled pink collar and matching dress. She doesn’t play with toys though. “She’s too grand for that,” Elliott said.
“I feel like her being here has kept me relaxed — because she’s truly my best friend.”
Fendi, backstage on Missy Elliott’s tour
ALEXIS SMITH/CROWDMGMT/VOGUE
Dogs have long featured in Vogue, starting in 1897 with a Labrador puppy on the cover. Coco Chanel was pictured with her Great Dane, Gigot, in the April 1931 issue and the designer Azzedine Alaïa was photographed with a Yorkshire terrier in each hand in February 1986.
However, the emergence of social media means some of the celebrities’ dogs are now stars in their own right. Powell, 35, who starred as Hangman in the film Top Gun: Maverick, has an Instagram page for his rescue dog Brisket with 134,000 followers.
He adopted the terrier-poodle mix, who is photographed for Vogue in a black bow tie, after getting the urge to be a “dog dad” while filming Twisters in Oklahoma and dealing with a relationship break-up.
Meanwhile, Sweeney, 26, who starred in the romantic comedy Anyone But You, revealed to Vogue.com that she surprised her parents as a teenager by bringing home a rescue dog.
Her great-grandmother, who had eight dogs and volunteered at a local animal shelter, took Sweeney, then aged 17, to the shelter, where she saw a female pitbull-mix puppy of about four weeks who she was told might not survive due to a botched operation.
Sweeney adopted the dog, who she bottle fed and dreamt would “grow up and be a big tank — be my protector”, she told Vogue. She named the dog Tank and would take her to school with her every day. “She became kind of like the class pet and would walk around in different classrooms,” Sweeney said.
In the Dogue feature, Carey’s dogs Mutley, Cha Cha and Jill E Beans wear cashmere jumpers and pearl necklaces as the singer admitted, somewhat unsurprisingly, that she spoils them. She wishes she could take her dogs on the rides at DisneyWorld.
Meanwhile Ayo Edebiri, the actress who rose to fame in the TV series The Bear, says of her dog Gromit: “To be perfectly frank, his greatest quality is that he looks gorgeous in hats and clothes — and he knows it. Sadly, the fact that he knows it is arguably his worst quality.”
The American rapper Ferg revealed that he was reunited with his Australian shepherd dog three years after he ran away from a dog sitter’s house in New Jersey. KrasH was eventually picked up by police in Connecticut.
Ferg said: “I hope this story gets out and I get to meet the family that had him and see what type of people they are. I want KrasH to show me everywhere he’s been — what he ate, if he fought rats, if he had dog friends, cat friends.”
