The New Bohemian Couturier: She spent a decade working under Azzedine Alaïa, and now, French fashion designer Sophie Theallet steps out on her own with a delicate, colorful line.

When asked what she thinks about corsets, Brooklyn-based designer Sophie Theallet scoffs, “I need to breathe. Fashion is supposed to be about freedom.” A protégé of two of the industry’s most architectural vanguards, Theallet worked in Paris for both Jean Paul Gaultier (for whom she created a line of clothing for babies), and Azzedine Alaïa (for whom she worked as a head designer for 10 years). “After I moved to New York,” says Theallet of her Stateside sojourn, “I thought it was time to design my own line because I couldn’t find a company that would give me what I was looking for in fashion—my own vision.”

The New Troubadours: Johnny Flynn and Laura Marling wander the globe soaking up inspiration for their fresh take on folk.

For songwriters with such a precise way with words, Johnny Flynn and Laura Marling are all over the map these days. “I feel really connected to all the places that I’ve been and the images and stories that I’ve picked up along the way,” says Flynn, originally from South Africa, who met his kindred spirit and touring mate Marling in London, after the Hampshire-raised beauty moved away from her home at the age of 16. “I forgave myself for being a kid,” she says of the songs on her Mercury Prize-nominated debut album, Alas I Cannot Swim, released after her eighteenth birthday, featuring her smoky, intoxicating alto. “Everything up until then had been a massive self-indulgence, very teenage.”

To put it bluntly, former Nickelodeon mascot Josh Peck has grown into one of the dopest comedians of his generation.

How did Josh Peck, former child actor and Nickelodeon’s teenage “Shecky Greene,” become the newest member in the canon of cool? He walked off -- and kept walking -- with last summer’s badass, Jazzy Jeff funky slice of a movie, the stoner romance The Wackness. There he was, Josh of Drake & Josh, grown up, thinned out and higher than Bob Marley, holding his own opposite Sir Ben Kingsley. Respect. And Peck, 22, has big plans to abuse his soaring fame. “I’m not going to wait in line for anything,” he says, laughing. “I’ll pretty much emulate Frank Lucas’ life from American Gangster, you know, $50,000 chinchilla coats. It’s going to be obscene.”

Seasons change, and with them, the ‘new faces’ of fashion. But don’t tell that to Eniko, the new Hungarian model with her sight set on longevity.

Few models ever become super, mostly because they don’t have what it takes to move beyond the shallows of seasonal hype. But Eniko Mihalik has been a supermodel for the past several years—according to her mom, at least. “My mother used to call me all the time,” says the 21-year-old Hungarian, “swearing I was in this magazine and that campaign. I would rush to find the magazine and realize she was talking about Daria Werbowy. My own mother thought I was Daria!”

The New Leading Man: Would the cast of 'Ocean’s 47' please clear the room for Patrick Wilson? By George, Hollywood’s most underappreciated character actor has finally grown into a bona fide box office draw!

For a man whose long-term plan was to tread the New York theater circuit, Patrick Wilson has taken a seriously wrong turn. “It’s been awesome,” says the 35-year-old Tony Award nominee and star of Angels in America, Hard Candy and Little Children. “I really love making movies.” And with another four in the can, including the recently released thriller Lakeview Terrace and the upcoming superhero behemoth Watchmen, Wilson is meandering dangerously close to leading man territory. “I don’t even know what that means!” he says. “I’m glad my movies make money, but if it’s leading man or character man, it’s all good.”

Unik Ernest, owner of Merkato 55 and Bijoux, blazes the path from Haiti to South Beach to New York nightlife don, stays grounded in a world where champagne bottles could feed entire villages back home, and dishes on his hot Art Basel party and the star-studded Inauguration Day event he’s cooking up in Washington DC.

What are some other places you like to hang out at in New York? Cipriani Upstairs, I like to go there. Sometimes I go to Pravda, because I live next door. I like to go to the gym. If I’m not working out then I’m listening to music. Or I’ll travel to Paris, to Hotel Costes, Plaza Athenee. I go to Barcelona a lot, but mostly I just like to walk around and not go out that much when I’m there.

The New British Invasion: Folk off, already, and make room for Glasvegas, the most exciting Scottish export since boiled sheep stomachs.

Those who have seen Lynne Ramsay’s desolate film Ratcatcher will understand the bleakness endemic to the city of Glasgow. It may now sport a few designer hotels and an inexplicable smoking ban, but it will always be a wearied, sallow place. The astonishing new band Glasvegas capture the melancholy of their town as explicitly as the Smiths did Manchester—yet their eponymous debut, out Stateside in March, has resonated across the breadth of Britain, where many have called them the kingdom’s best new band. “The reaction to our songs makes sense,” observes singer-songwriter James Allan, “because of the long nights and the amount of soul we put into that record.”

Never mind his bollocks. With compelling, controversial works that call into question everyone from Pollock to Pacino, Norwegian punk artist Gardar Eide Einarsson reinvents the men of American myth.

Over whiskey and beer at Manhattan’s Bowery Hotel, lofty ruminations on contemporary art crumble as the conversation turns to Gardar Eide Einarsson’s penis. “I know!” he says of Lars von Trier, the photograph in which he appears wearing nothing but a T-shirt alongside fellow artist Gareth James. “My little sister Googled me at her school library to show her friends my work and, well, she found more than she bargained for.” Nudity has become a theme throughout Einarsson’s career, as photographers and critics continue to equate the tattoos that cover much of his body with his general punk aesthetic. “It’s so crazy,” he says. “One time, a German newspaper asked me to take off my shirt in a museum, in front of one of my paintings. Can you imagine how lame that would have looked?”

Pop tarts with smarts? Impossible! Electro-powerhouse group Dragonette takes the stage to prove Britney wrong.

When it comes to combining sexual swagger and pop-art smarts, the only competition Martina Sorbara seems to have is an early crucifix-sporting, lingerie-flashing Madonna. Sorbara is the post-post-modern siren fronting Dragonette, the irresistibly naughty electro-rock band she founded with husband/bassist Dan Kurtz. And when it comes to her ironic-erotic charisma, the title of the Canadian quartet’s debut album, Galore, proves truth in advertising. “A lot of people just see a sex vixen,” she says of the reaction to Galore’s debauched diva tales. “That misses the point -- I’m more feminist than prostitute. I like to be sexy, but on my terms.”

The New Scene Stealer: More than a decade ago, actress Taraji P. Henson packed her bags for Hollywood, in search of a fresh start. It’s taken a few years and a little hustle, but the rising star of this year’s most anticipated film has finally found her flow.

“No-Shows!” screams Taraji P. Henson from the bathroom of her hotel suite in midtown Manhattan, her outstretched arms brandishing what look like two raw, embryonic chicken cutlets. “They’re my secret weapons,” she adds with the smile of a high-wattage fluoride model, before tossing the nipple concealers onto a nearby bed. Quietly but assuredly, the 38-year-old actress has become a secret weapon in her own right, most recently in David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, in which she plays Brad Pitt’s mother, a woman whose adopted son ages in reverse while she creeps towards death. It’s an unlikely scenario, the details of which she is quick to eschew. “When it comes to portraying characters, especially the more difficult ones, it’s like I loan out my body,” she says, her eyes two orbs of unrestrained emotion. “I become an empty vessel, as if I’m possessed, and I tell my character to guide me, to talk through me. It’s like I lock Taraji in a closet and let my body be used. It can be kind of scary, actually.”