ScarJo Goes Punk & Rooney Gets Groovy For W‘s 40th Anniversary

They say it's a fashion editor's job to transport the reader from the regularity of their lives to a world of imagination. After all, today's standout editors aren't known for simply dressing models in something on-trend and calling it a day. A killer editorial conceives entire fantasies and stories replete with nonexistent animals, far-away locales, and that which we can only find in our dreams.

Appropriately, W magazine is celebrating its 40th anniversary this November with an issue that takes four glamorous A-listers out of character and back to other decades. Starring a vixen-like Keira Knightley on the cover, the magazine's central editorial features four badass actresses who pack plenty of feminine bravado — Knightley, Scarlett Johansson, Mia Wasikowska, and Rooney Mara — to help illustrate W's "four decades of fashion, scandals, art, and beautiful people."

Each of the girls represent a decade that, to us, appears to be chosen for its challenge to the star's own personal look. For instance, Wasikowska generally is dreamy and whimsical — very '70s — but instead she gets the mega-glam '80s treatement. And Rooney Mara, who, thanks to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, would have been a shoo-in for the more punk '90s, but that was given to glam-girl ScarJo. The matchups are dramatic, vivid, and fantastic. Seeing Johansson go goth is pretty killer, and we kind of feel like she is channeling a version of herself that exists in some alternate universe. We hope.