The Teen BFFs of ‘PEN15’ Take a look at-Drive Magnificence Merchandise With a Again-to-Faculty Enchantment

You don’t have to have been a center schooler within the period of dial-up web to know PEN15, the Hulu comedy that follows two finest mates, Anna and Maya, by the awkward odyssey of puberty. The present’s pitch-perfect particulars—AIM chats on circa-2000 desktops, lip gloss over braces—conjure a time of a lot change, each bodily and cultural. An animated particular lands in late August, a shift in format that remembers a preferred sequence from that interval, Daria. The gimmick of PEN15, although, is that its cocreators and stars, Anna Konkle and Maya Erskine, who play teenagers, are 30-somethings (and new mothers) IRL. For these pages, the ladies step into character specifically for V.F., assuming the function of la-di-da journal writers opining in regards to the newest magnificence merchandise: match for precise grown-ups or those that simply need to play the half. —Laura Regensdorf