She and Alt should have been more diverse at their time, they got their moment to open the standards, but they keep playing safe with Kate or Rianne. I don't think they are racist, those were (sadly) the times when only the fashion industry was behind the blue eyed blonde type non-stop, it was the context. That's why I love more and more Franca Sozzani, which at the same time when this was happening she was shaking the industry's rules from her chair, but always was outshined by Anna, because she was the Vogue leader of the franchise from the perspective of media and people outside fashion. Edward and Anna are the opposite from Alt and Alex, and are too obvious that the intention of being more diverse can saturate their publications. Edward's Vogue doesn't reflect that much the British cultural identity and people, it's very Hollywood sometimes and he wants to include all in the market, but the May issue was too much for me and took that as a tasteless joke from his side. Anna is diverse, but she only features rich and famous people with huge popularity. I don't know if you are diverse if you only include rich people that are part of the Club. I always bring the example of Vogue Mexico and Latin America as a diverse publication well done. Even if their covers can have its faults, there's a respect for the several identities from this part of the world, and is very effortless. Karla is one of the best editors on board now. She in the middle between the Alexes and Edwards.
Hmm…
I don’t know if I feel the same way as you about the whole thing.
‘Vogue and Fashion in it essence is exclusive. It’s supposed to portray a dream, a lifestyle a minority lives and a majority aspire to. That’s one thing. That’s what made Vogue the magazine it is, that’s what made the industry the force it is.
The issue about diversity was in the first place seeing people of colors in those spaces.
I love Vogue Paris and maybe because fashion has always been part of my life I didn’t care but there were more representation of diversity in US Vogue during Anna’s tenure than Franca, Emmanuelle, Carine and her two predecessors and even Liz and Alexandra.
You have mini-phenomenon like the Liya Kebede full issue at VP, the Black Issue of VI but to see black, Latina or Asian models in a beautiful house portraying a beautiful lifestyle, it was mostly in the US that we have to look up to.
Why IG is so popular, because we have that idea of diversity and people being able to portray a certain idea of an upscale lifestyle…Most of the time without the panache of a great photographer or editor but it still works.
I think Franca had other challenges than the 3 others main Vogue. Italy is the smallest market so from the start, she had to scream louder than everybody else to make her voice matter. She was a genius and she understood what she had to do.
Her irreverence made her Vogue. After her, it was done for VI. Nostalgia made us all root for the title to have a voice again.
Alexandra and Emmanuelle never realized that they had brands on their hands. When I read for example Alexandra talk about the Vogue Fashion Night Out, I’m a bit on the fence. It’s true, it wasn’t interesting for the brands. I was working in the industry at that time and it didn’t made sense for the brands to do that (a lot of money thrown for what?) but it did in a sense showed the interest for fashion and the power of attraction of the name « Vogue ».
It was Alexandra’s mission to see how to turn that failure and figure out what to do with it.
‘In Paris, the same. Emmanuelle did it but continued to operate on a small scale while her aesthetic influenced all the brands in the contemporary market.
Antoine Arnault was clever to launch « Les Journées du Patrimoine » after that. It created a connection with LVMH and the public.
‘Diversity is one thing but you have to think about the magazine as a brand and insert yourself as part of the branding of that entity.
‘I can say it now, Alexandra is a better EIC than Edward. And it’s not even for discussion because he is a stylist at heart. Her Vogue made sense for that market but he understood that his voice was smaller than the other English-speaking US version. And so he became a brand himself. A but like Franca in a way…
I don’t know if you guys can find 10 interviews of Alexandra on YouTube. I don’t even think Emmanuelle has appeared on TV ever. Let alone done interviews others than the little reviews Loic Prigent used to do with them back in the days for Vogue.FR
We talk about the Met Gala but there are fashion exhibitions every other day in Paris and London. Where was Vogue?
I’m sorry but Emmanuelle didn’t do enough to make VP a title that mattered. Out of all the Vogue that had folded, VP is the one that should have remained untouched. That was a magazine that was influential in a substantial way in what people consume at one point. And that was the home edition of the biggest advertisers in the industry.
