Last week during the "Vogue Experience" I had the chance to interview Mrs. Sozzani in Vogue Italia's offices.
I thought I'd share the interview with you here.
(I don't know if this thread is only about photos or I could post also the interview....)
ZFB: Thanks again to you and your team for having us today.
Everybody was very spontaneous and seemed genuinely happy about our visit…
FS: I’m enjoying this experience myself, even more than what I was expecting to.
I’m meeting new interesting people every day and we’re exchanging our points of view about fashion and design after doing so only virtually for months on my blog.
ZFB: Wasn’t it difficult to explain to your team that they had to reveal the mystery and share the process of making a fashion magazine with the visitors?
FS: Why? What mystery? And what do we have to hide?
We make a fashion magazine, it’s all about creatively putting together the best clothes, the best models photographers to give you a quality magazine… “Vogue quality”.
My team is made of very real people, they are also genuinely glad to share the work behind every issue of Vogue with other interested readers/bloggers/followers.
ZFB: You have your own blog and you update it everyday.
How could a very busy woman like yourself find the time to do so on daily basis?
I find it difficult myself to juggle my “real” job and my blog, and I’m sure I don’t have half your commitments and responsibilities.
FS: Before I update my blog I want to make sure I have something interesting to say/share.
The hardest thing is to find the subject, the inspiration. Once I do so, it takes me almost half an hour to write my post.
Sometimes this inspiration comes from a fashion show, a breaking news or from the readers themselves.
ZFB: You were one of the first people in the business to understand the importance of internet in the future of fashion.
How did Vogue.it evolve during the last months and how do you see the future of the site and the magazine?
FS: The site has become an international fashion site, in fact 30% of our readers are English speaking. That’s why we update the site now even on weekends and on Italian holidays.
In the begining it was the magazine that introduced the site to the readers. People started visiting it because it was Vogue Italia website.
Now the site is introducing the magazine to a whole new audience of internet surfers.
The printed magazine and website will always move parallely.
The magazine’s first priority is to mentain the quality of the editorials and the photography, while the site is there to share with the readers Vogue’s point of view on actual events, post behind-the-scene footage of the editorials and communicate with our visitors on daily basis.
ZFB: Do you feel “threatened by” or “in competition with” all the other blogs and fashion sites out there?
Nowadays anybody can start a blog or a website and begin writing what they think about fashion and style, and some of these people are pretty successful.
FS: We don’t feel in competition with anybody, it’s just not the way we work in Vogue.
We want to make things as best as we can and that’s enough for us.
I believe that fashion blogs and magazines can work together, they are not in competion because they are two different approaches to fashion.
ZFB: Lately fashion magazines have been crticized for using more celebrities than model to attract people and sell more copies.
Vogue Italia has also been using more celebrities in the editorials, is it to make the outfits iconic in peoples minds or simply to attract a different audience to the magazine.
FS: It depends on what you mean by celebrities. If you mean TV celebrities, we don’t use them or write about them to attract people as we’re not a gossip magazine.
The “celebrities” we feature in Vogue are queens, princesses, and actors that have a certain style and an approach to fashion.
ZFB: Everybody on fashion forums and blogs has been debating whether early exposure of the collections and accessibility of designers is good or bad for the fashion business.
Some designers, like Stefano Gabbana, are very active on Twitter sharing previews of their collections and photos from their look books. While others, like Tom Ford, don’t want to have anything to do with the internet and would rather keeping their collections a “secret”, sharing information and photos only with selected fashion magazines.
Which is the right approach? and does over exposure hurt the final product?
FS: I believe in communicating and in the internet and that’s exactly what I’m doing here in Vogue.
But I do think that too much exposure hurts, there should be a right balance like with everything else in life.
You can go on twitter, open yourself to people and discuss your personal openions but without becoming a caricature/spoof…
Also during this interview Mrs. Sozzani told me that they are working on a new feature for the site that's gonna be only for men and launched in Jan 2011.
Can't wait!
