THE FUTURE OF FASHION
Ringleader Anna Wintour Navigates And You Pay
This past Wednesday, July 7, three editors-in-chief of different international publications of Vogue came together (virtually) for the 5th annual Vogue Forces of Fashion event. In a panel moderated by Vogue Runway’s Luke Leitch, the trio – American Vogue’s Anna Wintour, Vogue China’s newly-hired Margaret Zhang, and British Vogue’s Edward Enniful – discussed the future of the Vogue brand and how the past year and a half has transformed the fashion industry.
Impactful events of 2020, such as the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement, took early center stage during the panel. Buzzwords like “sustainability” and “inclusivity” were a main focal point as the editors contemplated the lasting effects of the global health crisis and BLM, and how these events forced new ways of thinking and prioritizing. Enniful pointed to the new dominance of digital communication and its “leveling of the playing field” between people in power and a younger generation of influencers. Zhang also touched on this while discussing her upcoming first issue for Vogue China, which happens to be the magazine’s September issue. She’s holding an open casting for the cover to discover new talent, as well as to emphasize “democratization” – a concept Enniful says will create more positive environments for creativity.
“I think moving forward there aren’t going to be too many ivory towers with designers dictating to the public what to wear,” Enniful explained at the panel. He went on to say how it will be curators, rather than just designers, that will be more in demand in the near future. “We’ll need people who can direct amongst all this noise.”
For Wintour, the eventual end of the pandemic does not necessarily mean a full return to the classic in-person runway show. Rather, she imagines a mash-up of old and new for future fashion weeks, where classic live shows will be smaller and more intimate, and livestreamed/digital shows will continue to increase in creativity and change the way we look at fashion. However, she doesn’t count live runways completely out just yet.
“I think it will be a hybrid way of looking at clothes,” Wintour said, “but the idea that the fashion show could be completely digital, I think that nobody is thinking that anymore.”
Other guest speakers at the Forces of Fashion event included singer Billie Eilish and Gucci Creative Director Alessandro Michele. As many of Eilish’s ensembles are the work of Michele himself (including the amazing looks she wore to the Grammys in March), the two have developed a close relationship. At their panel, they discussed the secret to their close connection, which Eilish said is mainly because of the late-night timing of their chats.
“Because of the time difference, we end up talking at midnight,” Eilish said (she is based in Los Angeles while Michele is based in Rome).
They went on to discuss the changing landscape of gender politics in fashion, their shared love of subversive style statements (Michele noted that Eilish’s early love of masks was an omen of things to come), the story and inspiration behind Eilish’s transformation, and of course, her epic British Vogue cover.
Head over to Vogue Forces of Fashion to check out all of the discussions and other speakers, including Marc Jacobs, Andrew Bolton, John Galliano, and more!
