The new (male) editor of British Vogue has reignited Jan’s passion for fashion. Here are her thoughts:
I’ve been a Vogue reader now for – ooh, let me count. Wait, I’ve run out of fingers and toes. And I’ve run out of my husband’s fingers and toes, too, and I still haven’t quite got to how many years it is since I started reading it.
Suffice to say, I became addicted to Vogue in my teens, kept on reading through my mothering and freelance years, and carried on through my fashion-editor years. As director of this fashion website, Vogue is required reading…. That is, I have had to flick through its pages each month.
I’ve just opened the December issue – the first under new editor Edward Enninful and I’m reeling – in a good way.
It has got my fashion pulses racing again. It has made me yearn for stuff. And I don’t mean yearn for specific stuff just that it has made my mouth water for fashion.
Vogue always did that for me in my young years, which is clearly why I became addicted to it. But over the last 20 or so years, although I carried on reading it, it failed to make my pulse race.
It always looked beautiful and it was a good read, certainly. I was (I am) hugely admiring of former editor Alex Shulman. But her smarts were in proper journalism. She was (she is) profoundly clever and intelligent and that cool intellect shone through Vogue in exquisite layouts, imaginative features and beautifully-crafted prose…but she couldn’t quite disguise her lack of passion for fashion; it sort of bubbled up…
If you had asked me how I felt about Vogue over the past few years I would have been entirely complimentary; intellectually, it held my interest but it didn’t grab me in that visceral way that Vogue once did.
But truthfully, I thought it was me. I was older; a bit jaded; I’d seen it all. I felt I could no longer feel real excitement over fashion. And then I saw the cover of the December issue and opened it, and it seized me viscerally; made my pulse race; made my mouth water; made me want to pore over its pages… This may sound a bit nerdy and excessive, (CORRECTION, does sound a bit nerdy and excessive) but anyone who has spent a life in ‘print’ and fashion will understand!
I didn’t expect to feel that way about Vogue under its new editor, Edward Enninful. Not because Enninful is male or black (the first male editor in Vogue’s 100-year history and the first black editor at Conde Nast) but because Enninful made the transition from stylist to editor. As a journalist, my sense of amour proper was offended; it felt wrong, somehow that he should be appointed over a slew of glossy female candidates, one of whom told The Telegraph it was as though they were favourites at Cruft’s “and the cat won.”
To me, like to them, his appointment seemed ‘wrong’ because he hadn’t come up through the conventional journalism route.
But he has reignited my passion for all things fashion so I won’t just wait to desultorily flick through the pages of Vogue when I’ve got nothing better to do. I’ll be avidly poring over my copy so I can drool over the images and truly feel the tingling excitement of fashion…
Do you read Vogue? Did you used to read Vogue? tell us your thoughts below…
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