How Vogue is changing the face of Australian fashion
Vogue Australia might be celebrating 60 years of remarkable storytelling but it remains firmly focused on the future.
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From Hollywood legends and real-life royalty to agitators, artists, politicians and scientific gamechangers — for 60 years Vogue Australia has been framing the stories of remarkable and talented Australian women against the backdrop of stunning fashions created by our equally talented designers.
To look back over six decades of Vogue Australia covers is to look at a visual history of this country’s cultural and fashion identity, says Vogue Australia editor-in-chief Edwina McCann.
“The stories behind each of the covers are amazing in themselves, but it’s also the fact that you can pick the decade by just looking at it,” she tells Insider. “The choices that were made over the decades have reflected the society that we were living in at the time.”
Vogue Australia has forged relationships with many of this country’s most recognised women. In many cases, their association with the brand has launched a career or taken it to new heights.
“We’re interwoven with so many stories of so many well known Australian faces,” McCann says. “Elle MacPherson has been on our covers for 30 years, Sarah Murdoch’s had 11 covers — more than anyone else in Vogue Australia — and it set her life path in so many ways she didn’t realise at the time.”
A young Kristy Hinze — photographed as a young unknown teenager — was propelled into the spotlight and kickstarted a successful career that has spanned decades.
Looking back over 60 years of covers, it’s a relatively modern one that stands out for the respected editor.
The cover was of Princess Mary soon after she married Frederik, Crown Prince of Denmark and heir to the throne — and the fairytale story that went with it.
Former editor Kirstie Clements got a world exclusive interview with the Aussie and a look inside her new life.
“I think being given entry into a palace when they were newly married and being able to bring that story to life and capture those extraordinary images at that time was absolutely a world exclusive but really played to the imagination of all Australians,” she says. “For Vogue to be given that honour really did position our brand as one that a real life princess would talk to and Australia had never had one before.”
Sitting in the editor’s chair of a title that is seen as the world’s fashion bible is the dream of many young journalists, but the decisions that need to be made aren’t always of the kind you might see in the movies.
“I see it as a great responsibility but also a huge honour,” McCann says.
An important part of that responsibility is reflection. Learning from the past six decades and positioning the brand for the next 60 years.
Continuing to build on the diversity of Vogue Australia is vitally important to McCann, who admits that a quick look back over the years will show it is something that has been lacking.
“If you look through our history and our pages, it’s not very diverse at all,” she says. “That is what it is and it was the times but I do think through the years of all the waves of immigrants who have come to Australia and Indigenous Australians who didn’t see their stories in themselves reflected at all in our pages, or very rarely. I just don’t think we can be that.”
McCann points to large Indian and Chinese communities in Australia and the relative lack of representation of women from them in the fashion world in
this country.
“I feel with the power of Vogue we can pressure the agencies to be actively recruiting and looking for girls with different ethnicities,” she says. ”That will encourage change and it will bring opportunity for women like Adut who might otherwise not have had that — that’s just an important part of our storytelling.”
Another area McCann is focussing on is that of Indigenous stories, something that she hopes the brand can help champion with more robust coverage.
“Where we’ve really fallen down is in our Indigenous storytelling,” she says. “As a Sydney-born girl I’m embarrassed at how little knowledge I have of Indigenous culture and I figure I grew up reading Vogue so maybe if I can tell more stories in Vogue, the younger girls will hopefully read more Indigenous stories and be better educated and understand more of that culture because it’s what makes us unique.”
* Vogue Australia: Sixty Years Through the Lens, Wednesday, November 27, Fox Showcase on Foxtel, 8.30pm AEDT
Originally published as How Vogue is changing the face of Australian fashion