Vogue is 100 years old and the June issue of the UK magazine is a bumper edition with the most fascinating articles and reports inside. If fashion and it’s history interest you, it’s well worth investing in a copy to keep.

HRH The Duchess of Cambridge is on the cover so I couldn’t resist taking a photo of HRH inside my Nicky bag 🙂

Fashion Reporting

One of my favourite articles in this edition of Vogue is the one by Lisa Armstrong about fashion reporting now, versus way back in time.

In the digital age, it’s hard to wonder how difficult it must have been to get the written articles and photos of the catwalk shows from Paris, Milan and New York, back to London in time for publication. Reports had to be transcribed in London by a copy-writer (not a fashion specialist) taking down the article over the phone, so journalists were always worrying that no mistakes were going to be made.

This is a hilarious one:

I wonder what happened to the copy-writer (or the journalist) in this case…

How Things Have Changed

When once fashion reporting was reserved for a few, now everyone at a catwalk show can take and upload instantly, photos of their favourite looks.

Not that everyone get’s to go to a fashion show! Even today (left top), the room holds a few hundred people but that’s a lot more than back then (bottom left) when it was a very reserved affair.

As Lisa Armstrong reports, fashion shows changed dramatically in the early 1970’s when a few American designers showed in Paris to booming pop music, shocking the more reserved French.

By the 1980’s the Fashion Week in Paris was a huge and glamorous affair. I remember vividly one which I attended in 1987 or ’88. As a fashion student, I managed to get myself in the front row of photographers at a Jean Paul Gaultier show (not by invitation)! I had to hide my camera on the way in and the way out, for fear that the film would be torn from me in case the latest designs leaked out, not via the proper press. I got some great photos but it was days until they were processed and I don’t think I’ve even shared them (except for my college project) to date!

That’s another post…

More about this edition of Vogue coming soon. It really is great. And, I’m going to dig out all the 1980’s copies of Vogue that I have kept all these years. I might find something else worth sharing.