EDITOR’S NOTE
We invited three bloggers into our #ELLECanadaCloset to take on a style challenge with our top spring picks from Nordstrom. Check out “Fashion Math” (page 50). During the shoot, I raided the racks for this month’s Editor’s Note shot.
Even before Fernanda Ly hit the Louis Vuitton runway wearing a leather skirt, pink moto jacket and anime-esque tiara, Nicolas Ghesquière set the scene for his futuristic-inspired collection with a voice-over soundtrack from the Minecraft trailer. “Let’s go wherever you want to go... build anything you want. Build your own little community. Protect yourself with the strongest armour that you can craft. Nobody can tell you what you can or cannot do. With no rules to follow, this adventure is up to you.” Ghesquière kicked off his fashion adventure with a trippy light show that felt like we were being sucked into a virtual world inhabited by manga warriors with a kick-ass sense of style. “It’s really about travel to the frontier of the digital world,” he told reporters backstage. “I love the spirit of the house and its history, but I’m also here to look forward.” He wasn’t the only designer in a futuristic mood. Similar ideas were on show at Chanel, Edun, Prada and Maison Margiela. But were these collections prescient in the way that Paco Rabanne’s were in the late ’60s, or were they merely flirting with the concept through clever styling? Clara Young explores this in “Practical Magic” (page 86). Rabanne, who, along with Pierre Cardin and André Courrèges, launched the idea of fashion futurism, interestingly never considered his work in such a prophetic light. “We can only be decadent—you copy the past or are contemporary,” he famously told The New York Times. Or, as Young suggests, he clearly had no issues with the future often being a rendition of the past. That’s something that our cover subject, rapper Iggy Azalea, is certainly hoping isn’t the case. After a difficult year—in which she found herself embroiled in a series of nasty race-inspired social-media feuds—she is ready to move forward with her much- anticipated second album, Digital Distortion. Azalea told features editor Aliyah Shamsher that she would like to “Men in Black memory-erase 2015.” After reading “Iggy Reboot” (page 64), you may have a slightly different perspective on how things went down for the controversial rap artist. “We live in a digital age of distortion where we’re all distorting each other and distorting ourselves and our perception of who we all are, and none of it is really accurate anymore,” she says. Azalea suggests that her latest work is moodier but her desire was to create music that makes her fans happy. While we were putting this futurethemed issue together, I got into the habit of checking my daily horoscope by our long-time astrologist, Georgia Nicols. For today, she told me that there might be a few power struggles over how money is being spent but cautioned me not to take the bait because tomorrow is going to be a lovely day. It was a fitting footnote to this month’s theme, because the chance of happier, lovely days explains our enduring faith in, and fascination with, the future.