EDITOR’S LETTER
I was five when I fell in love with shoes, a pair that had just been gifted to my mother. They were, of course, big shoes to fill, and still are (a sentiment Kenneth Cole illustrates beautifully in our section ‘Bazaar At Five’). It is the same with Harper’s Bazaar India. The magazine comes with a legacy of over 150 years, a legacy that has seen Andy Warhol illustrate its pages, Truman Capote write, and Richard Avedon shoot for them.
Harper’s Bazaar stands as the style bible for the well-dressed woman with a well-dressed mind. This special fifth anniversary issue focuses on exactly those attributes. The theme of the ‘Bazaar A-List’ emerged last year, when we decided to celebrate this 50th issue of the magazine with 50 very special people. They would not just be people in fashion, because the well-dressed mind is interested in so much more. Bazaar likes to talk about the fashionable life, and these would be all the people you needed for it. After all, the Bazaar Life is lived with heart. And art. Mindfulness. Some cheek and a lot of chic. The ‘Bazaar A-List’ is our carefully selected list of people across genres, a selection of pathbreakers and influencers, the beautiful and talented, the people changing the way we live and give, and of course, what we wear. What is an A-List? At Bazaar, the A-List is a snapshot of contemporary culture, one that reflects what we value and who we are. So yes, there is fashion—designers, entrepreneurs, and tastemakers.
These are people who influence how we dress, the way we see, what we buy, and what we preserve. There is film—Bollywood is the country’s most important influencer, and its reigning queen, Deepika Padukone,
steps onto our cover after scooping up all the year’s awards for Best Actress, which came on the heels of the biggest hits of 2013. There are feminists. There are philanthropists. Artists. Sports stars, debutantes, newsmakers, and restaurateurs. There are a lot of women. And a few good men. These are people you need to know. If the A-List addresses the well-dressed mind, then our fashion section addresses the trappings. We’ve turned the fashion section on its head and made it our trend report, and the top 10 trends for spring march across its pages. The A-List theme pops up there as well, with collaborations and shoots—we went backstage with fashion-industry insiders for one, asked designers to style a trend in another, and chivvied artist Rashid Rana to create his version of spring’s art-inspired trend for a third.
As the icing, Carine Roitfeld edits spring’s new looks with Karl Lagerfeld. An issue as special as this cannot be put together without its share of drama. And there has been a lot of it. From a cancelled cover shoot (yes, Bollywood stars fall ill too) to a marriage, a few tears, innumerable allnighters, looks flown in in the nick of time from Paris, and half a dozen last minute dashes across the country, we’ve seen it all. We’ve mostly laughed though, because after all, what is fashion without madness and madness is to be enjoyed. I hope you will enjoy this issue too, and join me in the celebrations of this landmark. Harper’s Bazaar India has turned five, but we’ve only just begun.