EDITOR’S LETTER
Editor-in-Chief Farrah Storr discusses the therapeutic power of secrets and introduces ELLE’s two new series to look out for
DO YOU KEEP SECRETS? I KNOW I DO. My whole life is littered with the things, like letters gathered in an old shoe box stashed in the cellar. They wouldn’t be shocking if I shared them with you here. For secrets only ever feel truly momentous to those who keep them. I have held secret failures, secret fears, secret crushes and secret grudges throughout my entire life, each one strapped tightly to my chest. I expect you have, too. Because secrets are what make us fundamentally human. To not have any secrets at all would, I suspect, make you a far less-interesting person.
But we are careful with our secrets. We must be; for they hold such power. We understand this from the moment we are old enough to articulate our deepest, most clandestine thoughts and feelings. It is why diaries are a young person’s best friend. And therapists never go out of fashion. And yet… there is something within us that is compelled to share them with others. Perhaps it’s that frisson of danger, knowing as we do that a secret shared is, at the same time, control relinquished. When you share your most private thoughts with a close friend or colleague, you are – in essence – trusting them with a trembling piece of yourself. It is trading catharsis for power. Yet secrets shared, when not in the name of idle gossip, can be hugely therapeutic. To know that another person keeps the same hidden beliefs or behaviours as you can be deliciously reassuring. Which is why we have launched a new series called The Secret Lives of Women – several stories of which are in this issue, from page 84. (Find more at ELLE.com/uk.) Free to roam under the cloak of anonymity, each woman has bared her soul, not with shame or trepidation, but with feeling, gusto and pride. Speaking of secrets, this month we also launch a new segment – ELLE Spotlight on page 48 – where we highlight fashion’s under-the-radar names and faces, all of whom we think you should know about before everyone else. Here at ELLE, we have always placed a huge amount of importance on championing designers who – particularly at the beginning of their careers – need the support of editors and consumers to be able to go on creating. We hope you fall for them as much as we have. Enjoy the issue…
“SECRETS SHARED, WHEN NOT IN THE NAME OF IDLE GOSSIP, CAN BE HUGELY THERAPEUTIC”