EMMA JOHNSON
BEYONCÉ AND CAMILLA STRIKE A POSE FOR VOGUE
With the rise and rise of social media and fashion influencers, recent years have prompted a lot of discussion about just how relevant Vogue magazine is today.
It is true, that the 106-year-old publication might not have quite the sway over Generation Z the way it did Boomers and Gen Xers but it still has power to pull the big names to pose for its glossy pages.
Take July’s issue of British Vogue, for example. It contains not one but two queens. Well, kinda.
On the cover is one Beyoncé Knowles-Carter aka – Queen Bey – music icon/pop culture goddess.
Inside is HRH The Duchess Of Cornwall, who it was recently confirmed, will be Queen Consort when Prince Charles ascends the throne.
While Beyoncé’s high fashion photos are accompanied by the magazine’s editor Edward Enninful regaling us with a description of dining ‘en famille’ at home with the mega star (‘a scrumptious dinner of ribs, cream corn, peas, and mashed potatoes’, he confides) and two brief quotes from his subject, Camilla sat down for an in-depth interview with Vogue’s features director Giles Hattersley.
In the opening paragraph of his piece, Hattersley reveals that the first words from the 74-year-old duchess to photographer Jamie Hawkesworth were: “Sorry you’ve got to photograph an old bat this morning.”
I can’t imagine Beyoncé’s photo shoot with Rafael Pavarotti would have begun with such a self-deprecating remark. Beyoncé’ dazzles in jaw-dropping designs from names like Schiaparelli and Alaïa teamed with sparkling jewels from Tiffany & Co.
Enninful describes the direction for the images as ‘a fashion fantasia spun from the tropes of club life during the last century’s final quarter’.
Pavarotti’s lens captures the 40-year-old mother-of-three sitting astride a motorbike in one shot, wearing an extravagant headdress and riding a horse on a dancefloor, in another.
Camilla, on the other hand Hattersley tells us, shunned a Vogue wardrobe for her first ever portraits in the fashion bible, preferring to be pictured in pieces from her own closet.
She also, we learn, poohpoohed a suggestion that she wear something to match the colour of wisteria in the gardens of Clarence House – Charles and Camilla’s London residence, where the shoot took place.
The writer adds that she terms the shade ‘menopausal mauve’. I don’t foresee that popping up on a Pantone colour chart any time soon.
Camilla’s make-up is minimal. Apparently she had been wearing some press-on nails, but ‘lost them all gardening’ the day before the shoot.
She looks utterly at ease before the camera.
In one striking full-length shot she wears a blue evening dress by Bruce Oldfield Couture, in another she looks relaxed seated in her private study, wearing a blue silk dress by British designer Fiona Clare.
Her feet are nestled inside a pair of round-toed nude highheeled courts and there is a glimmer of mischief about her facial expression.
There are no mashed potatoes, but Camilla does offer her interviewer a cup of tea and a Duchy biscuit.
For millions of women Beyoncé’ is the ultimate achiever, a style icon who told them that girls ‘run the world’ and if he liked it then he shoulda ‘put a ring on it’ and her Vogue editorials over the years have been among the magazine’s best.
Still, I can’t help but think I would rather go for a drink with ‘old bat’ Camilla... even if it’s nothing stronger than a cuppa.
■ The July issue of Vogue is out now