“A LOT GOES ON...
…but nothing happens,” sang Ben Lee way back in what we used to consider a pretty cynical time. The recession had the youth of the ’90s (I was one) feeling hopeless about their futures, the spectre of AIDS had everyone feeling paranoid and complicated about sex in a way our free-loving, baby-boomer parents could never understand, grunge gave a sound and a wardrobe to the chic mood of disaffection and despondency, and everyone walked around channelling Ethan Hawke in Reality Bites. But that looks like an age of innocence compared to what we’re living now, where our problem isn’t so much that nothing happens, but that way too much happens. As far as ’90s lyrics go, Jesus Jones’ musing that “it seemed the world could change at the blink of an eye” was perhaps better at predicting a 2018 future. Politically, culturally, technologically – life right now moves fast enough to give you permanent whiplash, and sometimes just keeping up feels like an impossible task. (Fact: if Reality Bites had been set in a world where you’re expected to be as familiar with the tears of one tiny, reluctant five-year-old dancer in China as the 6,550 Syrians displaced by violence every day, Winona would have definitely nailed the definition of ironic.)
How we live and the things that matter to us are almost unrecognisable from back then, or even to five, three or a single year ago. Even in the fashion industry, which by very definition lives in a permanent, purposeful state of flux, things feel significantly transformative. The changing state of the world is evident in the most diverse runways yet (at least when it comes to issues of race, if not body shape) and more and more shows presenting men’s and women’s collections together instead of separately (a concept that suddenly feels as bizarrely quaint as the idea that we still need to force people into separate, gender-defined bathrooms), while the social fight we have on our hands was evident in a much more literal way at shows like Maria Grazia Chiuri’s Dior, where the Paris protests of 1968 made for a resonant theme. Back then it was the students uprising against capitalism, consumerism and traditional values that led to a social revolution in France. And it’s young people, again, who are bringing about the inherent change we need now.
Teenagers from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and everyone involved in the recent March For Our Lives in the US have turned extreme tragedy into a force for good by harnessing the gun-control fight and already making headway in a way no adults had managed before them. Theirs is the most racially diverse generation in history, as well as more radically accepting of gender, sexual and identity nuances than previous generations. The recent success of Wonder Woman and Black Panther means that my five-year-old is growing up not knowing any other world than one where he has a powerful black superhero and a kick-ass female one (two, once Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel – in shockingly-appropriate-for-ass-kicking flats, no less – hits screens next year) to choose between for dress-ups. This is, of course, alongside the hundreds of white male options, but the point is that at least now he has options.
This marks our first-ever Rising Stars issue, featuring five of the brightest and boldest talents coming out of this country today. Not teenagers, but young women who beautifully represent the change we’re currently seeing in the world (see p54). At the other end of the spectrum, our “Coming Of Age” story (p74) looks at how that 1968 generation is turning their revolutionary attitude to the idea of ageing. Proving that, no matter what age you are, we can each be an extraordinary force for change in our own way.