EDITOR’S LETTER
When we photographed Katie Holmes for these pages, the world was vastly different. The shoot, brought to life by an all-female cast, took place when Holmes was in Sydney late last year. The energy on set was dynamic but also light-hearted, with a confident Holmes moving freely to the background music photographer Bec Parsons had playing (I distinctly remember her singing along to Prince’s Kiss as it was blaring).
We could never have foreseen the global shutdown that would transpire or the fact Holmes would spend much of this year in lockdown in New York. So to complement her powerful shots of femininity, we tasked her with penning an essay about poignant truths she discovered during this period and of finding new beginnings (see page 154).
“Now the leaves of October are falling and dancing through the air on windy days,” Holmes writes. “Soon my window will be covered in the beauty of the first snow. And I feel better. I feel inspired. I feel grateful. The beauty of the world is before us.”
I recently heard someone say that as we approach the end of this year it’s important to “find your positive”. While I know we’re all keen to put 2020 behind us – and this sentiment may sound a little lofty – I do think there’s real value in acknowledging those important moments of clarity we’ve gained.
It’s a sentiment echoed by ABC radio journalist Virginia Trioli, who wrote exquisitely about emerging from Melbourne’s crippling extended lockdown for
Vogue Voice (on page 46). “While I wish this had never happened, how can it also be true that some of the loveliest things to happen to our family have occurred only because of lockdown?” she writes. “My husband said it would be the making of us. I’m astonished to realise that he was right.”
That resilience is also evident in our profile piece (page 116) on Julia Hartz, the CEO of Eventbrite, who was also a speaker at the recent Vogue Codes Summit. Earlier this year her company was forced to cut 45 per cent of its global workforce, a circumstance she describes as “a crisis beyond our imagination”. Yet Hartz chose to see rebuilding from scratch as a positive. She asked herself: ‘If we could push a reset button, what would we do differently?’ and says this has brought “out a different strength and force of creative energy that helped me personally”.
The optimism in these women’s stories is matched this month with fashion and beauty looks that are jubilant, colourful and bold – an invitation to feel lighter and more hopeful. It feels fortunate that here in Australia we’re about to enter summer, because for all of us, it’s a timely reminder to embrace the sunshine not just literally, but in our outlook, too.