EDITOR’S LETTER
Katy Perry fronts our cover as she tours Australia this month, and just as with her on-stage transformations, she takes on many guises in these pages – with the help of some fabulous wigs. When I saw her perform a few years ago, I watched from the audience in wonder of her speedy and elaborate costume changes. Her friend, Vogue’s Derek Blasberg, takes us backstage to find out just how on earth she does it. You know you are in the inner circle when a celebrity as famous as Katy is okay with you standing there while she is stripped semi-naked. Derek and Katy have also created a fantastic, not-to-be-missed video together on Vogue.com.au.
While our fashion director Christine Centenera and Australian expat and Vogue cover photographer Emma Summerton were shooting Katy in the US on one of her rare days off, closer to home we were obsessing over another incredible voice and stage performer, Kelly Rowland.
I was introduced to Kelly via email by a mutual friend who lives in New York, and we met up at a Bondi cafe. I confess I was already on ‘team Kelly’, but after spending an afternoon chatting about fashion, music, her upbringing, motherhood and the challenges of achieving balance in all aspects of our lives, I felt I had found a friend. Kelly then went on to completely win over the whole Vogue team, leaving us all smitten and thrilled when she suddenly popped up at Coachella with Destiny’s Child midway through her latest filming schedule for The Voice. (Well, she had mentioned she had to pop back to the States to do something – an understatement to say the least!) I love the pictures of her from page 136, styled beautifully by fashion editor Petta Chua, and Kelly says they are some of her most favourite ever, too.
And while we are on the subject of superb styling, I hope you enjoy the luscious images created through the clever combination of Parisians and fellow Australian expats Tina Arena and Catherine Baba. We have celebrated both talents in the pages of Vogue before, but as this shoot from page 150 proves, the combination of Catherine’s styling vision and Tina’s beauty as she prepares to play the lead role in Evita is simply magic.
We continue our musical theme by introducing you to some up-andcoming female talents making their mark (page 80) and talk to the artists being tapped by beauty brands to collaborate (page 98). And make sure you read Alice Birrell’s feature on the ‘merch’ trend and its direct-toconsumer distribution model, which is transforming fashion (page 146).
As we enter into a new season, I hope you find lots of new fashion and much, much more in these pages to love.