English Texts
It is the spirit of the times to ask fashion magazines to do above all one thing: photograph reality in an authentic way. It’s a zeitgeist that manifests itself in the form of posts and likes, addressed to magazines which today – between print editions and social media – reach wider readerships than ever before. Fashion magazines are called on to portray beauty for what it is, in all its different shapes, ages, ethnicities and genders, in its honest, inevitable imperfection. In fact, like many other Vogues around the world, Vogue Italia contemplates these themes every day, and not just since today.
Yet there was a time, and who knows if it might return, when fashion photography was asked to do a different job: to give shape to dreams.
Indeed, at a time when anger, confusion and fake news are dominating the digital conversation, even steering the formation of public opinion, the world in general, and the fashion world in particular, need truth. But they certainly can’t do without beauty. Preferably real beauty, but imagined will do. Because the moment you doubt you can fly, you cease to be able to do it (Peter Pan says so).
This isn’t to speak of manipulation or passing off a strained idea of perfection, touching up bodies or skin in post-production. Rather, it’s about shifting the gaze from the here and now to an elsewhere, whether that elsewhere is possible or not.
Is it possible? Can we momentarily put aside the legitimate need for realism and give free rein to the imagination, like many times in the past? Can we use the tools provided by art and – why not? – technology to portray a world that doesn’t exist?
This is the origin of this September issue. It’s why we’ve dedicated the cover to three different visions of Paradise, entrusting them to the face of Italy’s most popular model.
So, this issue features flying houses and virtual clothes. Jokers, aces of clubs and papier-mâché trompe l’oeil. Architects, Pulitzer Prize winners and dreamers. Pilots who photograph the world from above the clouds, sculptures as light as air. Paradises in white, black or colour. Amazement and wonder. Voluptuous couture dresses, in photos and drawings. New worlds that are more or less possible, and the people who work to imagine and build them.
As Michael Cunningham writes in this issue: every new paradise fades as it becomes familiar to us, but we can always create another one, and yet another after that.•