GR AND DESIGNS
‘We have to believe in the idea of fashion,’ Jonathan Anderson tells us in a fascinating interview. ‘It cannot just be a shift dress every day.’
Over the past demoralising months, it has not even been a shift dress every day. Like so many, I started out dressing more for practicality than pleasure, a silk shirt and statement earrings belying the leggings worn below the scrutiny of the video camera. But comfortable though such an outfit might be, I discovered it had a profoundly damaging effect on my morale. I could make no decision wearing slippers, whereas a pair of proper heels instantly sharpened my focus.
This March issue is dedicated to the ‘idea of fashion’: as an expression of a bewitching aesthetic, as a reflection of a cultural moment, and a vitally important global business.
Within these pages, Anderson discusses the obligation he feels as a designer to connect with, and to express, the reality of the pandemic; Giovanna Engelbert tells us about being appointed Swarovski’s first ever global creative director during lockdown; and the novelist Lucy Jago shows how, through the
centuries, we have worn our hearts on our sleeves, shaking society in the process. Her exploration of the phenomenon of protest dressing takes in Kamala Harris’ white suit, the scarlet bonnet of the French revolutionaries, and the saffron ruffs worn by women at the court of King James I that broadcast a message of seditious liberation at a time when their wearers were expected to hold their tongues. Fashion as a weapon of a different kind may be seen in our cover star Carey Mulligan’s bold new film, Promising Young Woman, in which she plays an antiheroine dressed (almost literally) to kill.
Meanwhile its power as an art form to transport, to inspire and to uplift is demonstrated by two extraordinary shoots. One is a gloriously exuberant confection in shades of rose, blush and sugar pink, set in a British seaside resort. In the other, the photographer and model both plunged into the icy waters of Cumbria’s Buttermere for a story that is as full of drama as it is of beauty. I hope that you will find it equally immersive.