My Favorite Magazine Editorial

This is What I Miss In Magazines

For practically my entire life I’ve been devoted to fashion magazines. Before I could even properly read I would pour through my mother’s Vogues. One of my early memories is asking my mother if I could borrow her vog-you, as I pronounced it. She just laughed, handed it to me and started calling it vog-you as well. 

I loved the elegant world it depicted; beautiful women dressed impeccably. They looked serene and confident, but also very much in command. Two things I loved as a child: fashion and New York City. Growing up in New Jersey I was exposed to the city early with frequent trips there; particularly to see a favorite uncle who lived in Manhattan. From an early age I proclaimed that is where I’d live. I was destined to work in fashion in New York.

Before I took the leap, fashion magazines were my refuge. I would hoard them in stacks all around my room. When I finally moved to the city for college, the stacks came with me. 

Before the internet, fashion magazines were the life line to all that was happening in fashion, and they did an excellent job. The magazines gained even greater importance to me as a student of fashion, design assistant and finally designer. As a student I would spend hours in the FIT library pouring through their complete collection of bound Vogues and Bazaars since they began publishing. If an image captivated me I would bring it to the clunker of a photo copy machine and make a copy. This is where I absorbed and learned the history of fashion and more importantly developed my own eye and design sensibility.  

When I started working in fashion, magazines ruled. They could make or break a design house. They also gave credits, not only for the designer of what was photographed but where it could be bought and how much it cost. Items would sell out with the right credit. In the design room we were all magazine fanatics. We all had our own personal mood boards from magazine tear sheets displayed behind our desks. I’m talking about pre-computer times. Computers were beginning to be used, but only by the office staff, not the creatives, that didn’t come until around 2000. 

So why all this chatter about magazines? Because I miss them. Desperately. I still read Vogue and Bazaar but their importance has been diminished by the internet and with it the budgets for extravagant location shoots and superstar photographers. The focus has also changed to chronicling the lives of celebrities, which I find less interesting.

Over the years due to moves and to avoid becoming a stage five hoarder, I had to dispense of my piles of old magazines. Little by little I culled them looking through each one and tearing out the pages I couldn’t bear to part with. Then I amassed a hefty collection of tear sheets. Eventually, this had to be culled as well. I still have a box or two of magazine tear sheets, containing the crème de la crème.

Here, I share with you my all time favorite magazine editorial. Regardless of how many times I look at it, it still makes me dream. That’s what magazines have always meant to me; the dream. It’s what drew me to magazines as a little girl, dreaming of the perfect world of beauty, romance and adventure. I loved the women skipping through the world in satin heels or in this case floating above it.

The editorial isn’t old in terms of the timeline of my magazine obsession. It covers the Milan collections from the early 2000s. It’s shot by one of my favorite photographers, Melvin Sokolsky, best known for his fashion photography with a surrealist bent from the 1960s, most notably his bubble series.  Remarkably, this marvelous late-career editorial could not be found online.

The shoot was styled by Brana Wolf. Her editorials for Harper’s Bazaar are among my favorites as I noted while going through the aforementioned tear sheets. Wolf is well represented in the tear sheets saved. I’ve always favored the low-key luxe clothes she chose. Though she preferred understated fashion, her brilliant styling had high impact and a sense of casual elegance which can be applied to real life.  Something I find sorely missing in most editorials today.

Model Erin Wasson personified the spirit with her ethereal beauty and grace. Convincingly she portrayed an otherworldly lightness of being as she floats through an evocative Italian villa in billowing clothes; timeless as the surroundings.

I still find inspiration in every page. The clothes, accessories and mood are still appealing twenty years later. The short dark wig somehow lends a timeless exoticism to the whole show. That’s style!

I hope you also find inspiration in this. It’s too good not to share. This is what I miss in magazines. Or am I just looking in the wrong places? If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

Harper’s Bazaar US, Photographer Melvin Sokolsky, Fashion Editor Brana Wolf, Model Erin Wassin

Thanks for reading, until next time seek out the inspiration!

xxx Jolain