What’s “in” for fashion writers

Photo+by+Stephen+Walford

Photo by Stephen Walford

I spent the entire month of February checking the British Vogue website every day, waiting for one particular announcement: the release of tickets to the third Vogue Fashion Festival in association with Harrods in London on March 29 and 30.

The extravaganza promised to be a Mecca for the fashionable, with special talks from designers like Valentino and Sarah Burton, supermodels like Naomi Campbell, Karlie Kloss and Rosie Hungtington-Whitely, as well as artists like Lily Allen and Grayson Perry, and many more.

Finally the day of release came while I was out on the University of Leeds campus, and after navigating my way through the website on my phone, I secured tickets for both days. The festival took place at the Queen Elizabeth Hall at the Southbank Center in London, a gorgeous area with prime location right along the Thames a few paces from Waterloo Bridge and a breathtaking view of Big Ben and Parliament across the river.

On the first day, I arrived around 6 o’clock and the festival  – which had begun at 10:30 that morning – was still in full swing. The crowd was mostly young women, all with fresh faces of makeup, blown out hair, and vertigo inducing heels.

Everyone was dressed to impress, breaking out their best accessories, among them red soled Louboutins, Chanel handbags, and statement piece jewelry. I  dressed in my crimson Yigal Azrouël slacks, black Ralph Lauren sleeve shirt with matching black ballet flats, and my long Smyth camel-colored coat.

And infectious buzz filled the venue as guests stood in hour long lines waiting to be pampered by professionals. For some, the buzz came from having their hair styled in one of the four options by Kérastase hairdressers, or their nails painted by OPI representatives, or their makeup done by Burberry makeup artists.

Over the two days I attended four of the special talks. The first day I attended “Valentino: King of Glamour” featuring Valentino Garavani. The Italian designer’s designs are, “characterized by its romanticism, femininity and the color red.”

During his hour long chat with Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman, Valentino came across as a terrifically humble man with a love for seeing beautiful women wearing his clothes on the red carpet, his pugs that travel with him everywhere and his penchant for rose gardens.

The next day I attended “Good Taste, Bad Taste – The Shock of The New,” with Turner Prize-winning artist Grayson Perry, singer and songwriter Lily Allen and British designer Jasper Conran. Then, I went to “Want To Work In Fashion? Vogue’s Fashion Master Class,” and “Fashion Legends” with super model Naomi Campbell and Italian Vogue editor Franca Sozzani.

Each feature talk was jam-packed with juicy details and insightful topics, but the best was “Want To Work In Fashion? Vogue’s Fashion Master Class.” This stellar panel included Lisa Armstrong, the fashion editor of The Telegraph; Sarah Burton, creative director at Alexander McQueen (and designer of Kate Middleton’s wedding dress), Daniel Marks, director of The Communications Store, Shulman, and Louise Wilson, course director at Central Saint Martins.

The Vogue Fashion Master class, moderated by Vogue’s deputy editor Emily Sheffield, started off with Armstrong discussing her career and how she became fashion editor at The Telegraph.  She regaled the audience with the story of her first job, working at a tiny women’s fitness magazine that shared desks and phones with Penthouse.

“Don’t be grand about your first job – go where they’ll take you and work jolly jolly hard,” said Armstrong.

I was surprised to learn that the panelists writing for magazines and newspapers about fashion didn’t start off with an encyclopedic knowledge of the fashion world. Each attendee was given a pamphlet with tips from the panel on getting ahead in fashion. While each panelist pointed out you should have a love and passion for what you are doing, none of them stressed any need to know anything about fashion. In fact, Armstrong deterred writers from it.

“No waffle, no clichés, no fashion-speak. Ever. If you want to learn how to write, read good writers and try to work out how they do it. If you find that writing comes easily to you, you’re not doing it properly,” she said.

Shulman believes skill and the ability to learn quickly are more important than knowing everything. She spoke of how she knew nothing about fashion when she began at Vogue. Today when she is interviewing people she looks for their assets as a writer, and not whether they are wearing this-season’s shoes or not.

“It matters in an interview that I like how the applicant looks but they don’t have to be expensively dressed or neat or very fashionable – just appealing to my eye. I have to look at them every day in the office after all,” she said.

The panelists also stressed the importance of manners. Everyone agreed that interns should have no grand ideas of what they are undertaking, and that they shouldn’t be snobbish about where they work. The ability and willingness to listen and take constructive criticism and responsibility were mentioned many times on the handout.

When the festival ended, I was somewhat melancholy with its dissolution and took a brief stroll along the Waterloo Bridge with a food truck burrito in hand. As I looked out over the Thames, admiring Big Ben and the rest of the London skyline, I couldn’t help but think about how quickly the weekend went by.

I had waited for over a month to buy tickets and for the weekend of the festival to arrive and now it was already over. But to hear insider tips from some of the best fashion writers in the world was well worth the wait.

 

Emma Sandler is studying abroad at the University of Leeds. She can be reached at [email protected].

 

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