March 2009
Franca Sozzani, editor-in-chief of Italian Vogue, arrives in London this morning to collect her Brit Insurance Designs of the Year award at the Design Museum.
The recognition is for A Black Issue, which she published last July. It triggered such an explosion of demand that Jonathan Newhouse, chairman of Condé Nast International, ordered an unprecedented reprint of 40,000 issues for distribution in America and Britain.
The award places Sozzani in a 2008 cohort that includes other socially useful contributions from architects and transport, product and graphic designers. “It’s an honour, and one that is special to me, because it’s coming from outside the fashion and magazine industry,” she says.
Four months before Barack Obama was elected, Sozzani shamed the fashion industry for the “white-out” that persisted on its catwalks and in its editorial and advertising spreads.
Four different covers showed Naomi Campbell, Jourdan Dunn, Liya Kebede and Sessilee Lopez.
Editorial content focused on black models of all ages, photographed by Steven Meisel.
What swung the award for Sozzani is the way she used the power of Vogue to reach beyond the boundaries of fashion. I know this, because I sat on the panel, chaired by Alan Yentob, that scrutinised each entry for some kind of point beyond mere prettiness, cerebral content or even originality.
Thus, the Magno wooden radio whose production can sustain village populations in Indonesia won the product category, and a ski-lift system built in Medellin in Colombia, which gives mobility to the city’s poorest people, was recognised as best transport scheme.
The Black Issue stood up as work that didn’t have to be explained to anyone.
In one way, it was the wild card, because as a design artefact it looks exactly the way Vogue Italia has always looked under Sozzani.
Yet the content was judged to have done something socially to the good.
That vindicates the potential of fashion’s energy, and it feels correct that Sozzani should be recognised alongside her peers.
Each has done something to give the arcane micro-worlds of special-interest design and designers a much-need makeover – something the public, not just insider-geeks, will respect.
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