Why I Love Vogue

In Vogue we trust. Perri Lewis on why she loves the original fashion bible

By Perri Lewis

“That’ll be ¬£3.40 please.” So I give over a handful of change.

In the luxurious world of fashion, £3.40 is pennies. But that £3.40 can get you something priceless in a British newsagents.

Vogue was, is and forever will be the world’s leading fashion magazine. In its many localised publications, Vogue has graced the shelves in over 40 countries for over 50 years. It dictates what is in fashion and who is in fashion; it has the power to change the fortunes of any rising star or established fashionista. It is for this, along with many other reasons, that I will never stop buying Vogue.

Flick through the pages of any one of 14 international editions and you will see the future of fashion staring right back at you. From the mini sections at the front showcasing next season’s must-have bags, coats, jewels and shoes, past the sneaky glimpses of what’s been tried and tested by the fashion elite, to the always-decadent, never-plain 12-page shoots detailing every cut and finish of the latest looks, Vogue consistently predicts, and helps to create the looks we all want to have.

Despite spawning a plethora of similar fashion magazines like Cosmopolitan and Elle, no other publication has ever done this so well, nor been so close to the frontline of fashion: the vision of Vogue’s stylists, editors and writers never ceases to amaze me. On first look I often reel back in horror at the styles they champion, questioning whether such peculiar or extreme designs will ever catch on. But they almost always do and six months, or even a year later, you will always, always see Topshop-styled teens and Chloe-inspired twentysomethings parading down high streets all over the world imitating the outfits you saw on Vogue’s pages so long ago.

But the wonder of Vogue isn’t just that it offers such a confident anddefinitive insight into the next fashion era, it is that it does so insuch an exciting way. The magazine, with its hundreds of glossy pages, isalways bursting with rich, luxurious colour and texture. Every page isexquisitely designed and most of the photography would not look out of place in a modern art gallery. This forces you to look at clothes in a different light; it forces you to see the clothes they showcase as the pieces of art that they are.

Broadsheet fashion critics may be able to craft wonderful articles thatdescribe the latest cuts, designs and colour, but even when they do add the odd photo to their story, they will never be able to fully recreate theworld of fashion. The thin news paper that their pieces are printed on can never fully capture the lavishness of that world like Vogue’s glossy pages can.

This is why Vogue became an institution within the fashion world. Itssuccess, although partially dependant on the team of talented stylists,

editors and journalists, has come from the fact that buying Vogue is not like buying any other fashion magazine or reading any fashion section in a newspaper.

You don’t buy Vogue because it gives you realistic fashion advice or because it has any real practical use to your life. You buy it because it captures the lavishness of the fashion industry and lets you into a world that you will never know but will always aspire to. For less than four pounds you can travel to a place where everyone is beautiful, their skin never ages and their stomach-hugging underwear never shows.

The fact that most of the magazine is filled with advertisements adds to this experience. Although Vogue is often criticised for the large amount of space it dedicates to advertising, I do not believe that this is a bad thing for the reader. Beautifully-designed adverts for brands like Louis Vuitton, Cartier and Marc Jacobs blend in seamlessly with the rest of the magazine and offer just as much of an insight into the latest looks as the editorial pages do.

Unfortunately, despite my rave review, I cannot describe Vogue as the perfect fashion magazine: its stance on the use of fur in fashion is appalling. American Vogue editor Anna Wintour firmly supports its use, and, like many other Vogue editors around the world, has been known to fill fashion shoots with garments made of all types of fur. Vogue’s world-wide backing of the barbaric trade prevents the industry from dying away and paves the way for more designers to use fur and more of the fashion elite to wear it.

However, despite the fact that my vegetarian conscience niggles at me whenever I pick up a copy, I will never stop buying the magazine. It is a truly great fashion magazine. It captures the spirit of the fashion industry, predicts its future and, when I flick through my old copies in many years time, it will document its history. All for a mere lb3.40 a month.