Alexandra Shulman @ Rave

We all had the fantastic privilege to have Alexandra Shulman, the editor of British Vogue with us yesterday evening. I think I can speak for us all when I say we were all very excited and anticipated her arrival! When she walked in it a hush came over all of the babbling fashion and photography students.

Alexandra took over as editor in 1992, which makes this her 21st year at the title, she has also been voted the "Editors Editor". All of this for a woman who initially never had any experience or interest in fashion - she told us that she wanted to work in music and hang out with bands and have a rockstar boyfriend! Though it hasn't exactly turned out that way, she has many great achievements to count.

When asked how she would define Vogue, she said "Vogue is a number of things, partially it’s authority in it’s area of coverage and that’s come about in it’s longevity", she said that people trust in Vogue for it to be relevant. It's a magazine of record. We also spoke about the Vogues all over the world, such as Thai Vogue, the Netherlands Vogue and forthcoming Vogues such as Ukraine. She said the criteria to open a new Vogue is that it simply has to be in a country that has proved itself to be interested in fashion. 

But how is British Vogue unique? And why not simply have a European Vogue? And she answered to this "every country's sensibilities are different", and that cultural identities aren't wildly different but different enough to need separate magazines. British Vogue is eclectic to her in terms of styling and shoots.

We also had the opportunity to talk about covers - something that as 1st year Fashion Promotion students currently embarking on creating a magazine is very useful to hear about before we decide the final covers in a few weeks time. In particular we touched on the Millennium Vogue, which was completely silver foil, front and back. The issue itself for the first half looked forward, and the other looked back, so it was as if it were two magazines in one. She said it was uncommercial but it did sell very well. She remarked "covers are an imperfect art" which I found very interesting, and she also said to have two potential covers, as well as making the cover the most commercial thing about it.

As a University that is very much digital based, we touched on the digital age as a whole and whether she would consider making Vogue an online publication. I think the vote was unanimous when we all agreed that print was much better than digital in terms of magazines, and she was glad to hear it!

I'd like to say thanks to Alexandra Shulman for allowing us to ask her questions and also for chatting to us yesterday evening, it was a great experience.