Archives: Steven Meisel, Edward Enninful 'Sogno Di Donna' Vogue Italia July 2011

Fashion misses the fashion vision of Vogue Italia Editor-in-Chief, Franca Sozzani’s: bold, sensitive, intuitive, culturally-aware style. Sozzani pushed the edges of fashion magazines and institutions, both internally and externally.

I had forgotten that British Vogue’s Editor-in-Chief Edward Enninful was a contributing editor at Vogue Italia, beginning in 1998. Edward definitely shared Franca’s willingness to get her hands dirty, so to speak.

Of course, Enninful was behind the Vogue Italia ‘Black Issue’. He described his intention as one of ending the "white-out that dominates the catwalks and magazines". The issue was so successful that Condé Nast had to print an extra 40,000 copies. Featuring Liya Kebede, Jourdan Dunn, Naomi Campbell, and Sessilee Lopez on multiple covers, the issue also included 100 pages of black models fashion, all shot by Steven Meisel.

Sozanni, Enninful and Meisel struck again with the July 2011 issue of Vogue Italia, in which they confronted fashion’s lack of diversity in body imagery. Not only were most of the models white, they were headed towards size zero. Gone were the original supermodel days of size 4-6 models like Cindy Crawford, who famously said that she would not have gotten work under the new size 0 regime.

AOC has grappled with many of these topics since 2007, and we have perspective. Not only are we rapidly organizing all of our archives around race, models of color and refugee models of color, where we probably lead among all websites. We also want to revisit all the body size imagery and discussion with an eye on intersectionality. . AOC has always thought this way — my mind couldn’t follow in a straight line if wired to do so — but to revisit work now a decade old offers a new opportunity to write comparatively, as we did comparing the demise of the size 4-6 90’s models in fashion’s pursuit of size zero.

We’re in the process of also subbing out the much smaller images of a decade ago with 2020’s larger ones, This editorial ‘Sogno Di Donna’ (Dream of Woman) features models Candice Huffine, Marquita Pring, Robyn Lawley and Tara Lynn. Edward shows off his lingerie-loving, styling talents for stellar images by Steven Meisel./ Hair by Guido Palau; makeup by Pat McGrath; set design by Randall Peacosk

The images were breathtaking, not only in using larger models, but in their frank embrace of female identity sexuality. What with gender fluidity and #MeToo dominating the last decade, we don’t see such frankly sexual imagery in 2020. What a shame!