Despite being American, the British edition of one of the fashion world’s most iconic magazines, Vogue, has seemed to have captured the imagination of the discerning reader more strongly since it was launched in the autumn of 1916, when the magazines could no longer be brought into the UK from the US due to the constraints of the First World War. 

At the centre of the magazine’s success for 25 years until June 2017 was Alexandra Shulman, who took the helm of Vogue in 1992, presiding over a circulation increase to 200,000 and a higher profile for the publication. Conde Nast International launched Vogue Arabia in the latter half of 2016, and Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF 2017) invited her to give this part of the world an insight into how a magazine like Vogue functions. 

“Every magazine is different, and every issue brings with it a unique journey. I’m sure the editor of Vogue Arabia has his own way of doing things, but what all magazines use as their starting point is the world around them, finding things that would interest their readers. For my Vogue, the core was fashion, and we would start off with trying to work out the best way to tell the stories of the collections we would have seen in London, Milan, New York, and also smaller homegrown designers. Beauty pages, latest fashion trends, lifestyle, food, and more – the structure is pretty much set,” noted Shulman. 

Alexandra made interesting observations about how Vogue covers over the years have changed as a reaction to what is understood as appropriate for the market, and how over the years that she was the editor, fashion trends have made a full circle from being modest to high voltage colour to being slightly austere again, and have seen the shift from featuring film starts on the covers to models, and now a broader range of celebrities. 

Shulman spoke about how she used her years in Vogue to create a healthy body image and body health in the world of fashion, encouraging fashion designers to showcase their collections through models representing a range of body types, discouraged the use of very young models, and tried to make fashion more enjoyable to people. 

Shulman is one of UK’s most oft-quoted voices on fashion trends. In addition to her work with Vogue, Shulman has written columns for The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, as well as published three books. The most recent one titled Inside Vogue: My Diary of Vogue’s 100th Year.

The event was part of Sharjah International Book Fair’s ‘UK Guest of Honour’ programme – one of the highlights of the UK/UAE 2017 Year of Creative Collaboration initiative between the UAE and the British Council.