It’s the interview that everyone in the fashion industry is talking about: British Vogue’s longtime fashion director Lucinda Chambers’ tell-all in Vestoj, an annual academic fashion journal founded by editor-in-chief Anja Aronowsky Cronberg in 2009. (Those who didn’t know what the site was before most certainly do now!) The interview was published on July 3 during Couture Week in Paris but was then quickly removed from the website as reactions started brewing. “In terms of the reasons why it was removed, they are directly related to the industry pressures which Lucinda discusses in her interview,” Cronberg told The New York Times. “We created Vestoj to be an antidote to these pressures, but we are not always immune.” Now, the interview—titled “Will I Get A Ticket?“—is back online. Chambers does not hold back. Below, the must-read highlights from the piece…
- She was fired by new British Vogue EIC Edward Enninful: “It took them three minutes to do it. No one in the building knew it was going to happen. The management and the editor I’ve worked with for twenty-five years had no idea. Nor did HR. Even the chairman told me he didn’t know it was going to happen. No one knew, except the man who did it — the new editor.”
- She hasn’t read Vogue in years: “Maybe I was too close to it after working there for so long, but I never felt I led a Vogue-y kind of life. The clothes are just irrelevant for most people — so ridiculously expensive.”
- She thinks most fashion magazines are no longer useful or empowering: “Most leave you totally anxiety-ridden, for not having the right kind of dinner party, setting the table in the right kind of way or meeting the right kind of people. We don’t need any more bags, shirts or shoes. So we cajole, bully or encourage people into continue buying. I know glossy magazines are meant to be aspirational, but why not be both useful and aspirational? That’s the kind of fashion magazine I’d like to see.”
- She says fashion is cyclical and reactionary: Nobody can stay relevant for a lifetime – you always have peaks and troughs. The problem is that people are greedy. They think, ‘It worked then, we’ve got to make it work now.’ But fashion is an alchemy: it’s the right person at the right company at the right time. Creativity is a really hard thing to quantify and harness. The rise of the high street has put new expectations on big companies like LVMH.”
- The most authentic company she worked for is Marni: “We didn’t advertise, and what we showed on the catwalk we always produced. We never wanted to be ‘in fashion.’ If you bought a skirt twenty years ago, you can still wear it today.”
- Social media’s impact on fashion: “The social media world makes it so you’re not allowed to fail in fashion.”
- On succeeding in fashion: “You can go far in fashion if you look good and have confidence, even if you don’t have much talent.”