British Vogue - 11.2019

37

DARREN GERRISH; NICK KNIGHT; JUERGEN TELLER

an interesting process, don’t you think?

I will always be intrigued by the ways in

which an idea becomes a reality. Take,

for example, how this month’s cover story

came to be.

Firstly, in early July, I was at the couture

shows in Paris. Of course, haute couture

is always a divine whirlwind of lavish

otherworldliness, but this season I was

especially struck by the collections’ stunning

sense of fantasy. A spark was lit.

Unrelated to this, a few days later

I happened to be thinking about Jourdan

Dunn, the much-loved British model and

general force for good. In these days of

improved representation in fashion, I

recalled how, in the late Noughties, Jourdan

had been one of the very few black girls

to really break through in the industry

since Naomi Campbell. (Famously, in

2008, Jourdan was the first black woman

to walk in a Prada show for 10 years.)

I started to consider all the models who

have followed her, such as Joan Smalls,

Adwoa Aboah and Ugbad Abdi. I look

around now and see all these incredible

women, a whole new generation who don’t

Creativity

is such...

EDITOR’S LETTER

Above left:

Edward Enninful

with this month’s

cover star,

Jourdan Dunn.

The model is

interviewed

on page 202,

and features

in A Certain

Romance (above)

• our couture
  extravaganza
  (page 206). Left:
  Eva Herzigová


• who appears in
  a Juergen Teller
  shoot, on page 170


• wears jumpsuit,
  £3,550. Belt, £475.
  Bag, £2,230. All
  Louis Vuitton

even know about that struggle, or what it

was like to be the only ethnic girl in a line-

up of 40 at a show. I thought how much

the fashion landscape has shifted and how

• from catwalks to advertising – the black
  model is no longer so sidelined.
  Landscapes – in all senses – are crucial
  to our lives, ever-changing and unfixed.
  This is something that photographer
  Nick Knight understands well. Nick – a
  master of form, who, incidentally, has
  championed black models throughout
  his career – had expressed that he was
  keen for us to do a shoot together in the
  rolling green hills of Richmond Park,
  a place immortalised by painters such
  as Joshua Reynolds and Thomas
  Gainsborough in the 18th century. > 43

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