12 | THURSDAY, AUGUST 1, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
style
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, has been
revealed as guest editor of British
Vogue’s September issue, considered
the most influential edition of the year
for fashion magazines. But she won’t be
on the cover.
The Duchess of Sussex was invited to
oversee the issue by British Vogue’s edi-
tor in chief, Edward Enninful, and the
two began work in January. The cover,
released Sunday, features 15 black-and-
white photographs of women who are
“trailblazing change makers, united by
their fearlessness in breaking barriers,”
according to a news release from
Vogue’s publisher, Condé Nast.
In an editor’s letter published Mon-
day, the duchess wrote that she had
asked Mr. Enninful via text message if
she could guest-edit the September is-
sue, after he initially invited her to ap-
pear on the cover.
Mr. Enninful has been a vocal propo-
nent of improving diversity and ethics
within the fashion industry since his ap-
pointment in 2017 as the first black edi-
tor of any edition of Vogue.
“To have the country’s most influen-
tial beacon of change guest-edit British
Vogue at this time has been an honor, a
pleasure and a wonderful surprise,” he
said, adding that the duchess would be
the first guest editor of British Vogue’s
September issue since the magazine’s
founding in 1916.
The theme of the edition chosen by
the duchess and Mr. Enninful — “Forces
for Change” — is written in stark orange
print across the front cover, which is
made up of a mosaic of portraits by the
acclaimed fashion photographer Peter
Lindbergh. The lineup includes the ac-
tress Jane Fonda, the climate change
campaigner Greta Thunberg, Prime
Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zea-
land, the author and activist Sinéad
Burke and the model Christy Turlington
Burns. A 16th panel is mirrored paper,
intended to show the reader’s reflection.
In a statement, the duchess said,
“These last seven months have been a
rewarding process, curating and col-
laborating with Edward to take the
year’s most-read fashion issue and steer
its focus to the values, causes and peoplemaking an impact in the world today.”
“Through this lens, I hope you’ll feel
the strength of the collective in the di-
verse selection of women and that read-
ers feel as inspired as I do, by the ‘Forces
for Change’ they’ll find within these
pages,” she added.
Women of the British royal family
have been involved with British Vogue
before.
Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge,
posed on the front cover of British
Vogue in 2016 for the centenary issue of
the magazine, edited by Mr. Enninful’s
predecessor, Alexandra Shulman. The
duchess wore a relatively casual look: a
fitted white shirt and double-breasted
suede coat from Burberry and a forest
green fedora from the London vintage
store Beyond Retro.
That image emphasized the subtle but
meticulous attempts to portray her as amore accessible and normal royal since
her marriage to Prince William in 2011.
It also contrasted with the look cho-
sen by Diana, Princess of Wales, the
mother of Prince William and of Prince
Harry, Meghan’s husband, for her 1990
Vogue portrait by Patrick Demarchelier.
Diana, who died in a car accident in
Paris in 1997, wore a white ball gown and
tiara for her cover shoot.
The Duchess of Sussex has also
forged her own path: by not appearing
on the cover at all. According to Mr. En-
ninful, she turned down the opportunity
to be photographed for the front.“From the very beginning, we talked
about the cover — whether she would be
on it or not,” Mr. Enninful said. “In the
end, she felt that it would be in some
ways a ‘boastful’ thing to do for this par-
ticular project.
“She wanted, instead, to focus on the
women she admires,” he added. “As you
will see from her selections throughout
this magazine, she is willing to wade into
more complex and nuanced areas,
whether they concern female empow-
erment, mental health, race or privi-
lege.”
Inside the magazine, the duchess re-
counts a candid conversation with Mi-
chelle Obama, the former first lady. The
edition also features an interview by
Prince Harry with the ethnologist and
primatologist Jane Goodall. Meghan
was an advocate of women’s rights and
diversity long before her marriagemade her part of the British royal family,
so her editorial decisions — celebrating
strong women with a range of back-
grounds — are a continuation in that
vein.
The decision not to appear on the
cover also matches with some of the de-
cisions that the Duke and Duchess of
Sussex have made since their wedding
last year. The couple have a complicated
relationship with the British news me-
dia — particularly the tabloids — since
they took various steps to safeguard
their privacy, including declining to re-
lease publicly the names of the godpar-
ents of their son, Archie.
They also eschewed the traditional
photo opportunity to showcase their
baby in favor of posting carefully cu-
rated images online — a decision that
did not go down well with some sectors
of the British news media.Nonetheless, Meghan’s position as a
former actress and biracial member of
the royal family has afforded her im-
mense power to draw attention to the
causes she supports, not to mention to
the fashion brands she wears and the
publications with which she associates.
In that light, the decision to guest-edit
a print edition of British Vogue will be
seen as a boon to Condé Nast, which has
— like much of the publishing sector —
suffered dwindling magazine sales and
reduced budgets in recent years.
The September issues of fashion mag-
azines are traditionally seen as the most
important of the year because they
carry the most advertising, and cover
stars generally have pull within the in-
dustry. Last year, British Vogue had Ri-
hanna on its September front, while
American Vogue’s cover star was Bey-
oncé.British Vogue announces royal guest editor
LONDONDuchess of Sussex,
formerly Meghan Markle,
selects ‘Forces for Change’BY ELIZABETH PATONPHOTOGRAPHS BY PETER LINDBERGH, VIA VOGUEMeghan, Duchess of Sussex, left, oversaw the September issue of British
Vogue. Its cover, above, highlights women like Prime Minister Jacinda
Ardern of New Zealand and the climate change activist Greta Thunberg.The duchess was invited to be on
the cover but “in the end, she felt
that it would be in some ways a
‘boastful’ thing to do.”Every week Vanessa Friedman, The
Times’s fashion director, answers a
reader’s fashion-related question in the
Open Thread newsletter at
nytimes.com/styles. You can send her a
question at [email protected]
or via Twitter: @vvfriedman. Questions
are edited and condensed.What’s with the ubiquitous mustard
floral print dresses and tops? Noticed
one last week and now at least a few
per subway trip. What’s the origin of
this trend? — Emerson, Brooklyn
Every season a fabric or color takes off
seemingly for no apparent reason. We
see it on the street and we (who go to
shows) often see it first on the runway.
You’ll be sitting there, next to a
catwalk on one of those really uncom-
fortable backless benches designers
like to use, and suddenly: boom! The
30th garment in Yves Klein blue you’ve
seen in the last two weeks. Or boom!
The 15th awning-striped silk. And then
you think: What’s up with that?
I’ll tell you: Première Vision, in
Paris. Or Pitti Filati, in Florence, Italy.
Or one of the other V.I.T.s — very
important textile fairs — that are the
birthplace of so many trends.
A full 18 to 24 months before you see
a garment, designers and their teams
have to begin planning their col-
lections. And yes, they start with inspi-
ration from books or the web or a
movie they just saw or a trip to India
where they fell in love with saffron.
But they also start with another place.
Or places.
Which are — the fabric fairs. Which
they all attend. Where they all see the
same materials.
Why so many tend to fall in love with
the same color or material at the same
time is more of a poser. Maybe it looks
new (designers love new) because it
hasn’t been popular for a while. Maybe
there’s a different treatment involved.
Maybe it speaks to a cultural event (an
Yves Klein show at the Pompidou
Center in Paris, say) or social move-
ment (silver, which makes them think
of armor, which feels current). But
once it starts, it tends to steamroll.
And that’s why, when you’re sitting
on the subway now, you see mustard
everywhere. Speaking of which, I just
got an email from a New York cash-
mere brand called Glenevan touting its
new collection that features a mustard
sweater (which it calls ocher) as the
lead image. Think you’re on to some-
thing here. VANESSA FRIEDMANOpen Thread:
Why you’re
seeing mustard
In the mid-1950s, early in his career as a
fashion designer, Arthur McGee had an
identity problem of sorts.
“When I’d go to look for lines of fabric,
I’d go to the fabric company, and they’d
say, ‘Well, where’s the designer?’” he
recalled decades later when he was be-
ing honored by the Metropolitan Mu-
seum of Art in New York. “They’d walk
right by me. And I’d say, ‘It’s me.’”
The slight, it seemed, was because of
the color of his skin: Black designers
were exceedingly rare in the United
States at the time. As Newsweek put it
in 1992, “Until recently, African-Ameri-
cans were easy to find in the garment
industry: They were the ones pushing
the racks of dresses along Seventh Ave-
nue.”
Mr. McGee, who died on July 1 at a
nursing home in Manhattan, was a pio-
neer on that street, the heart of the city’s
fashion industry: He was thought to be
the first black designer to run the de-
sign room of an established Seventh Av-
enue concern, the Bobbie Brooks line.
The cultural historian Aziza Braith-
waite Bey, who once worked for Mr.
McGee, said that he died after a long ill-
ness resulting from a series of aneu-
rysms. He was 86.
Mr. McGee was a quiet force in the
business for decades, dressing celebri-
ties as well as creating functional
clothes for retail outlets like Saks Fifth
Avenue, Bloomingdale’s and Bonwit
Teller. Dr. Bey said Mr. McGee had a tal-
ent for blending the past and contempo-
rary style. “His classic designs,
whether created in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s or
’90s, could be worn today,” she said.
Along the way he mentored other de-
signers of color.
“Arthur was not a firebrand,” Harold
Koda, the former curator in charge at
the Met’s Costume Institute, said by
email. “Instead his confidence in his
own talents was like water seeping into
the hard rock of racism — effortless
seeming, but effective in breaking
through.”
Dr. Bey was one of those who bene-
fited from his guidance. “He mentored
working designers and fashion students
nationally and internationally,” she said
by email. “He was my mentor when I re-
turned from studying haute couture inParis in 1965. He taught me important
skills of the trade and how to navigate in
a fairly inhospitable industry.”
Though Mr. McGee helped bring
more diversity to the business, he was
clear in how he wanted to be defined.
“We are not ‘black’ designers but Amer-
ican designers, the way Bill Blass is an
American designer,” he told Newsweek.
“As soon as you categorize us, you can
erase us.”
Arthur Lee McGee was born on
March 25, 1933, in Detroit. His father,
George, worked in road construction.
He cited his mother, Rose, who was a
skilled clothes maker, as his earliest in-
fluence.
“She could make anything,” he said in
2009 in a video made by the Metropoli-
tan Museum of Art. “She would take a
piece of newspaper and make it into a
pattern, then make a garment out of it.”
At 18 Mr. McGee won a design compe-tition sponsored by the Traphagen
School of Fashion in Manhattan, earning
him a scholarship to study there, and he
also attended the Fashion Institute of
Technology. His mother had loved hats,
and as a teenager he had made her
some, so he was put in the millinery divi-
sion there.
“I stayed in school for maybe six
months, then I quit,” he recalled in the
video, “because they said to me,
‘There’s no jobs for a black designer.’”
He had begun working for the de-
signer Charles James while still at the
institute, and was also doing his own de-
signing. In the early 1960s he opened a
shop on St. Marks Place in Manhattan.
Later he had a store in Miami. In the late
1960s and early 1970s he was head de-
signer for College Town of Boston and
other lines.
Prominent figures from the Dance
Theater of Harlem, Broadway and Hol-
lywood began to seek him out. Among
the fans of his clothes was the actress Ci-
cely Tyson, who was once a fashion mod-
el. “When I wore them, I always felt like
I was floating,” she said in 2009 at a trib-
ute to him organized by the Costume In-
stitute.
In a 2018 episode of the PBS series
“Antiques Roadshow,” someone brought
in an outfit that Mr. McGee had made for
the saxophonist Dexter Gordon to wear
to the Academy Awards when he was
nominated for an Oscar for the 1986 film
“’Round Midnight.” Laura Woolley, the
expert who assessed the outfit, ap-
praised it at $5,000.
When not designing for celebrities,
Mr. McGee kept practicality in mind.
“These clothes were all at a certain
price range,” he said in the 2009 video,
describing his designs for the public,
“and you could always wear them, and
you could get new ones added to the old
ones. And that’s the way the market
looked then. Now you can’t wear any of
the stuff that you buy; it costs two arms
and three legs, plus some more. It just
doesn’t work.”
Mr. McGee’s survivors include a
brother, Gordon.
Mr. Koda, who was leading the Cos-
tume Institute when Mr. McGee was
honored, recalled a particular creation.
“A quintessential design of Arthur’s is
an evening dress made for a favored cli-
ent,” he said. “He had acquired an aston-
ishing length of mud cloth with its char-
acteristic airy, calligraphic geometries.
He whipped it into a ball gown skirt with
a sumptuous shoulder wrap to be worn
with a shell or a sweater. Like a perfect
jazz riff, it was a spontaneous, unforced
expression of its parts: the relaxed vo-
cabulary of American sportswear ani-
mated by the aesthetics of African tradi-
tion.”A fashion designer who broke racial barriers
ARTHUR MCGEE
1 933-A quiet industry force,
he created classic looks
and mentored manyBY NEIL GENZLINGERMARILYNN K. YEE/THE NEW YORK TIMESTop, Arthur McGee, right, with another designer, Ed Austin, in 1979 at the Fashion
Institute of Technology in Manhattan. One of Mr. McGee’s creations, second from left,
was displayed in 2016 and 2017 at the institute museum’s exhibition on black designers.THE MUSEUM AT FITAmong his fans was the actress
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