70 OCTOBER 2019 VOGUE.COM
ON OCTOBER 10 AND 11 at Spring Studios in Manhattan,
we will be holding our third Forces of Fashion summit,
Forces for the Future. It will be a moment for us, as it
has been in previous years, to have a series of animated,
intimate, and (I hope) highly opinionated discussions
with some of our favorite designers and figures of
substance and style. As I write this letter, we already
have a wonderful lineup confirmed: Tom Ford; Tory
Burch; Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing, soon to appear
in a forthcoming and (so I gather) emotional
documentary about his life and work; Kim Jones of
Dior Men; Wes Gordon of Carolina Herrera;
Proenza Schouler’s Jack McCollough and Lazaro
Hernandez; and Virgil Abloh, surely one of the
busiest people in fashion, what with his roles at
both Off-White and Louis Vuitton, not to mention
his successful career as a DJ.
Other names that I hope will further encourage
you to make the trip to New York to join us: Cindy
Crawford and her daughter (and fellow model), Kaia
Gerber, will be speaking, something we announced
a day or so after Kaia’s 18th birthday, on September 3.
When I met with Kaia recently, she impressed me with
her intelligent and measured approach to her career—
she’s very much Cindy’s daughter—and to modeling in
general, especially at a time when the health and well-
being of young women in the industry are rightly of
paramount importance. Now that Kaia has reached an
age where we can work with her—as you likely know,
last year we made a strict commitment to photographing
only models who are 18 and older—I look forward to
seeing her in the pages of Vogue very soon.
We’ll also have some newer fashion talents with us,
including Grace Wales Bonner, Marine Serre, and Kerby
Jean-Raymond, all of whom haveLetter from the Editor
LOOK WHO’S TALKING
AMONG THIS YEAR’S FORCES
OF FASHION SPEAKERS ARE
(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT)
TOM FORD, TORY BURCH,
VIRGIL ABLOH, WES GORDON,
DONATELLA VERSACE, JACK
McCOLLOUGH AND LAZARO
HERNANDEZ, AND CINDY
CRAWFORD AND KAIA GERBER.EDITOR’S LETTER>72
Show of Forces