This time last year, I was busy putting the final touches to our first issue of 2020, the first Vogue of a new decade. The incandescent Taylor Swift was on the cover, and the pages were packed with forward-looking features, portraits of emerging talents set to shape the years ahead, and the chronicling of an important sea change in fashion that championed quality and sustainability, which would see us, as the cover declared, “Buy less, buy better”.
It’s curious to me how prescient much of it was – but how could any of us have known what this most dramatic of years would bring? It has been hard, and there were moments of despair. Yet, as I write this, America has decided on a new president, and – like so many – I suddenly feel as if I am able to exhale.
Joe Biden and his wife Jill certainly won’t be new names to readers, and yet after such a toxic period in American politics, they feel like a welcome burst of newness. Then, of course, there is Kamala Harris. When we see the first woman – and the first woman of colour at that – take up the office of vice president in the White House at the end of January, it will be a bold and exciting moment in history, especially as it befalls a person who owns the symbolism of her position so powerfully. It really is a fresh chapter. On page 62, journalist Dana Thomas – a longtime watcher of the Biden family, who has known and documented them since the 1980s – considers the President-elect and incoming First Lady’s unique history, and what it can tell us about the era in government they hope to usher in.
Though its ending thankfully came with renewed positivity for global politics, 2020 was a year of reckoning, and saw a series of firsts for the magazine. From covers honouring the key workers who kept the country stable during its initial coronavirus lockdown to our oldest cover star (Judi Dench, resplendent at 85) and a 14-cover edition by Britain’s leading artists on the theme of Reset – it was a time for new ways to inspire.
It was a vital moment for social justice movements, too, and for September we turned our attention to activism, photographing some 40 changemakers – including Marcus Rashford and Adwoa Aboah – who faced the noise of a divided world and stood up to make a difference. Safe to say, it was a period of rethinking here at Vogue, just as it has been for everyone.
Now we look to another year, and with it comes a more self-aware, less self-assured mood. If 2020 has taught us something of what we can expect from 2021, it is that it will be unpredictable. But I can say this much with certainty – there will always be Kate Moss. Almost 28 years since her Vogue debut, Kate’s eternal chic once again finds its way on to our cover this month – a fact I find both thrilling and deeply comforting.
Ushering the magazine into a new year, I am delighted to say that this month also sees the promotion of Julia Sarr-Jamois and Poppy Kain to Vogue fashion directors. Of course, both Julia and Poppy have been key members of the team for a while, their differing and exacting aesthetics helping to shape the magazine’s point of view. Coming from a different generation to my own, they bring an evolving perspective and have a real sense of how women want to dress – Julia with her exquisite eye for modernity, for colour and clean lines, and Poppy with her twin senses of fantasy and wearability, coupled with a quintessentially British flair. They are well-equipped to help lead fashion into the future.
Elsewhere, we mark four decades since the Aids crisis struck London, by interviewing and photographing the cast of It’s A Sin, Russell T Davies’s brilliant new drama. It was such a pleasure for me to get to style them.
Lastly, on page 92, we gather some of our favourite women to reflect on the lessons learnt in 2020 and offer some much-needed guidance for what might lie ahead. Personally, as we face 2021, I have found myself returning to the words submitted by the great Margaret Atwood. “There will be another shore after the rapids: I promise.”
The January 2021 issue is on newsstands 4 December 2020.
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