Outspoken Vogue Italia editor-in-chief Franca Sozzani sat down with Women's Wear Daily to talk about her loathe of bloggers, her anti-anorexia campaign and her relationship with Anna Wintour, among other riveting topics.
Here are our favorite Qs and As from the discussion...
WWD: You were initially criticized for your "Black" and "Curvy" pages.
F.S.: Oh, very much so, because some said it was becoming the ghetto of plus-sized, the ghetto of black, but it's not true. These are very happy readers, happy that we are looking at them in different ways. In "Curvy," they are superhappy with their sizes. We help them dress fashionably. We say: It's pointless for you to buy leggings, take this because this will look good on you. We help them choose. We don't talk about diets because they don't want to be on a diet, but it's not a ghetto. Why should these women slim down? Many of the women who have a few extra kilos are especially beautiful and also more feminine.
WWD: Do you use Photoshop, too?
F.S.: We use it less and less, increasingly so -- actually recently I am very much against it. But now it's part of daily use and you can't blame it. There are few photographers who don't use Photoshop, very few. But you can't say fashion is the cause of anorexia -- what about Twiggy in the Sixties? There were anorexics already, were they so because of Twiggy? Or Jean Shrimpton? There are psychological problems. I don't feel a hypocrite at all and I couldn't care less if they say I am because I am convinced that if I can do something to help....Maybe these kids go on these pro-anorexia sites also because they feel lonely, we should help them not feel lonely. But this is an illness, I am not a professor, I can do things I find socially right, as when I organize Convivio to help fight AIDS. I can't move the world and be Hercules with everything on my shoulders, I can only do some things. So 90 percent of people agree with me, then there is the 10 percent that say it's absurd because they see Vogue as a fashion magazine and it shows thin models. But they forget the supermodel era -- Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, they were not thin. When Kate Moss arrived, they all said, "Here is the anorexic model," but she was 15. Now they are all against her because she has cellulite. But who cares? We would all like to have cellulite like she does. The problem is that many of these models are too young. This is the real problem; they are immature.WWD: I read that you find runway shows somewhat boring?
F.S.: I do get really bored at shows. Shows must be creative, without becoming ridiculous, otherwise a showroom presentation is best. And also I'm bored with what has emerged around the shows.
It's true; we've always wished to have Kate Moss' cellulite. Read the rest at WWD.com.