As editors go Kate Lanphear is one of my favourites. I mean, what's not to love. Her unique style continues to attract a herd of street style photographers at the shows and she managed to make the cast of 'High School Music' look interesting in American Elle and that's not easy by anyone's standards. You can imagine my delight then when I heard that Ruffian designers Brian Wolk and Claude Morais invited the editor to have an interview with them as a part of their La Vie en Ruffian Lunchtime Interview Hour.
In the interview Lanphear spoke about the rise of street style photography, the effect of her Southern upbringing on her style and why there's a disconnect between retailers and editors.
"There’s no denying that, in the last couple years, everything has become more big business and more corporate. I think we see that across the board, but people need all the help they can get to make shows happen. There’s also no denying there’s such huge interest in fashion, so corporations want a part of that. They want to partner with fashion brands, and with social media, I think there’s a snowball effect. But yeah, I think everyone’s a little bit sad that it feels sometimes like something has been lost. But it’s like everything — at the end of the day it’s big business. Everybody’s got to make a buck, I just think it’s sad that someone can’t make a buck — or maybe feels like they can’t — doing something really sumptuous and beautiful and artistic."
In digital age where we're as excited about what people are wearing to the shows, as much as the clothes appearing on the runway the role of the editor continues to grow. Where before it was focused on creating beautiful shoots and pages in magazines, editors like Anna Dello Russo are now becoming their own brand and are building on their new found fame by signing on to collaboration after collaboration.
ADR has mastered this. This week images from the campaign of Macy's private label brand INC have been released. What's interesting about them is that as well as styling the campaign, Dello Russo also makes an appearance alongside Karolina Kurkova showing that brand's are willing to embrace (or jump on the bandwagon) of her new celebrity status. In the past year Giovanna Battaglia and Kate Lanphear have both showed off the designs of Eddie Borgo in his lookbooks and last week Carine Roitfeld was the subject of Macy's Fall 2011 campaign. Five years ago who would have imagined that editors would go from styling models in campaigns, to being the subjects themselves?
