Fifty Years of Style. And a cover with fifty women. One way, our way, to celebrate a unique milestone, to establish a full stop that opens the way with conscious positivity to an equally durable future. Because, to paraphrase Wayne W. Dyer, the aim is not to be better than anyone else, but to be better than we are. Fifty years: a milestone that is nevertheless important in itself, and which becomes a point of reference to reread the fashion and fads of a half of a century, of which “Vogue Italia” has been as much spokesperson as creator.

A re-reading made through a selection of the many style icons who have appeared in the magazine in half a century, told through the extraordinary power of exclusive interviews and, above all, by the images of those masters of photography who have worked with us these past fifty years, most of whom have become icons in their own right. Fifty years in which the evolution of the world has seen styles and fashions change, sometimes arise and disappear, sometimes develop and flourish to become History. Fifty years in which the roles of women (and, of course, and often consequentially, those of men) have changed, evolved, and in most cases, globalised, following in parallel the unstoppable development of society.

Similarly, the aesthetic sense underlying every fashion has also been able to expand, adapt, modify, often becoming one of the protagonists of change itself. Just think of the hippie look or the look typifying the rebels of post French May 1968; the Nude Look at the end of the 1960s or the one – almost diametrically the opposite – of businesswomen of the 1980s; of the conceptual Minimalism of 1990s icons and the metropolitan look embodied by rock/riot/grunge girls.

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These examples serve to understand how aesthetics has helped to consolidate new, previously unimaginable positions as appropriate uniform for a desired assertion. Fifty years in which, in addition, Italian fashion has created new specifications and imposed them all over the world, in which it has influenced the way we look at the Ars vestimentaria and has itself become THE fashion par excellence. And while becoming at the same time the standard-bearer of a unique aesthetic sense, which finds its perpetual lifeblood in the DNA of our country, immersed in an eternal beauty, sometimes misunderstood, but certainly unique.

Fifty years recorded and often anticipated by our magazine that has a Sense of Style in its very DNA, and which tells its story mainly through those images that for the most part have been, and are, milestones in our creative imagination. Since 1964 when the “Novità” magazine, founded two years earlier, was transformed into “Vogue & Novità” and then in “Vogue Italia”, the importance of Italian fashion in the world has increased tenfold, has been divided, diluted and reforged, making the game of style the source of energy for its perpetual motion. It has been a difficult journey in terms of what has happened, but also seductive because endless, dotted with awards, experiments and even eccentric and forward-looking choices, crowded with iconic brands and designers that are part of History, and which over time have been joined by new names who have brought those stimuli inherent in the New in their role as harbingers of a continuous evolution.

It has been a journey in which the magazine’s parallel vocation for internationality, along with the constant, tenacious work of scouting has in a sense anticipated the concept of globalisation. It has marked an evolution that goes hand in hand with that of female beauty which today ranges from classical canons to the most atypical ones. And which has been traversed by the phenomenon of the supermodel: a cult that “Vogue Italia” realised and made global. “The best way to predict the future is to invent it”, wrote the American scientist Alan Kay, and this is certainly the diktat of a world – the fashion world – that is necessarily fluid and constantly in flux; a world that reads and constantly adopts elements from outside itself and appropriates new stimuli and resources. Fashion offers an engaging journey, and is a feature that has deeply affected the aesthetic vision of men and women. It is a timeless journey in which “Vogue Italia” has accompanied us for fifty years, as a sort of privileged guide to attain destinations yet to be discovered.

With this special issue, we wanted to celebrate Fashion and Photography, its essential spokesman; but most of all we wanted to celebrate the women who are the queens of Fashion and those for whom Fashion itself was born and exists. Models, actresses, artists, socialites, royalty, singers… all in their own way with a unique style and hence women-icons, women-symbols. But above all, women. Who here, in an imaginary fashion parade, talk about themselves also how the vision of women has changed, and how their aesthetic evolution/revolution has accompanied the changes in their social position and role.

Since the 1960s, a widespread self-awareness has seen them transform themselves from rarefied partners, almost a supporting cast of actresses in a theatre of life run (apparently) by men, to undisputed protagonists, solid and aware of an expanding society. Women who remain linked to a necessary femininity which some carry as their banner. Women proud of their style, who adapt the proposals of fashion to their own personalities. Women who make Style into an element that strengthens their status and speaks of their uniqueness. Women. Or rather, the women of “Vogue Italia”. F.S. (Text gathered by Carlo Ducci)