Kim Jones, guest editor of the new issue of Vogue Italia

The English designer Kim Jones is the guest editor of the April issue of Vogue Italia dedicated to the creative fashion communities.

The ideas and photos that make up the pages of Vogue Italia every month are the result of a continuous exchange between the internal team and the most important world talents in fashion photography, styling and writing: this “extended family” is at the origins of success of the magazine, an internationally recognized unicum. This month, the director Emanuele Farneti he called as guest editor Kim Jones, a stylist who in turn is known for his attractiveness and willingness to collaborate with great talents.

The April issue is therefore the result of the meeting of two creative communities that come together at a time when the sense of sharing is central in our lives.

«There are creative products that are the result of individual talent. Others, on the other hand, are the children of a collective effort, they grow and gain strength from the contribution of people with different sensitivities and experiences. Without any margin of doubt, Vogue Italia is part of this second group ”, he writes in his editorial the director of Vogue Italia Emanuele Farneti. “We did an experiment this month. We called in a designer who in turn knows and loves to surround himself with talents, and we have pooled our respective creative communities ».

“I am thrilled to have been able to work on this project for Vogue Italia with an extraordinary group of people,” he writes Kim Jones. «I chose to involve not only friends who belong to the world of fashion, but also to art and literature, and to other areas that I love and that I therefore wanted to be represented in this issue. They are a group of people that I admire, and that I know I will continue to admire in the future. Like Malick, for example: he’s a new photographer, he’s absolutely fantastic, and the idea that he could produce such beautiful images for such a prestigious magazine was really exciting. Over the years, Vogue Italia has been the most inspiring fashion magazine for me. I saved up to buy it and as soon as it came out I went to look for it at newsstands in London. Being the Guest Editor for a month was really, really special ».

For the issue, Kim Jones involved artists, musicians, collectors, movie and web stars who discussed a theme dear to the designer: the collecting, and in general the creative obsessions. There is a conversation between Jones himself and Demi Moore about beauty, and the comfort that the things we choose to love give us. In the portrait shot by Brett Lloyd, Moore holds a first autographed edition of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, a precious piece from Jones’s collection that had already been seen on the catwalk in the hands of the actress during the Fendi Couture show last January , when Moore had opened the show, Jones’s first at the helm of the house.

Then there are the antiquarian bookseller Sammy Jay and the actress Gwendoline Christie, for whom the first autographed editions are fetishes that changed their lives. Among the protagonists also Edward Tang and Ronnie Sassoon, both passionate collectors, who live in a totalizing but opposite way the affection for the works scattered in their homes: he is maximalist, she is minimalist. The ideas fixed on paper, the search for “Fragments of a painting” scattered in nature, the evolution of figurative art: the artists Peter Doig and Alex Foxton reflect on emotions and inspiration, mixing fashion, painting, landscapes, lions, saints and sex appeal. The musician Max Richter and Swizz Beatz, rapper and record producer, love to venture into unexplored territories who in the issue discover contrasts, such as those between the irrationality of a song, the elegance of the clothes and the genius of Virginia Woolf. Finally, two web stars: 19-year-old comedian Elsa Majimbo confronts fashion blogger Bryanboy on hater, likes, mentors and dates with destiny.

This special issue hits newsstands with 6 different covers: Demi Moore shot by Brett Lloyd, Stella Jones by David Sims, Natalia Vodianova by Paolo Roversi, Amar Akway, Malika Louback and Skarla Ali by Malick Bodian, Binx Walton and Selena Forrest by Miranda Barnes. For each of them, Kim Jones has chosen to represent the clothes of a different brand.

The sixth cover is the result of another important project. This spring London pays tribute to a master of photography, James Barnor. The Serpentine Gallery dedicates a retrospective to the ninety-one-year-old Ghanaian artist that spans sixty years of a career spanning two continents. To take part in James Barnor: Accra/London – A Retrospective, Serpentine called Ferdinando Verderi, creative director of Vogue Italia, who created a video installation focused on Barnor’s work in 1960s London.

The work, thanks to the collaboration of the London institution with the emerging CIRCA artistic platform, will be projected on the giant screen of Piccadilly Circus from 1st to 10th April at 8:21 pm. A video whose ending contains a surprise: a photo taken by Barnor in Piccadilly in 1967 is “transformed” into its updated version, and becomes one of the covers of this month’s Vogue Italia. The image was in fact taken in the same place and in the same pose as fifty years ago. The protagonist of today’s version, Adwoa Aboah, the English model of a Ghanaian father who is the symbol of a new British generation. Printed in a limited edition of 2021 copies, this cover – Barnor’s first for Vogue Italia – will then be replicated on posters scattered around the city, to draw attention to the Serpentine exhibition and to a legendary witness of African art.

In March, the Vogue Italia site had 3.7 million unique users, with a total of over 24.6 million page views. In the same month, the overall social fanbase was 9.3 million.