It is always the hardest to write about people who fascinate you the most. Franca Sozzani is a person of such creative dimensions that one should time looking for a suitable approach. Perhaps, the best way would be - following Franca's advice - to do it with lightness.
The thing that strikes you first about Franca is her eyes - bright blue, stern but with that warmth shining in the corners - and her majestic hair and posture. Yet there is also a certain nonchalance about her, yes - a lightness.
She reminds one of a pre-raphaelite painting - timeless femininity. Her style is unique - she uses clothes of a simple classic cut but modern and expensive materials, the jewelry adds to the queenly effect.
And she was a queen. Queen of controversy, speaking to the world through images, raising issues that no one would dare or care to approach. She turned Italian Vogue into high art and news, not aiming at commercialism - a risky approach, and she got away with it.
There are several great photographers whom she discovered and their work together has been fruitful both ways. She saw them, accepted them and gave them freedom, and they taught her many things in return.
Bruce Weber taught her that it's okay to break the rules, she said. He doesn't take pictures, he creates stories.
For Peter Lindberg a picture is about the Woman, and only then about clothes.
Paolo Roversi creates modern fairytales.
Steven Meisel combines fashion and global issues. Thus he was responsible for every single cover of Italian Vogue since Franca started as its editor in chief - and the two of them were chifely responsible for the controversy.
Franca was born in a very well-to-do family and growing up she thought she would have a "normal" bourgeois life - family, kids, etc. However, she realized that she wanted something different, so she anulled her first marriage after 3 months and went off to London. London in the 60s was the capital of fashion (Italy being too conservative at the time). It was the time of Biba, mini skirts, long fur coats, parties - she was having a lot of fun. She became editor of Vogue Bambini (children) and remained there for quite a while, although she disliked it - she was not interested in dressing chidren.
When she finally got the job at Italian Vogue for women, she started with announcing a new style. A cover in black and white, with a haughty model, the words - Il Nuovo Style - and nothing else. Franca cleared all the eccess.
Before her the magazine had done the strictly commercial approach. Photos of girls laughing, posing on the pages, so you could seen the clothes. With Franca as edior the images became high art, often bordering on controversy, beautiful and striking visually, challenging the reader, raising social awareness. She was getting ready to be fired with every issue, for the director told her - Vogue is, first of all, a business product.
Many issues have become iconic. The Black issue has been reprinted 3 times and is still hunted for by collectors everywhere at high price. The Makeover madness, the Domestic Violence, the Rehab Issue, the War Issue - each issue was the issue of the moment. A paradox, how the director thought it risky because non-commercial, and yet after the release she would be accused of commercialisin and fashionising serious problems in society. At the end of the day, "Why can't fashion talk about what's going on in the world?"
Franca went against the rules, the market research, preferring to make her own mistakes - and her ideas paid off. Italian Vogue has become "the height of what fashion and news can achieve".