British Vogue – April 2022
English | 280 pages | pdf | 238.81 MB
People are forever asking me what the colour of the season is. Most of the time, they seem so disappointed when I explain that the answer is almost never definitive. But for the coming months, I am calling it: the colour of spring/summer 2022 is platinum.
On 6 February 1952, Her Majesty The Queen became, well, Her Majesty The Queen. Seventy years on, as we head toward her 96th birthday on 21 April and then into a summer of Platinum Jubilee celebrations, Vogue looks back at its unique relationship with the monarch, charting the course of a reign as record-breaking as it is unique, through a series of familiar and rarely seen images, drawn from our precious, exclusive archive here at Vogue House in London.
It was an important and inspiring job for the team of Vogue editors to put together – though, of course, our fascination took on a modern hue. As we move ever deeper into the 21st century, for many people, and certainly any person born in a one-time British colony such as myself, the relationship to the British Royal Family can be complicated, to say the least. When I received my OBE for services to diversity in fashion several years ago, I thought carefully about what the
decision to accept it would mean. Ultimately, I saw an ancient institution that was setting about on a programme of change, and if they had noticed and wanted to recognise my work as something worth spotlighting, given the fact my endeavours were all about highlighting under-represented people too, then I felt comfortable – keen, even – to engage. I’m a participator, even when participation is not always straightforward. In my calmer moments, I have come to prefer slow, meaningful engagement – the sort that takes people with you to a fairer space, that leans into the collective, bringing in all types of voices, that can tilt the course of an entire society. Rather, I hope, as the woman who we celebrate this issue has.
And so it is, in the 70th year of her reign, that Vogue offers its own platinum salute with a twin set of covers. One, naturally, features the monarch in 1957, wearing the Diamond Diadem, originally made for King George IV, while – in playful echo – actor of the moment Anya Taylor-Joy wears a replica for her own fantasy dress-up moment. As Vogue
contributing editor Robin Muir writes in his essay on the Queen’s life in front of the camera, on page 168, the history of the Royal Family and of this magazine have forever been intertwined. Both of them are changing.
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