In recent years, Vogue Italia has started a little love affair with Africa. This affair became visible when they released All Black Issue in 2008. The affair grew bigger with Vogue Black − a fashion channel on the Vogue Italia website which is dedicated to successful black models, stars, actors, pros and stylists. I have fallen in love with Vogue Black. They have invested in great writers who produce fresh content supported by great imagery.
So I was very excited when I found out about the May 2012 of issue of Vogue L’Uomo was going to be about Africa. I went on the hunt for it and after a week of calling newsagency after newsagency I finally found the magazine at a specialty store. I got the issue, flicked through it and my joy turned to immediate frustration. The headlines were in English and the copy was in Italian. I wasn’t happy. I took to twitter, had a bit of a complain. In the midst of my complains, Afro-art extraordinaire Ola Shobowale tweeted that people should stop complaining about it the magazine. I decided to add my two cents worth and write that I thought people had a reason to complain.
The 140 characters Twitter allows for each tweet was restricting me to write what I really wanted, but that probably saved me! However I was quite curious to why Ola Shobowale didn’t see a need for people to complain.
I contacted Ola and his response was:
“African designers and other creatives (Make up artist, photographers, writers, models etc) have all longed and aspired to be featured in or associated with the Vogue brand. Now it is beginning to happen, some of us don’t like what we see or read.
Franca Sozzani, editor of Vogue Italia, has shown a more sustained commitment to African Fashion /creativity that all the other Vogues and other high end international fashion publications put together.
Regardless of the format/words/images used e.g Ban ki-Moon on the cover, Vogue were always going to do things their way on their terms. Whether we as Africans like it or not.
“The choice of Ban Ki-Moon as General Secretary of the UN has made a huge commitment about Africa. It’s his first goal are health empowerment of women, children, education and he is working hard for Africa’s development. I want this issue to be under the UN as a sign of real commitment. ‘ Franca Sozzani
I totally understood where Ola was coming from, however I just couldn’t get past the Italian copy thing. I had my thoughts all prepped to write a long post complaining about the copy and how it was unfair that we couldn’t get to read about our Continent and so forth.
By chance, I was on instragam and the lovely Mahelia de Randamie (an editor at Vogue Italia), brought to my attention that there are English translations of the articles at the back of the magazine. Today before writing this post, I grabbed the magazine from my desk where it had been sitting idle since Tuesday when I bought it. I flicked to the back and at that point I was ready to hide myself in shame. The English translations were there in fine print! How shameful!
I have read a few articles online who have pointed out reasons to complain − Africa is a country, Ebony, and FAB just to name a few. They all have raised some valid points however, I won’t be jumping the gun until I have read all the articles!
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