The beautifully stylish (part-Filipino) Christine Centenera
has been a street style regular of The Sartorialist and Tommy Ton for years.
Centenera studied communications at university and quickly
moved onto a job as the marketing assistant at Australian Harper’s Bazaar.Even though she did not have any formal
training as an assistant, she was seen to have a good eye and was given the
chance to climb the ladder within the magazine.She ended up as the fashion editor.
During her years working, Christine held jobs at
Cosmopolitan magazine, as well as a freelance stylist, and a fashion
consultant.She has consulted with
Australian brand Ksubi as well as Kanye West for his women’s clothing line.She most recently joined Vogue Australia as
their senior fashion editor.There she
produces fifty/fifty content for the Vogue magazine and vogue.com.au.
At the age of 71, Grace Coddington has made a real mark on
the fashion industry.The British woman,
who is currently the creative director for American Vogue, began life as a
convent-educated child, who yearned to be around fashion, with only the pages
of Vogue to keep her urge satisfied.
At the age of 17, someone submitted her pictures to a Vogue
model contest and she ended up winning in the young model category.She was a top model during the ‘60s, alongside Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton.At the age of 28, she joined British Vogue as
a junior editor, soon becoming a photo editor. She ended up staying there for nineteen
years.Next, she moved to New York City
to work for Calvin Klein and in 1988 she joined Anna Wintour at American Vogue,
working there ever since as the creative director.
(Photos from cheztitina.blogspot.ca)
In 2009, after The September Issue was
released, Time Magazine wrote, “If Wintour is the Pope..., Coddington is
Michelangelo, trying to paint a fresh version of the Sistine Chapel twelve
times a year” (time.com).The movie
depicted a hard-working and truly inspiring Coddington, and how hard she works
for Vogue to put together immaculate fashion spreads.This brought her into the spotlight and gave
her great credibility.
On November 20th, her memoir
came out entitled “Grace: A Memoir” and is for sure set to become a bestseller.The book gives an introspective of Grace’s
life during her times as a model, working with the top photographers and
designers in the world, to her time at British and American Vogues.Amazon declares Grace by saying, “Beautiful.
Willful. Charming. Blunt. Grace Coddington’s extraordinary talent and fierce
dedication to her work as creative director of Vogue have made her an international icon” (amazon.com).
“It’s so funny, at 28, I really felt
like I knew everything. At 52, I can
tell you I don’t know anything."
– Nick
Wooster
Nick Wooster is one of the hottest guys in fashion right
now.With his full-sleeve tattoos,
trademark handlebar moustache, and a permanent cigarette attached to his hand,
he is one of the most stylish dressers out there.He has been deemed the “Woost God” and “the
alpha male of American street style” (businessoffashion.com).
From top-left clockwise: deviantart.com,
chicageauxdevin.tumblr.com, coolestmudafucka-outthere.tumblr.com,
pureeuphoria.tumblr.com
He describes his style as,
“a headmaster and a longshoreman moving in together” (parkandbond.com).This juxtaposition certainly fairs well for
him!He is also covered in tattoos,
which makes him even more awesome.He
likes it because no one can see them under his tailored blazers.He has a leg piece of a koi fish, which he
says will never get finished because it hurt too much.
From top-left, clockwise: dudehere.tumblr.com,
thedapperanddandy.tumblr.com, hypebeast.com, porhomme.com
Wooster grew up in Wichita, Kansas and
had his first job at a local family-owned retailer.He then went on to study journalism and
advertising at the University of Kansas.After College, he moved to New York City and began working for the
advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi.He did not end up enjoying that job.
So from there he moved onto the fashion
world, where he has worked for 25 years.This has included for brands such as Saks Fifth Avenue, Barneys New
York, Neiman Marcus, and Bergdorf Goodman, as well as fashion labels like John
Bartlett, Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, and Thom Browne.He was also a creative consultant for
GiltMAN, Park and Bond, and the Project Tradeshow, as well as having his own
consulting business, Wooster Consultancy.He is now the Vice President of brand, trend, and design at JCPenney.
Nick has also done some of his own design work,
collaborating with brands such as The White Briefs (underwear), WANT Les
Essentiels de la Vie (bags), and Orlebar Brown (swimsuits).
Nick Wooster is surely a jack-of-all-trades in the fashion
world and definitely someone to follow.His
Tumblr is http://nickwooster.com/
or a t-shirt worn under a jacket that
seems welded
to you.When it’s just right, when you don’t
see the effort, it’s irresistible”
– Emmanuelle Alt
(mystylefest.wordpress.com)
Succeeding Carine Roitfeld as the editor-in-chief of Vogue
Paris in February 2011, Emmanuelle Alt has surely come far in the fashion world.Beginning at the tender age of 17, she was
working at French Elle, and then at 20 Ans, a French monthly magazine for young
women, becoming the editor-in-chief there in 1993.She held that position for five years, and
from there moved onto the magazine, Mixte, where she styled editorials.Roitfeld had picked up Alt straight from that
magazine to work as fashion director of Vogue Paris in 2000.Alt also had many side projects, mostly in a
freelance setting.These included
consulting for top fashion houses such as Balmain, Isabel Marant, and Giuseppe
Zanotti.She brought her rocker attitude
and appeal to the brands and turned up the hot notch on them, elevating the
designers to the top of fashion’s radar.
From top-left, clockwise: blog.trilogystores.co.uk,
flare.com, mabqueen.com, monoxious.com. Middle: vogue.com
Emmanuelle Alt is a true Parisienne.Her style is rock ‘n’ roll, with a youthful,
makeup free appearance.She is often
seen in skinny jeans, a loose t-shirt tucked into her jeans, a blazer, and the
hottest heels around.With every brand
at her fingertips, she still decides to wear Topshop jeans a lot, saying they
are “the best in the world” (vogue.com).
From top-left, clockwise: mamusedemode.blogspot.ca,
fashionzese.com, laleluxury.blogspot.ca, fashionzese.com,
fashionmenow.blogspot.ca, fashionzese.com
Even during the global financial crisis
of 2010, Roitfeld and Alt were able to increase Vogue Paris’ circulation from
100,000 to 140,000 (nytimes.com). This
increase was undoubtedly encouraged by the magazine's content of bold and
controversial fashion editorials.Many of fashion’s elite are confident that Alt
will continue to do wonders for Vogue Paris as its editor-in-chief.She has concluded that she does not want to
turn the magazine upside-down, and that she is happy with it the way it is.Alt is seen to be more commercial than
Roitfeld, being more connected to the street, and therefore may appeal to a
wider audience.We will just have to
wait and see what Emmanuelle Alt has in store for us!
“Lanphearites” are the cult following of Kate Lanphear.These people see Kate as a fashion God, and
she certainly seems to fit that description.She is constantly a front row fixture at the hottest fashion shows
across the globe.Her signature platinum
blonde locks, her punky, chic, and androgynous style has made her a regular on
online blog sites such as The Sartorialist and Jak & Jil, even having Tumblr
and blog sites devoted to her.
From
top left, clockwise: off-glass.com, redcarpet-fashionawards.com,
anananasamiami.com, redcarpet-fashionawards.com, off-glass.com, redcarpet-fashionawards.com
Kate grew up in a conservative Irish Catholic family in
rural Virginia.She was inspired by her
aunt and Godmother, who were always so meticulously putting together their
outfits.She just could not tear her
eyes away from this attention to fashion and she soon followed suit.Kate decided to go to college for journalism,
but quickly discovered it was harder than she thought getting into the fashion
industry.She turned to London as her
new place to find her fashion calling.She lived in a hostel with seven guys, and soon followed one of them to
Sydney.In Australia, Kate bartended,
picking up any fashion jobs that came along.Finally, she landed a job at Australian Vogue, and then went onto
Australian Harper’s Bazaar.She gained
an immense amount of knowledge there.From her experiences with the Australian fashion magazines, she says:
“The
staff were so small that if you put your hand up you were allowed to do
anything…I had no experience, but before I knew it, I was styling the cover
with amazing people. You’re allowed to
execute your own ideas, because it’s so small. It’s really like Fashion Editor 101. I became really well versed in budgets and how
to do production because you’re doing everything yourself”(businessoffashion.com).
From top-left, clockwise: ananasamiami.com, talkshoes.com,
ananasamiami.com, monoxious.com, flare.com, ananasamiami.com.
Middle photo:
ananasamiami.com
When she returned to the States, she
had a bounty of knowledge and experience under her belt.However, she found it tough that the HR teams
in the U.S. wanted more “defined” job descriptions, which she did not really
fit into due to her previous extremely broad jobs.She secured a job at Harper’s Bazaar,
moving onto a position as senior fashion editor at Elle.She is currently the style director for Elle
magazine, a position that she has held since 2008.She is also a huge supporter of her
designer friends, including the jewellery designer Eddie Borgo, whom she was part
of his fall/winter 2010 ad campaign.
Anna Wintour who?We have
all heard the stories of the current editor-in-chief of American Vogue and how
influential she is, but before her, came the original style genius, Diana
Vreeland.She was born into an affluent
family in Paris and then moved to the U.S.There she was seen as an extremely stylish socialite and was asked by
Harper’s Bazaar to produce a column for them.It was entitled “Why Don’t You?”The column infused fashion advice with her quirky sense of humour, with
advice such as, “(Why Don’t You) wash your blonde child’s hair in dead
champagne, as they do in France (D.V. 144).”She quickly rose up the ranks to become the fashion editor of Bazaar.
She left Bazaar in 1962 to become editor-in-chief of
American Vogue until 1971.At Vogue, she
modernized the magazine to get with the times of the sexual revolution.She has been quoted as saying, “The bikini is
the most important thing since the atom bomb (http://www.canadianinteriordesign.com/kwi/diana_vreeland.htm).”
Photo sourced from mrkstyle.com
Diana was an extremely free spirited individual with a
brilliant and fun view on fashion.She
was also the fashion advisor to Jacqueline Kennedy who became such a massive
style icon.As well, Diana discovered
Edie Sedgwick whom later became a muse for Andy Warhol.She was also known for celebrating uniqueness
in people’s appearances, flaws of the body were wonderful to her.In 1965, she was inaugurated into the
International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame.
