Vogue magazine is considered the original fashion bible, the bastion of ultimate mode… it has burnt itself onto our cultural consciousness. Uncontested market leader for over a century and million-dollar money machine, it has made its name selling to women. And yet Vogue has often disparaged women and punished LGBTQ+ identities. This lecture both honours forgotten visionaries and looks at how social norms can be interpreted either harmfully or positively depending on their translator.

Join Nina-Sophia Miralles, journalist, fashion historian, and author of ‘GLOSSY: The Inside Story of Vogue’ for a one-of-a-kind insight into the world of fashion publishing and how it affects women everywhere. This session will reintroduce Vogue figureheads erased by the establishment, editors and icons who lived outside the heteronormative mould and had an outsize influence on the legendary magazine, as well as on art and culture at large.

This lecture will also lift the veil on the treatment of women at Vogue and look at how an all-male management affected office environments as well as artistic output in ways that trickled down into mainstream society. In this section, we’ll be looking at overtly sexual fashion shoots, the symbolism and messaging encoded into famous photographs, and the varied way in which Vogue has portrayed gender in its pages through the ages and why.

Nina-Sophia aims to examine how fashion publishing could break free of misogyny, and what lessons there are to be learnt for anyone who wants to work in the intersection of design, photography, art and journalism.