How to Become a Creative Director with Alexa Chung | Future of Fashion | British Vogue

last week we had a lovely time in vog house talking careers with editor-in Chief Alex Schulman and roaming free in the fashion cupboard this week it's back to business we're here to find out who oversees the aesthetic of the magazine and to meet the all important digital team who it turns out know a thing or two about [Music] Twitter how do you balance the business with the creative cuz obviously you know you're in charge of something that is a business yeah I don't think you can run a magazine like Vogue without being interested in the business because you know we are part of a huge fashion industry and everything's kind of intertwined there was a good quote from you but now of course I've forgotten it but it was something along the lines of this is a business we're not here writing poetry yes yeah we could be artistic but an artist is somebody who just creates what they want to create create without any kind of um input I guess from other people and what other people want whereas a lot of what you create in a magazine or a newspaper is a kind of compromise in some way or other you know you're trying to please a lot of different people were you always interested in fashion when you were younger I was always interested in magazines I realized when I think what you know what do I actually find kind of inspirational I do think those voges that I read when I was like 14 15 16 and I had the posters then the sort of wonderful kind of Sarah Moon pictures and we should do that again yeah we should we really well there are some but not any contemporary ones it was sort of the beauty of the images it wasn't fashion per se but that was in the' 70s so there wasn't fashion like there is now there was so much less fashion you know there were there were shops and there were some designers but this idea of these huge Brands you know stradle the world like a Gucci or a Chanel or a Prada who had shops everywhere with huge advertising campaigns I mean just didn't exist so you know I was buying clothes from charity shops I still was until I got the job at Vogue [Music] actually the cover is the most iconic element of the whole Vogue institution it's shifting design over the years reflects the endless changes in fashion but so much more can be read from it it sign shifts in popular culture politics and most notably changing representations of female identity arguably the most important page of the magazine the cover is ever evolving but with great power comes great responsibility and after Alex the job of overseeing this Monumental task as well as the overall design and artistic Direction Falls to Jamie Perman so I run the art department and sort of oversee all things visual in the magazine um and I work closely with Alex woman planning the fashion for the magazine so I am involved in that but I'm not a stylist um it's purely photography and graphic design cuz I've been on shoots where there are there's an art director there and I don't know what they like sometimes a lot of people wonder that a lot of what they do is is before the shoot so you kind of you put the teams together you decide who's going to photograph it what the brief is for the shoot what the creative direction is which means like the aesthetic uh you know what's what's it going to look like yeah and then on set you just sort of make sure it goes you know goes smoothly and and like an ideal shoot I don't actually have that much to do okay so this is the The Well of the magazine it's all just like full spreads double page spreads of content and we've got like a number of fashion stories for February this one on top is really exciting cuz this is why Tyrone leban who's um one of our sort of new generation of British photographers that's really like changing the face of Photography and going back to the purest aesthetic and taking real pictures and and printing um film see he doesn't use digital he doesn't right I shot with him for a brand for a campaign and um obviously there's nothing really to look at other than theid that must have been stressful for the client what can we see and I was like nothing so they had to just go you go trust yeah yeah so this is Harley weot ASAP Rocky oh she's another sort of really exciting New Generation photographer she's probably about 25 I know I didn't know she was quite so cool and really and I did a shoot and I was quite hung over and had quite a short attention span and she handed me like a black painted banana and was like and I was like I just I've got to go left and then it turned out to be one of my favorite shoots [Music] ever these are all the headlines here on the side that they were coming up with oh wow I mean look at them all rappers delight straight out of har then you um style up the type yeah you know caslon but that's a bit delicate so we went with the other thing cuz it's more bold and the pictures are bold yeah did you move to London to work for Vogue I did I moved it was my dream to come here and be art director for British Vogue and then it worked why British Vogue in particular I guess well I was working at American Vogue at the time and I loved it there yeah and I love British Vogue like you know it's always been really experimental and in photography how have covers changed um since you've been working with magazines in terms of who they're using the feel of it as things are going more digital everybody's wondering what the meaning of a cover is what used to sell doesn't necessarily sell anymore what used to sell I think what used to sell is like more more commercial covers maybe things that were a little more safe now I think there's no guarantee we'll think something is going to do really well and it doesn't and then another cover will be like H that's going to be a dud it's too weird and people will buy it so we're always kind of trying out new things now which is exciting do you have um advice for people that might be watching this about what they could do to one day get your job what a magazine was when I started is completely different from what it is now and it's all going digital and print is very important obviously but I think kids studying magazines as an art director need to be really versed in digital and and instinctual about it and so I think learning all the coding courses digital design and moving image stuff is really important we're still producing a magazine in a relatively similar away to what was happening 20 years ago the introduction of a whole Digital Universe has made a big difference what we can do digitally is kind of an add-on to what we were originally doing hasn't completely changed the way things are produced I mean you're still trying to create something that's beautiful and interesting and aspirational there are more people involved in the industry in different ways than there probably were origin but there weren't so many people that kind of interwove with the industry as the industry evolves entry points for employees change with it Nomi Pike Miss Vogue assistant landed her job via a competition in the magazine the winner is n [Music] me so how many people were entering I think like a lot of people entered but it was like finalized to 20 excellent so what were you doing before you were here I interned a lots of other magazines SC I went to retail was that and so when you were working in retail was that to support doing internships elsewhere yeah so you would you say it is possible to do those internships and still be able to you know as long as you like you know you have to work hard yeah like I would work like seven days a week how do you see the the future of print magazines going and how are you incorporating that into the digital space I think people still want to like touch something you still want like a tangible product but you also want something new every day you know sometimes you don't want to wait till the issue comes out to see a new trend you what can I buy this week what can I wear this week so I think it's just becoming faster and quicker I'm doing an itag index at the minute guess what's on the list is it Alexa it is yeah of course what's that actually first so this is where we can see what's going on on the site like how many people are looking at what we're writing about what we're tweeting so like up over there swi Dimension so we can see the people that have spoken to her who does everyone love right now Brooklyn I can say like Brooklyn brookly GG Kendall yeah um like there's a you know this gets like a lot of likes when we put anything about Brooklyn up and like the comments like are like he's so cute something something so sexy these days the online platform plays just as vital a role as the print magazine as editor of vogue.co.uk Lucy hutkins brings an entirely new set of skills to the table what's the difference in how you represent a magazine digitally versus how you would work if it were in print what things change a very tricky balance to keep up because a digital audience is always going to be slightly different yeah so you want to maintain that vog voice so you have to take every platform as an extension of Vogue so whether that's Twitter or whether it's Facebook or whether it's the website and bring that brand voice across all the digital platforms and how has people's perception of your job and the digital space altered over time when we started out out kind of the websites were seen as kind of little sisters to magazines like it was kind of almost like a side project and there wasn't social media at this point it was all kind of a lot smaller teams were much smaller and there wasn't the integration that there is now right so whereas we work so closely with the magazine team we are almost just another department of the magazine if you look back a year what we do on our jobs just changes all the time so you're constantly having to evolve in terms of what grows what you see audience reaction to so we are on analytics all the time watching what people are actually looking at so we have our screen here yeah which tells you how many people on the website what they're looking at where they're coming from whether that's a social media or from Google it's per second as well per second there's 639 people on the site right now say 141 I just went up exactly so you you write a piece of content and the moment that's up on the website you're monitoring are people reading it are they interested in it now I can't tell whether I do want to know about Gigi hadid's hair or whether I've been trained via my Twitter and Instagram feed to give a that's something that we have to decide every day like are we like okay if we're talking about it does that mean everyone else is going to be interested in it in terms of how we work on a team it's just talking it out and going oh I'm interested are you interested oh how about if we dig a little bit deeper on this side and how you then put that fog Mark of authority on it as well the analytics how much do they dictate what you're producing it definitely doesn't alter what we're doing we will always be doing what we think is a relevant news story to the readers the question for us is how we cover it in a way that's then going to make sure that people click on it the editor will think about the search engine optimization how is my content going to appear on Google they'll think about the social media how am I going to sell that to the various different audiences on Facebook on Twitter on Pinterest on Tumblr on YouTube whatever it may be cuz this countdown's giving me the fear it's now at 655 I want it to do better can you put something up now so we can count the people um who it just went up it was you I can it just went up by 20 in one second okay you hit Gigi I'll keep on ready she's she's trying to get just the right Tweet now oh she's gone to the top there you go she's I don't know if we're going to get over 700 90 690 it's like edging you can sit here and I love this job W GG guys 705 oh my God at the stock market Buy sell haded jna can't wait to show you it has such a cache doesn't it it's always feels such an aspirational publication and kind of stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the fashion industry is the go-to title when you think of the most authoritative voice in fashion I think they've been able to adapt and um evolve along with technology and the introduction of social media yeah in the mid 2000s when things started to change it was survival of the fitst and I think Vogue has such a specific tone and voice and brand that it didn't die like many other things did because there was still a desire for it and a need for it at the root fashion has to be something creative wonderful exciting appeal to people uh that's got to be the core I I feel that very passionately that the entertainment side of it can't become an end in itself it's got to be a a kind of byproduct and I think sometimes people mistake that and think that actually the fashion per se is a kind of reality TV show it's not it only works because you've got these incredible creators um making a world that people aspire to so as far as the future I think you've got to keep fashion very precious and something people really aspire to you've got people looking at it in terms of entertainment education like this you've got fashion much more accessible through the High Street than it ever was but I think you've got to keep the core of it something very special um otherwise all those other bits won't Thrive you know I was very interested in the uh digital team and I love how fast-paced is and it's interesting to know how magazines are developing for modern times basically and that um they're managing to retain the tone of a magazine but also reflect how fastpaced everything's become I really enjoyed the chat with Jamie about graphic design and creative direction I've always wondered what art directors and creative directors do because it's most of the works done before the shoot itself and if it's done properly then you don't have to step in cuz I see them floating around shoots and I'm like you hear for the macaron any cheese sometimes they are it's been interestingly calm in here as well today I think and uh everyone's been very affable and charming and kind haven't seen anyone getting shouted at get [Laughter] [Music] out thank you for watching if you'd like to see more of this type of thing not this exact episode cuz all you just watch it again anyway subscribe to the British fogue YouTube channel and it'll all be laid bare I'm going to leave you with this beautiful [Music] image I've held that way too long [Music] in that's all for now but don't fear we'll be back next month when we'll be skipping across the pond to my adopted home of New York City on a quest to find out more of what you want to know about the future of fashion and how you can be a part of it

Channel: British Vogue

Views: 756,513

Keywords: Vogue, Vogue Video, British Vogue, Vogue Magazine, Fashion, Style, British, how to get a job at vogue, How to get into fashion, fashion stylist, fashion job, Alexa chung vogue, alexa chung, the future of fashion, How do I get into the fashion industry, fashion industry, fashion documentary, vogue UK, Alexa Chung (Award Winner), editor, fashion editor, fashion journalism, become a creative director, creative director, art director, vogue creative director, Jamie Perlman

Id: bK_fnLCgF9M

Length: 16min 2sec (962 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 26 2016