#GirlBoss - The Fabulous Franca Sozzani
She is renouwned for bringing some bright light to the 80’s fashion. directed Lei and Per Lui in the early eighties. By 1988, she was running Vogue Italia and was named editor-in-chief of Condé Nast Italia in 1994. She became editor of Vogue l’Uomo in 2006 and took over editorship of Vogue Sposa and Vogue Bambini in 2015.
Sozzani is famous for unflinchingly using her platforms to explore contentious issues such as domestic violence, drug abuse and environmental pollution, and turning around the 80’s fashion. She produced Issues such as “The Black Issue” featuring models of color, “Makeover” which was dedicated to the plastic surgery phenomenon and in February 2011, she launched Vogue Curvy, a publication staffed by and writing for plus-size women.
Sozzani is also credited with helping create the Supermodel phenomenon. She championed a group of photographers including Bruce Weber, Peter Lindbergh, Paolo Roversi and Michel Comte, giving them complete freedom to choose models and subjects, and encouraging them to be more experimental.
Sozzani wrote and curated outside Vogue. She published a book, I capricci della moda – a selection of posts from Vogue.it’s Editors Notes – in 2010. In collaboration with photographer Amanda Eliasch, she also produced “British Artists at Work.” She curated several exhibitions and retrospectives, including: 30 Years of Italian Vogue, Vietnam Story & My Own Story in Vogue, Women and Portraits of Elegance. She also wrote journalistic articles and text to accompany paintings in exhibition catalogs.
Franca Sozzani and Adele Dejak were fast friends as they shared the fashion fervor and worked together for important social causes such as education. In 2015, Adele and Franca visited a school in the south of Ethiopia together to support and encourage the education of the girl-child. Adele also featured in Vogue Talents and has been interviewed for Vogue Italia
Sozzani died after a year-long illness on 22 December 2016, at the age of 66. We remember her fondly, but the world still celebrates her vision, her compassion and her spirit.