

While as a medium it has been sidelined as old fashioned in comparison to the cutting edge that photography presented - made all the more thrilling by a Bailey-esque reputation for rebellion - in those days fashion illustration led the fashion press, inspiring new attitudes and breathing new life into past ones. In doing so it created a visual timeline of life since Vogue began. It never completely disappeared, but recently it has come back to explosive effect. Perhaps our first Vogue under editor Edward Enninful was such a marker in the sand of the new that it has generated a naturally concurrent upsurge in nostalgia; or perhaps, as technology erupts around us, we yearn for the quiet of a considered illustration, alive with the possibility of the artist's internal thoughts as much as with the potential of our own interpretation.


