It’s not often you see Anna Wintour at a university fashion show. So you can imagine the buzz when it was announced she would be descending on the University of York, not only to watch the one-off show they were hosting but to take part in an exclusive Q&A too…
Entitled The Northern Youth, the charity event was produced in tandem with the university’s fashion and culture magazine, HARD. With the aim of raising £30,000 for local refugee projects, the idea was to reject stereotypes and encourage diversity in fashion, most notably to break apart the north/south divide. As the organisers declared, ‘The Northern Youth isn’t a moment as much as a movement’.
Including the work of four distinct upcoming brands from the north (The Design Studio, Simon Cathcart, Kiosk Projects and Teresa Bunting), the show also featured work from over forty student designers, including final pieces from various universities and colleges such as Leeds, Lancashire and Liverpool.
By invitation of her niece – English Literature student Ellie Wintour, one of the main organisers of the event and Deputy Digital Editor of hardzine.org – American Vogue’s Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour was there to introduce the show and participate in a conversation with Katharine Viner, the current and first female Editor-in-Chief of The Guardian.
In what was the perfect amalgamation of sass, style and skill, Wintour took to the stage to declare we all ought to ‘be intellectually free’ and to ‘try lots of things’.
Wintour’s main message was to ‘be self-sufficient’, but she also warned against letting social media ‘be a substitute for living’. She is tired of people always wanting to ‘take a photograph instead of shaking hands, meeting one’s eyes and having an actual conversation’. ‘Even at the shows people are so busy documenting the moment, they forget to actually look at the clothes in front of them,’ she pointed out.
Anna Wintour says we should focus on living in the moment [Getty]
On a lighter note, when Katharine Viner teasingly asked whether there was anything she would never ever wear, Wintour wittily retorted: ‘I’m not too big on neon…’
And the sass didn’t stop there. When asked for advice on how to cultivate one’s own style, Wintour chuckled and riposted, ‘Look in the mirror’.
Inspiration for Wintour’s work springs often from film – her favourite directors being Baz Luhrmann and Wes Anderson – and in fact, ‘anything that has an interesting visual to it, I find very inspiring,’ she said.
When it comes to film wardrobes, however, she sarcastically cited inspiration from The Revenant: ‘There was a really good bear costume…’ As Katharine Viner quipped, you heard it here first; The Revenant fashion might just become a thing... (With faux fur, naturally.)
Anna Wintour jokingly said she feels inspired by The Revenant [Rex]
And what of The Northern Youth show itself? Against the backdrop of urban concrete blocks, moody lighting and bountiful beats by DJs Metronomy and Friendly Fires, came a striking mix of pieces.
Highlights included the furry bombers from The Design Studio, and oversized space-themed jackets from students at Edinburgh University. All with the important work of Refugee Action York at its heart, the show stood resolutely as a prodigious example of the good which Anna Wintour herself believes fashion can do for the world.