magic & mass.(Editorial)

Byline: Anna Wintour

I do not want all women to look and dress exactly alike. I want them to be as different in their dress as they are in their personalities." I love this pronouncement of Paul Poiret, the magical Parisian couturier who, early in the last century, famously liberated women from the corset. I've always believed that fashion is about freeing us to express ourselves in a way that does justice to our individuality. Our cover girls this month would agree. They are the first crop of models in a long time to have been given the license-as we saw for fall-to dance on runways (Coco Rocha), wear hair in an uncompromising style of their own (Agyness Deyn's peroxide buzz cut), and swagger sexily (Caroline Trentini). There is an African-American teen who winks at the front row (Chanel Iman) and a Russian beauty who sketches her fellow catwalkers backstage (Sasha Pivovarova). I would encourage designers to take this trend further; however much we love actors and singers, fashion also needs its in-house stars to inspire us.

In short, we felt the time was right to gather a generation of models who might have a chance of being as super as another group of young women whom we also shot in white shirts from the Gap, in 1992, many of whom still require no surnames: Linda, Cindy, Christy, Claudia, Naomi. This time around, the girls' white shirts have been specially designed for Gap by the winner and the runners-up of the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Award-Doo-Ri Chung, Thakoon Panichgul, and Kate and Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte. These shirts are on sale at Gap stores, and take it from me, they're ...