peripheral vision.

Byline: Anna Wintour

I was recently in London for the memorial service of Isabella Blow, who died in June, at age 49. Issie, as everybody knew her, was my assistant in 1984, when I was this magazine's Creative Director. Fresh from a marital stint in Midland, Texas, and a job as a coat-check girl at a downtown club, Issie breezed into Vogue in a series of extraordinary getups (I seem to remember an orange chiffon sari and a maharaja and Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday). She cleaned her desk every night with Perrier and Chanel No 5. But there was more to her than glorious gestures: She brought the young New York art scene into these pages-Basquiat made a painting for us on a cardboard box-and most of all she brought the conviction that fashion, indeed culture, should delight and provoke and surprise.

When I had lunch with Marc Jacobs last August, he hinted that his fascination with tabloid celebrity was steering his spring collections in a sexier, more youthful and colorful direction. It was a daring and, for him, unexpected turn; and the impulse to challenge himself in this way was one that Issie would have applauded (she was a terrific clapper).

This issue celebrates the maverick eye. In Sally Singer's couture report "Alighting," we learn that Karl Lagerfeld can take an early-eighteenth-century waterproof riding jacket-the ultimate in utility-and make it the basis of a dazzling new jacket shape for Chanel. Another seer of note is Roland Mouret, who this season comes back with a new brand, RM, but with his wonderful ...