Powerfully Personal.(Editorial)

Every year, my editors and I spend not an inconsiderable amount of time thinking about "power" and its timeliness and resonance in our culture and society. The results of these discussions come to fruition in our annual March Power Issue, which this year is dedicated to the power of change. It's our biggest spring fashion issue ever; clearly, change and power are the buzzwords of our time.

And could there be a more apt cover girl than Drew Barrymore? At VOGUE, we have followed and had fun with Barrymore since 1993, when Ellen Von Unwerth photographed her as an adorable young starlet and scion of a Hollywood dynasty. We watched her through her precocious beginnings, her more difficult periods, and her emergence as a major industry player with her own production company and clear perspective on how her tastes align with those of her public (first with Charlie's Angels and now Grey Gardens ). Drew, as revealed in Julia Reed's "Positively Drew," is quick to adapt to everything from changing fashions to changing music to a rapidly changing entertainment business. But the key to her strength, and why we remain so entranced by her, is that Drew at her core is steadfast: witty, imaginative, questioning, and kind.

To remain true to oneself while being open to new opportunities and shifting landscapes is the essence of great style and strength. Two women who have managed to do just this with seamless grace are Barbara Walters and Wendi Murdoch. Barbara has for decades been an icon of fearlessness and vigor. Now in her 70s, and with her autobiography due out this spring, she opens up to Joan Juliet Buck in "A Good Run" about the costs of having a path-breaking, public career. Barbara brings the same honest inquisitiveness to her own life choices as she has done to those of politicians and celebrities for four decades. Wendi Murdoch is a young woman who is figuring out how to be a wife of a mogul, a devoted and hands-on mom, a working person with an unceasing mind for the business of new technologies, and a citizen of old-world New York and new-world Beijing at the same time. As we learn in "A Woman of the World," Sally ...