A Quote by Hamish Bowles

I started looking at fashion magazines, specifically 'British Vogue.' I was reading a lot about Cecil Beaton. Then I thought maybe I should start collecting. — © Hamish Bowles
I started looking at fashion magazines, specifically 'British Vogue.' I was reading a lot about Cecil Beaton. Then I thought maybe I should start collecting.
We used to say that inside Cecil Beaton there was another Cecil Beaton sending out lots of little Cecils into the world. One did the sets, another did the costumes. A third took the photographs. Another put the sketches in an exhibition, then into magazines, then in a book.
I'm known for fashion photographs, but fashion photographs were mostly a joke for me. In 'Vogue,' girls were playing at being duchesses, but they were actually from Flatbush, Brooklyn. They would play duchesses, and I would play Cecil Beaton.
Now that I'm in the modeling industry, I'm taking reading magazines seriously. I read the Vogue magazines. I make it my homework. I try to study the designers and the stylists when I have time, because I wasn't brought up in a household where I was surrounded by fashion.
I didn't understand anything about fashion until I moved to Canada when I was 9. That's when I learned English and was exposed to fashion magazines like Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue.
When 'Teen Vogue' started out, 'Teen Vogue' was an aspirational fashion magazine for fashion lovers. You know, it was the little sister to 'Vogue.' And over the years, we've realized that our mission was really to become more focused on making this an inclusive community that speaks to every kind of young person.
At the beginning of my career, as a boy from Peru in London, suddenly discovering British culture and society, I looked so much at the work of the photographers Cecil Beaton and Norman Parkinson, which seemed to represent a wonderful vanished grandeur of my new country.
In the past, people couldn't place me. They thought that I was Danish or English or French. They never got that I am Italian. I'm not typical, maybe because my visual education was very mixed. There was a lot of London in my aesthetic: The Face, i-D, British music, and a lot of British fashion . . . But I really enjoy this contrast.
I was once again looking for a book idea, and I remembered Holmes, but I specifically remembered that there was this World's Fair thing in the background. I thought, 'I'll read about the fair.' I had nothing better to do. I'd dismissed about a dozen ideas, and I was getting sort of antsy. I started reading, and that's where I got hooked.
Within two months I made the grand slam: covers of 'American Vogue', 'Italian Vogue', 'British Vogue', and 'French Vogue'.
My introduction to photography and a lot of how I developed aesthetically was through '50s and early-'60s fashion magazines like Harper's Bazaar and Vogue.
When I started university, I didn't know much about architecture, so I flipped through a lot of magazines, looking at different and exciting images from all over the world. I thought that architecture could be interesting.
I never looked at magazines before I started modeling. I was 13 or 14 and none of my friends were into magazines. We were into the fashion of the day, though. Designer jeans were really popular - Sasson, Gloria Vanderbilt, Calvin Klein, Jordache. Once I started modeling, I began to learn about these things, and magazines helped me to understand who was who.
When I started in 1992, I really thought the 'Vogue' fashion department was one of the most frightening places on the planet.
With all the new media outlets out there, with all the noise, a voice of authority and calm like Vogue becomes more important than ever. The more eyes on fashion, the more opinions about fashion, the more exploration of fashion around the world, the better it is for Vogue. Vogue is like Nike or Coca-Cola—this huge global brand. I want to enhance it, I want to protect it, and I want it to be part of the conversation.
We always had 'Vogue' in our house. But, when I was around 12, my Mom finally took me seriously about modeling and put a stack of magazines in front of me, then told me to study all the poses. The ones I loved the most were in 'Vogue.
We always had 'Vogue' in our house. But, when I was around 12, my Mom finally took me seriously about modeling and put a stack of magazines in front of me, then told me to study all the poses. The ones I loved the most were in 'Vogue.'
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