Introducing Issue 26 of 10 Magazine Australia: TRANSFORMATION, EVOLVE, JOY.

EDITOR'S LETTER:

This issue is about transformation, which in many ways is the sweet spot for women, and that made it easy to celebrate many of the best/our favourites/the inspiring; in other words, those who reach for their true selves and excel at what they do. Of course this includes Sophia Neophitou, my long-time friend and accomplice, who founded 10 magazine 25 years ago! A milestone that is celebrated on these pages.

We’ve photographed so many great women, including Emma Grede, the phenomenally successful co-founder of Skims, in the season’s finest, although she turned up to the shoot in Los Angeles in perfect black silk Ritz-Carlton Paris pyjamas. We shot Bella Freud in Bella Freud – well, naturally enough – in London. Her podcast is compelling fashion neurosis at its best. We photographed Clem MacLeod in Pimlico in this season’s best Miu Miu. Clem is our one and only intern who ever was. She quietly breezed into our office when we were still at White City Tennis in Sydney and was always so thoughtful and a great person to get to know. She left for London and has since created Worms magazine and the creative project Seed Readers for people who love books and love to read. Simple, really. Elliott Morgan shot her on one of the hottest days of the year, for which she arrived on a Lime bike while everyone else was melting.

Then to Paris and the hilarious – need we say more, drumroll please – Lisa Rinna, who turned up to the studio in a flurry of fabulous, having hot-footed it from Demna’s final couture show for Balenciaga. She danced, she sang, she was amazing. Byron Spencer captured her in the moment and she worked it, like he does.

I first met the other great woman in this issue, Virginia Bates, at Arlington restaurant in London for dinner last year. She entered the restaurant and everyone stopped. She turns heads and always has. She is a Hammer Horror legend and is coming full circle in her career by playing a vampire once more. Tony Glenville, one of her great friends, talked with her for this issue. And the twinkling Darren Gerrish photographed her in west London in her great Holland Park home.

These women brought everything you could hope for, their very best. They are power engines of creativity who are always open to the possibility of change and life’s adventures.

And then there are the transformative fashion pieces, the jewels, the ones with the power to seduce us, making us part with our dream multimillions. Cartier has released its highly prized high jewellery collection, En Équilibre, and so off we went once more to Paris to photograph the top-notch diamonds, incredible onyx, coloured sapphires and 49.37-carat Zambian emerald drops. They were sent piece by wonderful piece, literally just finished, having taken thousands of hours to create by the Cartier atelier. It was fun and the team created amazing make-up to match the colours.

Back in Sydney, Banjo McLachlan, who captures candid so beautifully, joined up with against-the-odds Sarah Starkey styling. They took us and an armful of Prada to a supermarket car park. Meanwhile, the photographer Joe Brennan and stylist Abby Bennett explored a sense of character with the model Niamh Battersby, who is our one to watch. So much thought and care came from everyone involved.

The lead-up to printing has been about dressing up, the good times. The small moments of joy. They can have the power to dazzle. This is what the AW25 issue is all about. Desire and standing in your truth. In a season of flux, with new designers succeeding into houses and about to begin their next transformative chapters, what it has taught us is that fashion needs clear leadership. Voices. Someone in charge. Not a committee, nor simply a collective or a meritocracy. We love people who have a vision, go against the odds and climb the mountain every day so spectacularly. This is for them.

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