Franca Sozzani Editor-in-chief of Italian Vogue Date of Birth: 20.01.1950 Country: France

Biography of Franca Sozzani

Franca Sozzani, the chief editor of Italian Vogue, passed away unexpectedly on December 22, 2016. She led Italian Vogue for twenty-eight years and was one of the greatest authorities in the fashion world, revolutionizing the perception of fashion in her country. Sozzani provided unprecedented freedom for photographers to experiment and boldly proclaimed that curvy women were more attractive than thin ones. She fearlessly addressed issues of racial and gender inequality in the pages of her magazine and featured photographs of models taken in the midst of environmental disasters. It can be said that it was Franca Sozzani who initiated the perception of the fashion industry as an integral aspect of society rather than a pursuit for the elite.

Franca, born on January 20, 1950, belonged to an Italian aristocratic family and had Russian roots on her mother's side. She was the middle of three Sozzani sisters and grew up in Mantua. Her older sister, Carla, currently owns the prestigious line of Milanese boutiques, 10 Corso Como, and her younger sister, Maria, became the wife of Joseph Brodsky and the mother of their daughter Anna Aleksandra.

Initially, Franca planned to live the life of a wealthy aristocrat. After graduating from a classical high school, she studied German philology and philosophy at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan. At the age of twenty, she got married. However, after three months of marriage, she realized that a quiet family life was not for her. After spending some time in India and deepening her spiritual practices, Franca graduated from university in 1973 and began publishing articles in various magazines. In 1976, she first set foot in the prestigious Vogue magazine office. She was hired as an assistant for Vogue Bambini, a publication focused on children's fashion, a position she described as the "assistant to the assistant to the assistant." Franca assisted with photoshoots, fashion shows, and wrote articles for Vogue Bambini and other smaller publications, such as Lei and Per Lui.

After four years, Franca became the chief editor of Lei and in 1982, she took the helm of Per Lui. This period was not only a time of career growth for Sozzani. In 1982, she gave birth to her son, Francesco, whose father was the manager of the Italian branch of the international travel brand, Club Med. At the time of their child's birth, he was still married, so Franca kept their relationship a secret. Their relationship ended in 1986, and Francesco only reconnected with his father many years later. Despite constant business trips with her mother and being behind the scenes of fashion shows, Francesco remembers his childhood as a time of constant learning and development. Franca helped him find his passion for photography at a young age. Francesco Sozzani is now a successful director, an Emmy award winner, and a renowned photographer.

Franca Sozzani nurtured the creative abilities of everyone who worked with Vogue. Changing the established working concepts of the magazine, she gave photographers unlimited choices in models, storylines, and concepts, granting them complete freedom to experiment. Thanks to her approach, internationally acclaimed photographers such as Bruce Weber, Paolo Roversi, Peter Lindbergh, and Mario Testino gained worldwide recognition.

Sozzani's first challenge to the Italian fashion world was featuring a photograph of the internationally renowned French couturier, Yves Saint Laurent, on the cover of Vogue Italia, with the comment that fashion is not purely an Italian phenomenon. This move sparked great interest among the intellectual part of Italian society, and designers and clothing manufacturers began to pay attention. In 1987, after the death of the chief editor of Italian Vogue, Franco Sartori, Franca Sozzani was invited to lead the magazine. She later referred to the first two years of her tenure as the worst in her life. Vogue felt like a clothing catalog that did not interest leading global brands, and the magazine's sales and advertising revenue were continuously declining. However, everything changed with Franca's arrival. She transformed the magazine's layout, design, and overall concepts. Vogue began featuring supermodels, and the photographs published in the magazine gained worldwide recognition.

Continuing this trend, Franca Sozzani, together with fashion photographer Steven Meisel and Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief of American Vogue, brought the idea of photographing supermodels in unusual situations to life. They were seen training with police officers or appearing on the cover of the magazine wearing regular jeans instead of designer suits. The success of this new format of Vogue led to Franca becoming the editor-in-chief of Condé Nast's Italian division in 1994.

In her magazines, Franca featured girls photographed against the backdrop of the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in New York City in 2001 and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Responding to critics with the statement, "I hear you, but I'm going my own way," Franca never made mistakes. Speculations that an issue of Vogue dedicated to black models would not sell were proven wrong, as the magazine had to be reprinted due to high demand. Franca's claim that curvy women are more attractive to men was confirmed by her creation of a blog on this topic and featuring photographs of three voluptuous beauties on the cover of Vogue with the headline "Dream Women."

In 2012, Franca created a "floral" design for the MINI Roadster car. The proceeds from its sale at a charity auction, which exceeded half a million euros, were donated to an HIV/AIDS foundation. She was one of the founders of the Child Priority charity fund, which supports talented young people, and served as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations. Franca also wrote books on fashion, design, and photography. Her contributions to the fashion industry and her impact on its international development were recognized with numerous awards, including the French Legion of Honor, the Swarovski Fashion Award, and others.

During her last year, Franca Sozzani fought a difficult illness, presumably cancer. She passed away on December 22, 2016.