On Monday, Franca Sozzani took the stage at Harvard University alongside supermodel Doutzen Kroes and Huffington Post founder, Arianna Huffington, to discuss issues of body image in the media. To accommodate those who couldn’t make it to Cambridge to hear her in person, the editor published her speech online; but, a few lines in, we realized that some unscripted tidbits mysteriously didn’t make it onto Vogue Italia.
Off script, the EIC revealed a few candid insights into her Franca noggin, when she expressed her frustration with the modeling community, let her warped perception of youth and beauty show, and acknowledged, without taking any responsibility, the link between eating disorders and fashion. Ahead, the top ten quotes we thought you should know, that you might not read anywhere else.
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1. “I’m not a doctor…I’m an editor-in-chief. I see a lot of skinny girls.”
2. On Karlie Kloss: “She’s a dancer! She’s very muscular. Have you seen her butt?”
3. “The mistake that we’ve made is that everyone looks the same. Everyone is Natalia: Natalia V., Natalia C., Natalia Ch.”
4. “Models used to have lives—character. They ate, smoked, had boyfriends. Now, all the girls are so scared to be sent back to Ukraine.”
5. “A[n online] Vogue community wouldn’t mean anything. I’m not the Facebook.”
6. “Only young people can help young people.”
7. “This is where I feel guilty: We’ve given only one way to be beautiful.”
8. “I don’t agree with laws about [limiting a model’s] age. When I met the supermodels, they were teenagers.”
9. About who young girls should look up to: “Go to the agencies and see who they reject.”
10. "I don’t really like male models. They’re boring, so I don’t care what they do.”
Photo: Courtesy of Vogue Italia