EDITOR’S NOTE
was changing around us in the world of politics, fashion,
music, literature and online as we worked from very early
mornings (me) to late, late nights (the team) coming up
with a new creative template under the skilled and watch-
ful eye of Creative Director Suzanne Sykes.
As I write, my inbox is brimming with everyone’s mem-
ories of making September ELLE 2016: the midnight
recasting of a fashion shoot just to get it exactly right, the
relentless hours spent perfecting layouts, the hundreds of
moodboards, the thousands of new-season pieces stream-
ing in and out of the glass-fronted fashion cupboard in our
open-plan office. All the emails, transatlantic phone calls
and transcribing cover interviews through the night.
I watched as the momentum surged while we put the
pages together and the team, fuelled it has to be said by all
manner of chocolate treats and epic playlists, began to get
ever more excited collating all the content we had created.
It felt like being on the launch of a new magazine, and it
felt special to be giving every page such lengthy care and
attention. So now it’s over to you. What do you think of
our new look, both in print and online? What do you like
and what is missing? Let us know via email or twitter and
we’ll see what we can deliver in our forthcoming issues.
D
ear Reader,
I have noticed that two things happen when
you live through an era of rapid change, as
we are now. Firstly, there is an inevitable
surge of artistic creativity and second the misfits, the con-
trarians, the underdogs and the anti-heroes come into their
own. We witness the rise of the rebel: those who don’t
play by the normal rules, who flourish in chaotic, unpre-
dictable times and welcome uncertainty without fear. This
new-look September issue of ELLE is dedicated to those
people, the curious revolutionaries who think differently.
We’ve made a bolder, braver magazine to celebrate them
and give these important, varied new voices a place to talk
about who they are and what they stand for. I am incredi-
bly proud of what the ELLE team has created and curated
on the pages that follow, and this issue is one of the high-
lights of my career as Editor-in-Chief. From our interview
with transgender model Hari Nef (p230) to Kenya Hunt’s
piece The Age Of The Contrarian (p188), we have shone
the spotlight on inspiring people who I hope will provoke
stimulating debates.
Chuks Emele
Editor-in-Chief
Reinventing this modern magazine, with its five unique
and collectable covers, has been an epic project. It’s been
an unstoppable (and frankly, emotional) roller coaster for
us as we reimagined every single page and every single
shoot. I tasked the team with bringing me fresh thinking,
reverse thinking, big, bold ideas and a new, more diverse
and inclusive approach. The issue is loosely based on the
theme of change and we spent months asking, ‘Do we
have to do it the same way as we always have?’ More
often than not we concluded that no, we don’t. So much
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