The result of this process is a kaleidoscope of forms and styles, unified by Lopez’s distinctive line, which nevertheless always seeks to enter into dialogue with the design depicted, bringing out its details, the garment’s structural lines and each designer’s signature elements. Each issue revolves around a “Vanity concept”, chosen by Piaggi as a guiding thread not only to connect collections from different brands, but also to highlight fashion’s links with other creative disciplines, including design, architecture, cinema, theatre and the visual arts. Following Piaggi’s insights, references to the historical avant-gardes, from Surrealism to Constructivism, emerge in Lopez’s illustrations, becoming visual models to reinterpret in order to offer a different, culturally informed and thoughtful perspective on contemporary fashion. Gianfranco Ferré’s clothes, for example, are rendered through sculptural volumes, in homage to the designer’s architectural training. For Krizia, Lopez’s line draws on Japanese woodblock prints, highlighting the influence of Eastern traditions on certain designs. In depicting Cinzia Ruggeri’s famous ziggurat dress, meanwhile, Lopez employs artistic references ranging from Surrealism to Futurism, perhaps nodding to the penchant for quotation in postmodern design, with which Ruggeri is sometimes associated. In effect, “Vanity”, partly through its unprecedented visual identity, positions itself less as a chronicle of the fashion system than as a form of criticism, situating the collections within an expanded landscape of contemporary artistic practices through a narrative conveyed primarily through images.

To understand what makes a magazine like “Vanity” distinctive, it is worth recalling that it is the only one to declare an interest in stilismo in its very subtitle. The stilista, as some readers may know, emerged specifically within the Italian context during the 1970s and 1980s: a figure capable not only of designing a collection, but also of mediating between the production chain, public taste and the press. This virtually untranslatable term thus refers to a particular local context: late-1970s Italy, where stilisti were expected to give a recognisable, personal signature to ready-to-wear collections, including those designed for other companies, while responding to the distinctive characteristics of an Italian manufacturing sector made up of highly specialised small and medium-sized businesses. In “Vanity”, however, this did not translate into an exclusive interest in Italian products. Rather, Piaggi used stilismo as a critical lens through which to offer an Italian perspective on international fashion. Alongside Armani, Ferré and Versace, the pages of “Vanity” frequently featured names such as Karl Lagerfeld, Vivienne Westwood, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Yves Saint Laurent, Claude Montana, Issey Miyake, Comme des Garçons, Sonia Rykiel and many others. The aim was to champion the individual creative vision of those whom Piaggi regarded as stilisti in every sense, even if they were not Italian, using Lopez’s work to highlight the imagery and signature elements that made their creations unique. Consequently, brands such as Gucci and Louis Vuitton, which at the time did not employ figures identifiable as stilisti, were almost entirely absent from the magazine.

This approach remained largely unchanged until the end of 1984, when the collaboration with Lopez came to an end. A few months later, Anna Piaggi also stepped down as the magazine’s editor. Yet despite losing its founder’s distinctive critical perspective, “Vanity” sought to reinvent itself with a new visual identity, bringing in artists and illustrators such as François Berthoud and Stefano Canulli, but above all the comics creators of the Valvoline collective. Valvoline—whose members included Igor “Igort” Tuveri, Giorgio Carpinteri, Marcello Jori, Daniele Brolli, Lorenzo Mattotti and Jerry Kramsky—was already an established name within what critics have termed Nuovo Fumetto italiano, or New Italian Comics. This movement emerged in the late 1970s, distinguishing itself through an unprecedented maturity of authorial expression, greater psychological depth in its characters and, above all, new stylistic and representational approaches, in constant dialogue with both other creative disciplines and the political and social landscape. Moving from magazines such as “Alter Linus” and “Frigidaire”—bibles of the emerging New Italian Comics movement—the Valvoline artists brought to “Vanity” a complex, innovative visual language unlike anything previously seen in fashion communication. Their editorial illustrations became stage sets in which, as in a tableau vivant, a fragment of a larger narrative seemed frozen in time. For Igort, clothes provided an opportunity to reinterpret the rigorous formalism of the Russian avant-gardes and the Bauhaus, while Mattotti shaped them through expansive, abstract volumes of colour. Jori’s watercolours—he was the only member who also had an established career as a painter—lent themselves instead to scenes with an atmosphere of suspended time, seemingly drawn from films noir. Through the visual language Valvoline brought from comics—and, for instance, through Berthoud’s prints, which explored techniques unusual in fashion—“Vanity” managed for several more years to sustain a narrative that used fashion as a privileged vantage point from which to interpret developments in the arts as they unfolded.

Towards the end of the decade, however, even “Vanity” began to show signs of fatigue. Photographic editorials returned to prominence, while the illustrations were now entrusted almost entirely to Stefano Canulli alone. This was perhaps a sign of an era drawing to a close, one that would give way in the 1990s to a celebration of austerity—particularly evident in Italy in the aftermath of the Mani Pulite investigations, which marked the end of the Socialist-driven dream of “Milano da bere”. Yet “Vanity” remains a pivotal publishing venture for understanding the remarkable circumstances in which, as Marco Meneguzzo has written, the 1980s saw “Italy produce a kind of culture that represents not only the new, […] but even a new way of thinking or, rather, of looking at the world and living in it”. A new perspective, then, which, by highlighting the cultural values underpinning the creation of a garment, helped introduce the world to an Italian way of thinking and writing about fashion.