Sienna De L'Orpaz is Editor in Chief of The Editor Magazine, an intercultural high fashion magazine that is set to be opening its pages — print, online and digital — to Bangkok and the world in January. We felt it necessary to catch up with Sienna as this will be no ordinary magazine, whatsoever. With the aim of removing the bars through which the fashion world has caged us, Sienna feels it's The Editor's responsibility to "break the norms traditional media has bound us by and set unconventional boundaries for beauty and fashion through diminishing all conformities and social norms by including all ages, sizes, nations and cultures". Seriously, wow. Read on, guys.
Please tell us about yourself Sienna. When did fashion become such a huge part of your life?
Fashion, in a way, was always a part of my life. Growing up my mum was a fashion designer and pattern-maker. She was always extremely stylish and elegant, with a bold sense for it. I would love watching her get ready and transform herself. She also always said I was a little dictator of taste. I would never let her pick my clothes and it was always a battle as I had to pick them: the lace on my socks had to match the lace on my dress and my shoes had to match and my bow had to be perfect. So, really, nothing has changed -- she is still stylish and I am still a dictator of taste.
At what point did you notice there was a lack of diversity in the fashion world and media generally? Where were you at this point and how did this affect you?
Actually in high school, around the tenth grade, I started writing every English project I could on social justice as well as every group project and every essay, to the point where during one group project, my teacher asked to have a conversation with me after class and said: "I know you're a leader, and I know your passionate about this, but what if your group isn't?" and my -- very stubborn, very passionate, fiery -- reply was "well, they should be, and you should too". And that was the end of it. We did the project my way. I never respected her in the same way though, because to me, she should have been encouraging it. I think from a young age I was very conscious of this because I was interested. I questioned everything and I grew up in an international community.
I read magazines a lot, like Cosmo Girl and Teen Vogue, and remember wondering why the only diverse ads I saw were Roca Wear and Baby Phat. I remember wondering why everyone was -- and is -- so skinny beyond reality. You know? I didn't look like these models and they definitely didn't look like me. It affected me negatively, because I thought I was supposed to look like these size 0, blonde, blue eyed models with glowing skin. No one tells you that they cast these models this way, then put six gallons of baby oil and foundation on them, tell them not to eat for six days before a shoot, and then airbrush them. Titles like "Get a better body in two weeks", "Make out Make-up", "The Body Guide Issue" (yes, in magazines like Cosmo Girl and Teen Vogue) didn't help. Body Diversity and Racial diversity were non-existent, and really, they still aren't.
How did the idea of The Editor magazine come about?
The Editor was an idea that sprang to my mind when I was 23, when a professor was talking to me about going to work for Vogue, which had been a dream of mine since I was about 17 years old. I realised that I really didn't want that anymore. I stopped buying Vogue in my second year of university because I was tired of how repetitive everything became -- the same types of models just over and over. The articles stopped being relevant. They stopped challenging me, they stopped provoking thought and making me question things beyond what kind of spanx Kim Kardashian wore and what kind of cream Gigi Hadid used when she got haemorrhoids -- OK, now I'm exaggerating, but it wasn't far from reality.
Now, really all you see on the covers are Kendall Jenner, Gigi/Bella Hadid and celebrities. Enough. Vogue is not a tabloid. Well it pretty much is now, but it's not supposed to be. So I stopped following Vogue on everything and I stopped buying it altogether. Actually, since Anna Wintour began editing Vogue there has been a sharp decline in models of colour -- and now, quality content. There was an influx of models of colour in the mid-70's -- models like Beverly Johnson, Naomi Campbell, Louise Vyent, Kara Young, Shari Belafonte, Sheila Johnson, and Karen Alexander all graced the covers of Vogue and then returned to decline when Anna Wintour began editing Vogue in 1988. So basically I thought about all of the things I would change to the point where it would be a complete 180 degrees from what it is today. It would be a completely new magazine. So I starting thinking about starting my own magazine. I decided to call it The Editor, because being an Editor has been a dream of mine since I was young.
Will the magazine be headquartered in Bangkok but with a global focus? Or will it be catered to a Thai audience? Please elaborate.
The magazine initially was planned to be headquartered in Bangkok, catering to an audience in Thailand only. However, since we soft launched our website for market validation, there has been a global interest, way more than we ever expected, thus we decided to rethink and alter our business plan. So now, we are still headquartered in Bangkok but our audience is global.
How do you feel Thailand specifically would benefit from a magazine like The Editor ? Why is the world in such dire need of The Editor right now?
I think Thailand experiences a lot of the issues we discuss and is trying to change. Growing up in Thailand, I know first hand about the innate ideals of beauty and the Thai women's -- and even men's -- ambition to be whiter. Which is understandable because having light skin is a virtue that was equated with intelligence, attractiveness, and most importantly, with social class. In Thailand, "whitefacing" is an actual term -- although not an idiomatic one -- but it's used to refer to the phenomenon in Asia for people that desire white skin as an indicator of beauty, social class and even intelligence.
Although, it so happens that this is a ubiquitous idea that has developed internationally throughout communities of colour -- not only in Thailand. This, as well as systematic racism, began due to historical events; slavery and colonialism for one, but has continued to manifest through various conducts. Nevertheless, I believe that the most dangerous contributors are advertising, beauty, fashion, and the media in general. These offenders have created homogeneous and racialised hierarchies that permeate these industries. The Editor aims to diminish these hierarchies and construct a more healthy, realistic, and colourful "ideal" of beauty. I say "ideal" because, its not really an ideal if you can't fit it into a box. We don't even want that box. Seeing models of colour, having both racial diversity and body diversity should be the norm, not the exception.
Women and men alike need to be more comfortable in their own skin and stop letting the media tell them what they should or shouldn't be or that they aren't good enough. That's where the world benefits from a magazine like The Editor. We would never digitally alter a model or change their skin colour or their or body. We do use Photoshop but only for photography purposes: to change the mood and lighting, the background colour -- really only to reach that vision that we had. But never to alter the models' faces or bodies.
Will The Editor be available in Thai?
In the future, yes.
When will the magazine officially be launched?
We were supposed to launch on the 29th of October, however, our hearts and condolences go out to the people of Thailand during this difficult time, and The Editor staff join me in expressing our sincere condolences to the Thai people on the passing of His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej. Therefore we have decided it would be best to move our launch to January.
What can we expect to find in the first issue?
The first issue is really our starting point. You will find a lot of visuals with meanings behind them, articles and images that will both challenge and inspire our readers; articles about racism, feminism, life, beauty, and culture. Our first issue of The Editor explores conformity, and the rebellion against it.
Do you have any kinds of processes in place when finding your models to ensure your ideals for diversity are always reached?
We rarely ever use models from agencies. We are trying to go against the convention of using agencies, whose process of recruiting models is the same reason why runways, campaigns, and advertisements are so unreasonably whitewashed. It is extremely difficult, especially here, to go to an agency to find models of colour, or voluptuous models. There are a few agencies, Zoom-Evrika in particular, that have been amazing in working with us and actively trying to help us find the models we look for, and they try to help us embrace this shift we are working hard to bring into play. Even then, we try to use people we meet day to day. One of our models, Alex, we actually met at a party. I was sitting talking to my partner Dolly Mirpuri, over the loud music and she pointed over to this beautiful girl and was like hey she'd be great for so and so. So Dolly gets up and chases her down the stairs and she agreed to be at a shoot the week after! I think it's a much more interesting way to work than picking girls out of a plastic folder.
Once launched, The Editor can be bought online, and will be in select stores throughout the city. Visit www.theeditormagazine.com or follow the facebook page, www.fb.com/theeditorthailand to stay updated.
