Anna’s Fashion Affair

While working on a university project about leadership in business, I didn’t expect to find myself emotionally stirred. But studying Franca Sozzani, the iconic editor-in-chief of Vogue Italia, was not just an academic exercise. It was a return to why I fell in love with fashion in the first place.

Franca Sozzani was not simply a fashion editor; she was a cultural visionary, a disrupter, a leader in the most radical and romantic sense. She didn’t follow trends—she cracked them open. She didn’t just style pages—she told stories that made the world uncomfortable, reflective, aware. Under her leadership, Vogue Italia became a canvas where clothes were poetry, and editorials were political statements.

In Between Two Worlds

As me and my colleagues dove deeper into her leadership style—transformational, participative, and at times free-rein—I realized something: this is the kind of leadership that shapes not only magazines, but mindsets. She trusted talent, nourished innovation, gave her team the freedom to experiment, to fail, to soar. And in doing so, she redefined not only the magazine, but the very idea of what fashion could be.

The values she championed—authenticity, courage, curiosity, and beauty with meaning—are exactly what I try to explore every day on Fashion Affair. My fashion is not just about clothes. It’s an ode to identity, to storytelling, to provocation wrapped in elegance. In a way, everything I aspire to wear, write, or create carries a spark of Franca’s fire.

The Unorthodox Power of Women Who Disrupt

In a GQ article published right after her passing, Franca Sozzani was regarded as “the Pope of fashion” – yet her rule was “everything but Catholic.” It was unorthodox, bold, fierce, irreverent, radical. Everything society had long told women they could not be.

And that’s precisely what made her a revolutionary. In a world that often demands women to lead quietly, politely, within the lines, Franca broke every rule and rewrote the playbook. She didn’t wait for permission to innovate. She created space where there was none. She took the most glamorous magazine in Italy and turned it into a cultural battleground—where aesthetics met activism and silence was never an option.

There was fashion before Franca Sozzani, and fashion after her.

The Art of Leading Through Fashion

Thanks to her, shoes, accessories, dresses—once symbols of luxury or superficiality—became tools of narrative, identity, rebellion. Fashion became a means to speak about race, gender, war, addiction, power, and privilege. It became political. It became art in motion.

And through it all, Franca led with fearless elegance.

She represents a kind of leadership that doesn’t just inspire trends—it accelerates transformation. She reminds us that the most disruptive innovation often comes from women who are told to sit still but choose to stand, speak, and create instead.

This project reminded me that a leader’s legacy isn’t just a list of accomplishments—it’s the world they leave behind. And Franca Sozzani left us a world where fashion dares to speak, move, and matter. So thank you, Franca.

All the love, as always

Anna