What does the appointment of Megha Kapoor at the helm of Vogue India mean for the magazine and this industry?
“The January 2022 issue of Vogue India ushers in a new era, a new chapter,” begins Megha Kapoor in her first editor’s letter, as she announces a “Vogue Reset’ and plans to lead the magazine in a new direction. Kapoor is the new Head of Editorial Content at the magazine and her appointment to this role has sparked many conversations on the evolution of fashion journalism in the country.
Already on shaky ground after decades of being relegated to the entertainment and party pages, Indian fashion writing, coverage, and reporting didn’t really have much time to develop to its fullest even with the coming of foreign legacy titles in the first decade of the 2000s. Advertisers quickly owned the pages, and monthly magazines rarely, if ever, critiqued collections of products. Then came the slump of the mid-2010s, followed closely by the social media onslaught, and then the Covid pandemic. Not good.
It is into this sorry state for print media that Kapoor, 35, steps up to the top job at Vogue India, designations notwithstanding. Before moving to Mumbai a few weeks ago, Sydney-based Kapoor’s only connections to India seemed to be an internship at Vogue India over a decade ago, and that she is of Indian descent. A graduate of the University of Melbourne, it was her time at Vogue India that landed her a stint at Vogue Australia’s fashion department. Since then, she has worked as fashion director at the indie Australian publication Oyster Magazine, and founded Inprint, her own luxury fashion glossy, in 2015.
Six years later, Kapoor is ready to take charge of one of the youngest Vogues in the world — launched in October 2007, Vogue India is just about a year shy of its 15th anniversary. “It is kind of magical for me to be able to engage with India through this opportunity,” she says. “I think one has to be humble enough to [know] what one does and doesn’t understand, and I’m not going to pretend that I get every nuance. That said, there are over 36 million of us who have had the immigrant experience, and that does not make us any less Indian. I have a lot to learn, and I’m excited.”
Meeting newer demands
Her appointment follows Vogue’s parent organisation’s global shakeup—Conde Nast’s reorganisation of the company’s content strategy, leadership teams, and structure. A similar exercise had taken place at The New York Times and Wall Street Journal just a few years ago. Gone are the powerful Editors-in-Chief of old; enter the Content Head, a hybrid entity who’s better placed to respond to newer demands from consumers as well as advertisers.
Spreads from the January 2022 edition
The future, says Kapoor, lies in striking a balance between local and global content. “To me, it’s not a dichotomy. With every project I do, I want to ask myself who the audience is, and if we’re reflecting India’s modern and diverse voices.” She mentions the works of modern Indians like photographers Ashish Shah and Bharat Sikka, and adds that while she is loath to criticise what came before, she looks forward to evolving local content, talent, and image making for a platform that’s more 360-degrees in its outlook, and puts India on the world map. “I’m already working to get Indian designers on Vogue Runway [the title’s free app that covers global fashion] to ensure worldwide recognition.”
No urban bias?
When I ask what she thinks of exploring regional Indian languages, she says she is ready to take on every opportunity to connect with a diverse audience. And while it may take some time before we see fashion magazines offered in Punjabi, Bengali, or Tamil, it’s not as far-fetched a notion as it would have been even a few years ago. She wants to represent all of India, not just Delhi and Mumbai, which is encouraging in its intent.
What will be truly interesting to see, though, is how well such developing editorial policies will work when it comes to advertisers, especially luxury brands, who have come to all but own the pages of Indian fashion magazines over the past decade. “There is definitely going to be a shift,” says Kapoor. “There will be more editorial solutions, and we are perhaps not going to be as dictated by brands.” Given Conde Nast’s influence over the magazine market, it is entirely possible that her outlook is quickly adopted across titles—those that still exist, of course.
The author is a fashion commentator and creative director based in New Delhi.
