CNC Faculty spotlight influential women for International Women’s Day 2021

To celebrate International Women’s Day 2021, faculty members from the Condé Nast College of Fashion & Design spotlight the influential women who continue to inspire them creatively and why their approach is so motivational toward their practice.
Alex Eagle – Sara Hassan, Creative Director

Quentin Jones – Hannah Shakir, Senior Lecturer and Vogue Fashion Certificate Course Leader
This International Women’s Day, I am endlessly inspired by artist and filmmaker Quentin Jones. Her ability to amalgamate the weird and wonderful into something striking is endless. As an Editor, I often like to collect edits of imagery whilst analysing up-and-coming trends and the collage methods of Jones’ work pulling together language, mixed media, and existing imagery appeals to all the senses making for a feast of visual extravaganza. Something we can all creatively dine out on!

Diana Vreeland – Zoe Souter, Head of Stakeholder Engagement
Diana Vreeland was brought to my attention by my grandmother, who was an avid reader of Vogue and Harper’s & Queen. She thought Diana Vreeland a unique bird of paradise, so chic and so intelligent. One of Diana Vreeland’s sayings was “what these magazines gave was a point of view” and having a point of view and being intelligent was what mattered in my family.
I grew up in the 1970’s in Northumberland, north of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, while Granny was from Kent and worked in London before she married. We used to pour over the exciting images in Vogue which made me long for a more exciting life like the one she had.
She had worked for Baron D’Erlanger, whose wife was a patron of the arts and supported Cecil Beaton. Everything Diana Vreeland did was glamorous and unique and I loved her originality. She was the first person I really admired who worked for a magazine, I used to study what she wore and read what she said avidly. She inspired me visually both in her fashion pictures and with her red lipstick and her high rouged cheekbones. What I remember she said was “I think fashion must be the most intoxicating release from the banality of the world”.