Fashion and rebellion in Vision Undressed magazine
Anano Shalamberidze is the founder and editor of Vision Undressed magazine, a new title that’s dedicated to providing a platform for Georgia’s often underappreciated fashion talent. As she explains in this episode of the podcast, the project was always intended as something of a critical love letter to her country, drawing attention to the designers, stylists, photographers and models working far from the international centres of power. But when the pro-European protests broke out across Georgia last year, they changed the tone of the magazine, with contributors wanting to say something about the movement towards a more open, more international vision of the country.
She’s now living here in London, studying at Central Saint Martins, and it was interesting hearing how her experiences as a student are shaping what she’s doing with the magazine: She says she still wants the next issue to feature Georgian talent, but she’s also excited about including people and projects she’s encountering while she studies.
As you’ll hear, I was also keen to get her thoughts on the role of print publishing today, and the idea that, for her and her fellow students, paper has become a form of rebellion against the social media that exhausts them: “I want to touch things and I want to read them and I don’t want to be confined to the black miror on my phone.”
She says at the start of our conversation that she is determined to not be afraid of being young and inexperienced, and I love the way that she’s following these impulses and ideas to make Vision Undressed magazine as a way of framing the world as she sees it.
If all goes to plan, this will be the last of our regular podcast episodes for a while – I’m switching to video podcasts in an effort to help these conversations reach more people, so I hope you’ll start to see them popping up in more places. Of course you’ll still be able to listen to the regular, audio-only version, though, so if you haven’t done so already, please follow us wherever you get your podcasts and we’ll be able to keep on delivering our new episodes to you as soon as they’re ready.
