Angelica Cheung’s booming voice can be heard throughout the editorial office. “You need ideas!” shouts the editor of Vogue China. Four picture editors come marching out of her office, heads drooping.
They are preparing a 14-page spread for “Fashion’s Night Out”, Vogue’s one-night shopping festival on Friday next week. “They want glamour but this isn’t about glamour, it’s about shopping,” sighs Ms Cheung. “I suggested shopping bags as a motif but you can’t fill 14 pages just with shopping bags. You could have someone jumping into a mountain of shopping bags, shopping bags flying at you . . . They need some ideas!”
Is this how she does it? Within eight years, Ms Cheung has built from scratch one of Vogue’s biggest and most dynamic international editions. In a market other fashion publishers thought was not ready, she launched a magazine with original content produced for China to global standards.