Daily Front Row

2012 February 17

Alionissima!

Comments | | Print

Aliona Doletskaya
Alexey Kolpakov View Gallery

(NEW YORK) Fridays are all about a healthy dose of media goss at The Daily, so here's what you might have missed in our juicy Media Issue over the weekend! As founding EIC of Vogue Russia, Aliona Doletskaya was Moscow’s answer to The Bobbed One. No wonder her 2010 departure was so newsworthy. Now, she’s back as EIC at the buzzy new Russian Interview.
BY ALEXANDRA ILYASHOV 

How did you land Interview?
It was all Naomi Campbell’s idea! I’d been planning on resting a bit after leaving Vogue Russia. She approached me and said, ‘Why don’t you take on this beautiful magazine?’ I’ve known her for many years, and shot her for Vogue Russia cover stories.

How did things progress from there?
Naomi introduced me to Peter Brandt, and [Campbell’s companion] Vladislav Doronin, president of Capital Group and an outstanding Russian businessman with an interest in publishing. Doronin decided to underwrite the licensing for Interview in Russia and Germany. Our publisher, chairman, and co-owner of Interview Russia and Germany is Bernd Runge. I invited Bernd to get involved because we’d worked together for around 13 years at Condé Nast International. I started out in charge of both, and then we hired Jörg Koch as editor-in-chief of Interview Germany, where I remain as international editor. Interview is a very visual magazine, but 50 percent of it is about excellent writing, which only a native speaker of the language can manage.

Why those two countries?
There are quite a lot of similarities in what’s happening in Berlin and in Moscow. Both cities have recently woken up to everything new. They’re young, full of energy, and readiness to create something new—even if it involves provocation.  

What’s it like to edit Naomi? 
Excellent and professional! I found that almost impossible to believe when I first started working with her at Vogue Russia in 1998, since everything that she did on the shoot completely contradicted all of the critical stuff I’ve read about her before. I’ve never met anyone with such an incredible and outstanding memory for everything—names, dates, times, whatever.

How does your Interview contribute to the Russian newsstand?
There was a niche for a magazine that covers not only fantastic fashion and photography, but also creative people speaking honestly with each other.

Thoughts on Ingrid Sischy’s Interview?
Ingrid was doing it for over 20 years, during which there were many changes. There are issues that I adore, and there are some that I find less exciting. It had its own vision, approach, and of course, it’s quite different from what it is now—it’s natural. American Interview, since it was started by Andy [Warhol], has been reincarnated so many times. It’s unique that a relatively young magazine has gone through so many incredible stages of design and content development.

Let’s backtrack. Where did you come from?
Oh, God! I was invited to work for Cosmopolitan in the nineties. I stayed there shortly before moving into arts and movies—I worked for BBC Radio and RTL Television. I also did books on art. In 1997, I was invited to start Vogue Russia. That was a good 12 years.

How did you land Vogue?
Runge, then at Condé Nast International, came to Russia looking for candidates. I was invited to London for interviews with the editor-in-chief of Vogue UK and Jonathan Newhouse, the president of Condé Nast International. They looked at my previous work and asked me to write a creative synopsis of how I envisioned Vogue coming to Russia.

Which was...
At the end of the nineties, all of the major fashion magazines were present in Russia already. Vogue was actually the last to arrive. Vogue set a taste and aesthetic standard. It came at the right moment for this growing, fashionable milieu. To a non-Russian eye, the magazine’s success seemed quite unexpected—premature, even. People didn’t think that Russia was prepared for Vogue. Exactly as we were finishing the first issue and working on the second, the infamous Russian financial crisis hit. For a moment, we thought we’d published the first and last issues of Russian Vogue! But thanks to our publishers, we carried on and took the magazine to incredible success.

How did the mag change during your 12-year run?
The ‘baby’ of Vogue was born. After a few years, it was ‘walking’ and then ‘running.’ That was from 2005 through 2009, when the magazine was very much coming together confidently, had a strong point of view, and was standing on both feet. Just moments later, it seems, the baby is saying ‘Mom, I want to get married!’ Interest in other areas beyond fashion—movies, art, music—became part and parcel of the whole Vogue vision. That’s why my choice of Interview was so logical.

How is Russia changing?
Rapidly! In the eighties and nineties, girls thought it was quite chic to wear top-to-bottom Versace. Since then, the same women have developed very sophisticated taste, which a number of young Russian designers contributed to.

What about the rumors that you were up for Anna’s job? 
It had nothing to do with the truth. If you react to everything that’s happening on the internet, you’d probably die 25 years early! It’s impossible to keep up. My response was, ‘OK, guys. If you’d like to discuss this rumor, please do, but otherwise, I’ve got a lot of work to do.’ It was not a big deal.

Did it bother you?
I love rumors, especially when they are creative. I totally accept their autonomous lives. I live my life, and rumors live on their own. The escalation of the whole American Vogue rumor was really fun because it was so far from the truth.

Are you still planning to write a book?
You can consider Interview Russia as my book project! I’m sure I’ll come up with one in the proper sense of the word eventually, when the time is right.

Are you a visual type, or more of a wordsmith?
It’s completely 50/50 between visual and text. Every picture, every word, every line goes through me! I can’t stand banal, bland writing. I will ruthlessly throw it into the wastepaper basket. But I will also sit with my art director and work on the layout of one page for three hours, just because I love a particular picture and I want it to stand out just the right way.

Do you have any hors-Interview projects in mind?
For the time being, that’s a secret—but I have something in mind….

What’s something fun we don’t know about you?
That question should be referred to somebody else if you want the naughtiest answer!