A wonderful mix: Vogue Australia's Jen Nurick on fashion and gender

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Vogue Australia is a coveted institution for many burgeoning fashionistas and is often seen as a magazine that only deals with fashion, leaving all other complexities such as politics, academia and sociology behind. But Jen Nurick, a Features Fashion Writer for the magazine, proves that fashion is complex and deeply enmeshed with political issues and encourages many young graduates to strive to work for fashion magazines despite their commercial stigma.

I interviewed Jen Nurick one afternoon, desperate to find out how she got into Vogue and how she expressed both her love for fashion and her extensive academic qualifications including a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Gender Studies and Film History as well as a Masters of Philosophy in Multidisciplinary Gender Studies at the University of Cambridge.

Dying to know how Nurick managed to land such a dream job (my obsession with Devil Wears Prada was a real influence here), I asked her how she got into Vogue. "Well I was actually interning my whole sort of time at University...I started interning at Marie Claire for about 8 months as a fashion intern, so just working in the cupboard and helping with styling and packaging and all of that. Then I guess I got the internship at Vogue through that, as an editorial intern and I thought I was going to go to Vogue and do a fashion internship but that wasn’t available, so I said I might as well try the editorial side. I was there for just under two years."

But most importantly I wanted to ask her about how she navigates the contrast between her training within academic institutions with the highly transient and commercial nature of fashion. Nurick highlighted the common assumption that fashion is for a feminine audience which has historically implied a kind of frivolity and silliness. But Nurick is a "firm believer that you shouldn’t underestimate your audience or your reader." Within recent years fashion has closely intersected with issues of gender which gave Nurick an edge in a n environment where "there was nobody that felt confident or qualified to write/talk" about arises in fashion such as "non-binary fashion designers" and "trans models."

Not only this but Nurick had the challenge of changing her academic tone for a more popular tone without compromising her expertise or assuming that the audience won't understand. "I had to reconcile my own academic voice and the voice of the magazine." Nurick also had to work around the pressures of commercialism and advertising that is inevitable within fashion spheres such as the magazine: "It’s a fine balance between adapting to the voice of your employer as well as staying true to myself and trying to reflect my background and point of difference."

Nurick's approach is a great insight into the diversity of backgrounds which fashion can facilitate. To get into fashion you do not have to go to a fashion school or own expensive handbags, but rather you can bring your own background, wherever that may be and contribute to the rich diversity of fashion as a cultural and social force.

Sven Kristian, Fashion Editorial with Kayla-Crous