Fei Fei Sun x Vogue Italia

Welcome to the newly spruced up Of Stranger Sensibilities, version god knows what. I know better than to constantly change the layout, for fear of alienating longtime readers, so I have held my hand back to not change too much by keeping the same motif of thick black borders only with the edition of better fonts. I suppose the timing is apt since its a) a new year b) almost my blog's second anniversary and c) I've just purchased a domain!! The final push to get my own space (err minus hosting) was seeing Amanda getting her own. It just seems so clean and professional...even if I am not one. I just got the domain so it will take a while for servers to redirect my blogspot to my own domain. The cool side benefit is that I get to have a cool new email account, which is updated for the e-mail icon under 'Find Me Here.' I will forward all the emails I have currently from that old account to this new one, but I can't promise that if you send me email to the old account in the future that I would be 100% guaranteed to get it. Just email me using my new account ok? I used Playfair Display for the post title, gadget headings and tabs, which I discovered via Google Web Fonts (hey Sam here is the link) and Gentium Basic for the body, which I found through graphic/web designer Breanna Rose, on whose blog I've first saw using it and LOVED it. I'll end all the boring blogger talk here and more fanfare plus blogger treats will come when my blog-niversary is here on the 27th.

Back to fashion news, the reason why I HAD to share this editorial, not only because it's fantastic and beautiful and I love Fei Fei Sun to death (after Liu Wen), but because it is a historical moment in which there is finally a Chinese model on the cover of Vogue Italia for the first time EVER on their January 2013 issue. This is a big deal since to my knowledge, this is the first time a Western Vogue had a solo East Asian (or maybe even Asia in general) model on its cover. I remember Vogue US doing the 'Asia Major' spread photographed by Meisel (too!) back in their Dec 2010 issue, but I thought it was more of a token gesture of "D-I-V-E-R-S-I-T-Y" more than a genuine appreciation for massive strides the models have carved out for their themselves (ugh how I've come to loath that term). As much as I love seeing mah home gurlz get represented in the big fashion glossies, I really hope magazines would stop doing Asia model issues, but rather treat these models as just models on their own right. Except that their ethnicity just so happens to be Asian, the same the way I hope plus size models will lose their plus size label and just be normal models themselves, even if there is a clear physical difference between the two. The reason why I dislike such labels is that it turns everything into a kind of a gimmick. I want these models to be successful not because they happen to be *insert label* model but get blue chip contracts and editorials by virtue of their own merit, by werking it like any other Brazilian or Russian in town.

If there is one good thing that came out of the huge buying power of the Chinese, this is it. I can still remember the days when there only Asian model out during the baby doll era of Gemma Ward was Du Juan, then along came Hye Park and Daul Kim (girl I miss you so much RIP) and joined later by Lakshmi Menon. It's so satisfying to see Chinese models almost everywhere you go now. I can't wait till the proliferation of Chinese models develops so that you will begin to see different kinds beauty other than the current preferred aesthetic of monolids plus insane bone structure (+/- pouty lips), since there are at least 56 officially recognized ethnicities in China alone.

This editorial is well done if a bit trite in being all studio shots, but if there is a bone I had to pick with it, it would be the heavy make up on the cover. I understand the difference between everyday make up and editorial/haute couture make up, however Fei Fei loses some of her character underneath the heavy contouring and eyeliner. Though what can I say, this is a great coup for Fei Fei and will sure be a career milestone in propelling her modeling career to stratospheric heights. It would AWESOME to see her in a big brand's beauty campaign. Holy cow I didn't expect I would write so much – it was supposed to be a simple pic sharing post. The full editorial is under the jump.

IMAGES COURTESY OF