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"  A former Harper&amp;#039;s Bazaar U.K. creative/fashion director, London-based Neophitou also founded her own glossy, 10 \u2014 and 10 years (and counting) later, it&amp;#039;s still going strong. The perennially Ala\u00EFa-shod editrix consults for Antonio Berardi, Roland Mouret, and Elie Saab, but she styles high street just as well as high fashion: She recently took the reins (and wings) of the Victoria&amp;#039;s Secret runway show. Harper&amp;#039;s Bazaar: You&amp;#039;ve worked for corporate magazine \u2014 notably the U.K. edition of Bazaar \u2014 and independent magazines like your own, 10 and 10 Men. What can you do in independent publishing that&amp;#039;s harder in corporate? Sophia Neophitou: Someone once said to me, &amp;quot;Creativity is not democracy,&amp;quot; which is brilliant. It&amp;#039;s a total dictatorship [laughs]! No, it&amp;#039;s not. But when you have an idea, it&amp;#039;s great to be able to say, &amp;quot;This is my idea,&amp;quot; and to be able to see it through from conception to inception. A lot of the time, [there are] so many people making choices on bigger magazines, and there are so many sorts of hurdles or hoops you have to leap through to make it to a point where it&amp;#039;s not compromising the idea. HB: You also style and consult for labels like Roland Mouret and Antonio Berardi. How does that affect the work you do for the magazine? SN: It&amp;#039;s like my brain&amp;#039;s a big filing cabinet and there are these little sections \u2014 my consultancies, and the magazine, and lots of different things going on all at the same time that I&amp;#039;m inspired by. I don&amp;#039;t think I could have the magazine without doing consultancies, and vice versa. You really do plunk into the woman of that designer. When I&amp;#039;m working with Roland, I&amp;#039;m thinking of the Roland woman. When I&amp;#039;m working with Antonio Berardi, it&amp;#039;s very much about who she is. You become a curator of different ideas. And it all does inspire you, but they don&amp;#039;t overlap because they&amp;#039;re all quite different. HB: Which fall shows did you love? SN: For me, each city represents a different moment of euphoria. I did really adore the whole resurgence of that Calvin [Klein] minimalism. But then I went to Proenza Schouler and I loved it \u2014 I loved the ethnicity of it. And the Marc Jacobs show was breathtaking. You came out of that experience and you felt you had a vision of where he was in his head to create. You go to Paris and Milan and have the same unique experiences across the board. In Paris, there was Haider Ackermann&amp;#039;s show, with Leonard Cohen&amp;#039;s voice reciting &amp;quot;A Thousand Kisses Deep.&amp;quot; I shed real-life tears! I adored it all: the clothes, the presentation, and him. HB: Are there other particular moments that stand out? SN:: I&amp;#039;m always inspired by London, by the fact that a lot of the designers here are functioning on a shoestring and are able to put out some of the most inspiring collections that have an impact globally on so many designers and trends in general. I feel like London as a city gives so much with so little. Christopher Kane still manages to put on amazing shows with total design integrity. But my true inspiration is sitting in an Azzedine [Ala\u00EFa] presentation at the end of a whole month of seeing everything in huge venues. I&amp;#039;ve been there where there&amp;#039;s hardly any other journalists there, a few buyers, drinking wine and looking at clothes on girls you&amp;#039;d never recognize. But it&amp;#039;s about the clothes. They stand out, those intimate moments. HB: At the shows these days, editors like Anna Dello Russo are on display as much as models, thanks to the street-style photo brigade. Has that changed the way you prepare for shows? SN: Oh, God, no. No, no, no. What it has made me do, though, is an issue where we put Anna Dello Russo on the cover. People like her just do love fashion. I&amp;#039;m always mesmerized by people who plan their outfits because I don&amp;#039;t have time for that. I&amp;#039;m really about, What do I feel like wearing? I&amp;#039;m a very lazy dresser. I wear Azzedine, I wear C\u00E9line, I wear Roland, I wear Berardi, I wear Balenciaga. They&amp;#039;re my brands. I&amp;#039;m about putting those 10 things in a bag and taking them, with lots more shoes than I need. HB: The street-style set does tend to go for the flashy.  SN: Once we were walking through the Tuileries and some girl was wearing some weird lederhosen outfit, and behind her was Vanessa Paradis. The paps were so distracted by the lederhosen fancy-dress girl that they totally missed Vanessa Paradis. We thought, That&amp;#039;s a bit stupid. In the end, her style is much more understated and believable, and something that should be what&amp;#039;s being discussed rather than someone wearing an elephant on their head. Read interviews with more stylish indie mag editors Suzanne Koller and Katie Grand and Penny Martin. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a794/independent-women-sophia-neophitou-rr11/>