When I started as ELLE's creative director back in 2007, I had a clear mission: to make sure that the idea of the ELLE woman was alive and prominent in each photo, on every page of the magazine. In my first month on the job, the design director and I hung up a list of words in our offices—modern, sexy, strong, cool, smart, fun—in order to keep the code of the ELLE girl dancing in our heads. She was this life-loving, blog-reading, savvy-shopping, smart individual who was as passionate about Balenciaga as she was about, say, Barack.
In reality, of course, there is not one individual woman who defines ELLE. And that's proven to me every day as a parade of ELLE girls—who also happen to be ELLE staffers—walk by…
