Megha Kapoor and the rise of the content head in fashion

What does the appointment of Megha Kapoor at the helm of Vogue India mean for the magazine and this industry?

“The January 2022 issue of Vogue India ushers in a new era, a new chapter,” begins Megha Kapoor in her first editor’s letter, as she announces a “Vogue Reset’ and plans to lead the magazine in a new direction. Kapoor is the new Head of Editorial Content at the magazine and her appointment to this role has sparked many conversations on the evolution of fashion journalism in the country.

Already on shaky ground after decades of being relegated to the entertainment and party pages, Indian fashion writing, coverage, and reporting didn’t really have much time to develop to its fullest even with the coming of foreign legacy titles in the first decade of the 2000s. Advertisers quickly owned the pages, and monthly magazines rarely, if ever, critiqued collections of products. Then came the slump of the mid-2010s, followed closely by the social media onslaught, and then the Covid pandemic. Not good.

It is into this sorry state for print media that Kapoor, 35, steps up to the top job at Vogue India, designations notwithstanding. Before moving to Mumbai a few weeks ago, Sydney-based Kapoor’s only connections to India seemed to be an internship at Vogue India over a decade ago, and that she is of Indian descent. A graduate of the University of Melbourne, it was her time at Vogue India that landed her a stint at Vogue Australia’s fashion department. Since then, she has worked as fashion director at the indie Australian publication Oyster Magazine, and founded Inprint, her own luxury fashion glossy, in 2015.