Julie Bishop was one of Australia’s most recognisable foreign ministers – a central figure in complex negotiations, the international response to the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, and Australia’s leadership on the UN Security Council.
She was also a fixture in the pages of Australia’s leading fashion magazines. That moment is worth revisiting.
At a time of intensifying global conflict, when foreign policy must be both exercised and explained, the question of where it is actually seen and understood deserves closer attention – and Bishop’s career offers an instructive and underexamined answer.
In 2014, as Australia negotiated with Russia in the aftermath of MH17, Bishop appeared in Harper’s Bazaar in Giorgio Armani and Kailis pearls, discussing sanctions, diplomacy and the effort to secure international agreement. The feature named her Australian Woman of the Year and quickly got to the substance of her first year in office: airstrikes against ISIS, boots on the ground in Iraq, APEC, women’s empowerment in the Asia-Pacific and the painstaking diplomatic effort to secure a unanimous Security Council resolution.
A 2015 six-page spread in Vogue Australia followed the same pattern. Full-page portraits of Bishop in elegant Armani and Balenciaga appeared alongside discussion of Australia’s expanding military involvement in the Middle East, the threat posed by Australians joining ISIS and the widespread use of sexual violence in conflict zones. Fashion photography and hard geopolitics, side by side.
Fashion was not a distraction from foreign policy. It was the mechanism that brought new audiences to it. The readership of these publications is markedly different from that of traditional foreign policy media. Harper’s Bazaar reaches an audience that is 98% female and largely under 35, while Vogue similarly speaks to a predominantly female and comparatively younger readership. These are not the readers typically addressed by parliamentary debate or broadsheet analysis – but they are a large, engaged public. As Harper’s Bazaar puts it, this is “a well-dressed woman with a well-dressed mind” – a reader who sees no contradiction between an interest in fashion and an interest in the world.
The fashion was not a backdrop to the politics. It was the reason they were reading.
It was Bishop’s fashion credibility that drew readers to these pages. Her widely recognised status as a style authority – what Vogue Australia editor Edwina McCann described as a “cult following” – secured extended coverage in publications that rarely carry foreign policy commentary. Sanctions, UN resolutions and military strategy reached these readers not despite the fashion context, but through it. Bishop coined the term “fashion diplomacy” to describe her use of clothing and cultural exchange as tools of soft power – but her magazine appearances were extending that idea further than she may have anticipated.
What made her case distinctive was not simply that a powerful woman appeared in fashion magazines. It was that her authority as a figure of style created an affinity with readers that made them want to read about her – and in doing so, encounter the foreign affairs content that came with her. The fashion was not a backdrop to the politics. It was the reason they were reading.
There is also a broader implication. McCann put it simply: it was powerful for Australian women to see a leader who embraced fashion while exercising real political authority. These features did more than communicate foreign policy. They offered an image of what diplomatic authority looks like – and who might imagine themselves within it.
Bishop was not just representing Australia on the world stage. Through the pages of luxury fashion magazines, she was shaping what diplomatic authority looks like to a generation of younger women who had rarely seen it directed at them.
When statecraft and style meet in those glossy pages, diplomacy is not stepping outside politics. It is extending its reach – and reshaping who sees themselves within it. For diplomatic practitioners concerned with communication and influence, the lesson is straightforward: the audiences that matter are not always where we expect to find them. With Australian Fashion Week approaching in May, it is also a reminder that fashion diplomacy is about more than trade promotion or industry support – it can shape how foreign policy is seen and understood, and who gets to be part of the conversation. Sometimes, the most persuasive diplomacy happens in Armani and pearls – reaching further than any press conference ever could.