In Vogue: National Portrait Gallery celebrates Aussie women

"We don't celebrate our successes enough," McCann says.

"I think today's Australian woman is incredibly competent. I think that she is very unique, I think that on the world stage - and it doesn't matter which walk of life - she exceeds. She is a very assured, intellectually capable person on the world stage."

For 60 years, Vogue Australia - the fourth oldest Vogue in the world - has been celebrating Australian women, documenting how they and the society around them have changed over the decades.

Since 2012, McCann has been at the helm, creating these records alongside creatives, photographers, stylists and image-makers.

But her relationship with the publication began much earlier when, as a teenager, she used to lie on her mother's bed reading her copy. From there, she landed a job straight out of university as a stylist at the fashion magazine.

This intimate knowledge of how women - and teenagers - have a relationship to the magazine's documentation of history is one of the things which keeps McCann in the business.

"I often reflect on the fact that if we weren't here doing this, who would be?" she says.

"The journey of the Australian woman, nationally, has become part of our pages and I think because we rely so heavily on imagery to tell our stories - it is our point of difference. It is what Vogue is essentially about.

"To be able to coax all sorts of wonderful Australian women into sitting for portraiture for us, it is something that very few brands could claim title to.

"That's the privilege that we have - most doors open to us - and we have a great responsibility that we use that privilege well and we tell Australian and often unique Australian stories."

Along with the supermodels and celebrities expected to fill Vogue's pages have been stories and photographs with female politicians, scientists and sportsman - some of which will be featured in the upcoming Women in Vogue: Celebrating 60 years in Australia exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.

The exhibition aims to showcase this cross-section of Australian women as exemplified in the pages of Vogue Australia by combining portrait photography from the leading photographers - past and present - with vintage covers and a selection of dresses and gowns.

Vogue Australia and the gallery have delved into the archives to showcase six decades of the magazine, featuring iconic portraits of Australian women including Cate Blanchett, Kyle Minogue, Elle Macpherson, Miranda Tapsell and Canberra's Mia Wasikowska.

These portraits - like all of the photographs which grace the pages of Vogue Australia - have been weeks in the making. No matter if it's a shoot for Nicole Kidman in Nashville, or for Sudanese-Australian model Adut Akech at her Adelaide home, it's a big operation. Of course, one of the biggest hurdles is organising the fashion - "it's not as simple as borrowing something from your friend".

"Obviously, we do tell our stories through the prism of fashion and it's got to be the latest fashion and the latest collections because that's what we're about," McCannn says.

"When we shot Adut Akech ... at home in Adelaide, we decided to shoot her in couture because the juxtaposition of where she was - at the pinnacle of fashion - and where she grew up was so important for us to make.

"Through pictures that we wanted to tell that story that she was from here and loved here and belongs here and comes back here, and yet now had access to this extraordinary world. We wanted to bring that couture to her.

"Now those looks, there's one in the world of every one of those outfits, so every one had to travel to Sydney and then on to Adelaide and it's an extraordinary production to get every one of those outfits there."

Going through the archives for the exhibition has been a fun exercise for McCann and the rest of the Vogue team.

At times this enjoyment has come from looking back on the "strange beauty advice and diets and on all sorts of things that we gave women in the 60s and 70s", but it was also a chance to look at their beginning. Starting from Vogue Australia's first edition in 1959 which featured Tania Mallet - a relation of Helen Mirren and a former Bond girl - on the cover.

"It was a very different Australia back then than it is today," McCann says.

"The original editor was sent out from the UK to edit the Australian Vogue in what would have been considered then as a colony.

"We launched pre the swinging sixties. The journey of the Australian woman has been our journey as well and that's what we've documented."

Even back then, the photography was a construction of a fashion narrative.

Sure, one could dismiss fashion as "fickle women's business" but McCann believes that would be a mistake.

"Fashion has forever been used as a tool to tell stories about who we are and what we stand for and what we believe in and what we will put up with," she says.

"It is a very powerful tool of communication and if you look historically, eras are defined by its fashion.

"We recognise the Georgian era or the Victorian era - so many other eras or whole cultures - by fashion really. Sometimes you might not label it fashion but what we wear is essentially fashion.

"To say that it's somehow insignificant or not politically relevant or socially relevant or intellectually informative, I think, is just naive."

That's the aspect of the new exhibition which curator Aimee Board finds most interesting.

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Each of the women featured in the exhibition not only have their own style, sophistication and "a fine dose of sass" but they are a reflection of how women in each era were challenging the social norms.

In 1959 and throughout the 1960s the pages of Vogue featured women who were starting to question their conventional roles as happy homemakers and were demanding equal rights. Their fashion started to shift from the conservative lines and as hemlines started to rise so did "the emergence of the sexual revolution". Then the 80s came around and so did the concept of power dressing.

"What women chose to wear throughout that period becomes symbolic of what she represents in the wider world and then on the global stage," Board says.

"Today's Millennial women ... are women who are depicted with this layering of style and functional fashion and that gives voice to something bigger than themselves. The Millennial woman who is driven and purposeful and influential in what they do and say."

Functional fashion may be the wardrobe of the modern woman, but power dressing still has its place in 2019.

Take Julie Bishop's resignation red shoes, for example - which will be on display as part of Women in Vogue. At the time, Bishop was surprised so many people read into the fashion choice, but admitted that red was one of her favourite colours as it evokes power, passion and fashion.

"I have been a big fan of the red shoe emoji in the past and so a number of people saw it as a statement of women's empowerment which is what I believe the red shoe emoji is intended to be," she told The Sydney Morning Herald at the time.

But according to Board, the move - whether intentionally or not - saw fashion become political in that instance, and led other women in the Liberal Party to wear red in the chamber to highlight the male majority.

"It was a powerful moment politically for [Bishop] to wear that," Board says.

"There's something tying back in with the idea of the woman representing more than just herself and having a greater purpose, and of course, Julie is an advocate of the empowerment of women in leadership roles and on the global stage."

The idea of the exhibition is not only to demonstrate how Vogue has cast an - albeit glamourous - lens on the identity of Australian women, but to showcase women who people have heard of and perhaps relate to in some cases.

It could be argued that modern Vogue Australia is more relatable than ever.

"The pages of Vogue are far more diverse today than what we saw even a decade ago, arguably," Boards says.

"With the vintage spread of covers we see the first Indigenous woman appear in 1993 - supermodel Elaine George - and then, of course, we had Christine Anu as well in 2000 and then Samantha Harris in 2010.

"Vogue, I feel, has certainly become more diverse and reflected the change in wider society as well."

In recent years Bosnian-Australian supermodel Andreja Pejic, a trans woman, has also made regular appearances, and in 2011 model Robyn Lawley created buzz when - at size 14 - she became the first plus-sized woman to appear in Vogue Australia. She has since been followed by Lauren Hill and Rebel Wilson.

"It will be interesting to see these women alongside each other and we're able to see them and reflect on their contribution and their unique journey, and how they embraced the multi-facets of the lives that they've lived," Board says.

"It's interesting to reflect on the complexity of Australian women and how that's reflected through portraiture across the different eras."