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Harper's Bazaar
April 1965: Jean Shrimpton, photographed by Richard Avedon
Avedon guest-edited this issue to mark twenty years at the magazine, and the cover shows how far a fashion front could stray from a polite portrait. Shrimpton peers out from a pink space helmet while the masthead vibrates in acid green, a Pop Art jolt designed by art directors Ruth Ansel and Bea Feitler. It is the cover to study for the moment fashion magazines started borrowing from contemporary art and the space race rather than the salon.
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British Vogue
March 1966: Donyale Luna, photographed by David Bailey
The first Black model on the cover of British Vogue, eight years before American Vogue followed. Bailey's image partly obscures Luna's face, which makes the cover feel mysterious rather than a straightforward portrait, and the editor Beatrix Miller picked Luna for her personality. Luna had already fronted Harper's Bazaar in 1965, but as a sketch that left her identity ambiguous; this was the photograph that put her on the newsstand as herself.
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Glamour (magazine)
August 1968: Katiti Kironde, college issue
A Harvard freshman who won the magazine's Top Ten Best Dressed College Girls contest became Glamour's first African American cover girl. The sales answered anyone who claimed readers would not buy it: the issue broke the magazine's previous sales records. The photographer's credit is not reliably recorded, but the cover's place as a first for a mainstream American women's magazine is well documented.
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Essence (magazine)
May 1970: Barbara Cheeseborough, first issue
Rather than waiting for the established titles to change, Essence launched as a magazine for Black women and put the model Barbara Cheeseborough on its very first cover. The face on that debut told readers who the magazine was for and what it celebrated, and the title is still publishing more than half a century later. A collector's piece for anyone tracing how independent publishing widened the newsstand.
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Vogue (magazine)
August 1974: Beverly Johnson, photographed by Francesco Scavullo
The first Black woman on the cover of American Vogue, eight years after Donyale Luna fronted the British edition. Johnson's agent at the time doubted it would ever happen; she moved to Wilhelmina Cooper's agency, which pushed Scavullo's picture to the editors, and Johnson ran to a newsstand to see it for herself. She went on to front Vogue twice more, so the cover proved to be a beginning rather than a one-off gesture.
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Vogue France
August 1988: Naomi Campbell
The first Black model on the cover of Vogue Paris, and the push came from a designer rather than the magazine. Campbell has said she was refused when she asked for a cover like the other models, and Yves Saint Laurent reportedly threatened to withdraw his advertising unless she got one. The cover photographer is less widely recorded than the story behind it, but this is the issue to remember when asking who has the power to change a newsstand: here it was an advertiser.
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Vogue (magazine)
November 1988: Michaela Bercu, photographed by Peter Lindbergh
Anna Wintour's first cover as editor, and the first Vogue cover to show a pair of jeans. Bercu, shot outdoors with her hair blowing and her eyes off camera, wears a jeweled Christian Lacroix couture jacket with stonewashed Guess jeans. Mixing couture with denim on the front of Vogue signaled that high and everyday fashion could share a page, and that idea shaped the magazine for decades. Wintour has said the jeans came about because the skirt meant to go with the jacket did not fit.
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British Vogue
January 1990: Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz, Christy Turlington and Cindy Crawford, photographed by Peter Lindbergh
The black-and-white group shot on a New York street is often treated as the start of the supermodel era. The editor Liz Tilberis wanted a cover that looked ahead to the new decade, and putting five models together, rather than one star, made the group itself the story. George Michael then cast them in his Freedom video, and the image was recreated for Vogue in 2023.
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The Face (magazine)
July 1990: Kate Moss, photographed by Corinne Day
The Third Summer of Love cover made a teenage unknown and a young photographer the faces of a new look. Shot on the beach at Camber Sands, with Moss wearing no makeup and a feathered headdress, it was raw where the supermodel covers were polished, and it pointed fashion towards the grunge and waif style of the following years. Moss had made her cover debut in The Face two months earlier, but this is the issue that collectors chase.
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Harper's Bazaar
September 1992: Linda Evangelista, photographed by Patrick Demarchelier
Liz Tilberis's first issue as editor relaunched an American title with a single coverline: Enter the Era of Elegance. Evangelista, in black, raises one hand as if lifting a letter of the masthead into place, so the model and the typography become one design. After years of crowded coverlines, its spareness was a statement, and the cover is still studied for how much it achieves with so little.
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Vogue (magazine)
April 2008: LeBron James and Gisele Bündchen, photographed by Annie Leibovitz
The Shape issue made James the first Black man on the cover of American Vogue, and only the third man of any kind. The milestone was quickly overshadowed: critics said his animalistic pose beside Bündchen echoed King Kong and old racist stereotypes, and others compared it to a World War I recruiting poster. It belongs here as a first that showed how much the framing of a cover matters, not only who is on it.
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Vogue Italia
July 2008: the Black Issue, photographed by Steven Meisel
Franca Sozzani's issue used only Black models and ran four covers, of Naomi Campbell, Liya Kebede, Jourdan Dunn and Sessilee Lopez, styled by Edward Enninful. It sold out in the United States and Britain within 72 hours and had to go back to press, which the casting director Bethann Hardison said had never happened to a Condé Nast magazine before. The newsstand answer to anyone who claimed diverse covers did not sell.
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Paper (magazine)
Winter 2014: Kim Kardashian, photographed by Jean-Paul Goude
An independent New York title set itself one assignment, Break the Internet, and the cover became the model for fashion covers built to spread online rather than sell at a kiosk. One version recreated Goude's own Champagne Incident image from his 1982 book Jungle Fever. Critics pointed out that the reference revived an image with a troubling history in how Black women's bodies are shown, and that debate is part of why the cover is remembered.
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Vogue France
March 2017: Valentina Sampaio, photographed by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott
The Brazilian model became the first transgender woman on the cover of Vogue Paris, and reports at the time described it as the first trans cover star of any French magazine. The cover line framed transgender beauty as something shaking up the world, so the image led an editorial argument rather than standing as a token gesture. Putting a trans model on the front, not on a feature page inside, was the whole point.
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Vogue (magazine)
March 2017: Ashley Graham and six other models, photographed by Inez and Vinoodh
Graham's first American Vogue cover put a plus-size model on the front of the magazine for the first time, beside Gigi Hadid, Kendall Jenner, Adwoa Aboah, Liu Wen, Vittoria Ceretti and Imaan Hammam. It is a milestone with an asterisk: readers noticed that Graham's pose hid her thigh and argued over whether a neighbor's arm had been retouched, and Graham defended the magazine. British Vogue had given her a solo cover two months earlier.
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British Vogue
December 2017: Adwoa Aboah, photographed by Steven Meisel
Edward Enninful's first cover as editor announced his direction with a model and activist rather than a film star. Aboah, in a silk headwrap and peacock blue eyeshadow under the line Great Britain, was reported at the time as only the third Black model to front the magazine alone. It was also Meisel's first British Vogue cover in 25 years, and its 1960s-inspired look nodded to the magazine's past while signaling who the new British Vogue would put in front of readers.
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Vogue Arabia
June 2018: Princess Hayfa bint Abdullah Al Saud, photographed by Boo George
Vogue Arabia's first issue dedicated to Saudi Arabia put a princess behind the wheel of a vintage red convertible in the desert outside Jeddah, to mark the end of the kingdom's ban on women driving. It is here for the argument it started as much as the image: the cover appeared while activists who had campaigned against the ban remained in custody, and critics called it tone-deaf. A clear case of a cover that made history and was contested at once.
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Vogue (magazine)
September 2018: Beyoncé, photographed by Tyler Mitchell
The first American Vogue cover shot by a Black photographer in the magazine's history, and the change came from the cover star. Beyoncé chose the 23-year-old Mitchell, who had worked with her label and with her sister Solange, for the year's biggest issue. The cover changed who stood behind the camera as well as in front of it, and Mitchell returned two years later to shoot another first for the magazine.
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British Vogue
September 2019: Forces for Change, photographed by Peter Lindbergh
The Duchess of Sussex guest-edited the September issue, and she used the cover not for herself but for fifteen women from fashion, film, technology, wellness and beyond, chosen as changemakers who break barriers. Treating the most commercial issue of the year as a gallery of trailblazers was a new use for a fashion cover, and the editor Edward Enninful called it the most important edition of 2019.
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Vogue Italia
January 2020: the illustrated issue
No photographer at all: the editor Emanuele Farneti replaced every cover and feature with drawings by artists ranging from established names to comic illustrators, and the magazine had never had an illustrated cover before. The point was the cost of a shoot, in travel, crews and waste, and the money saved went to restoring the Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice after the city's floods. A cover that questioned the photo shoot itself.
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Vogue (magazine)
December 2020: Harry Styles, photographed by Tyler Mitchell
The first man to appear alone on the cover of American Vogue chose to do it in a lace-trimmed Gucci gown with a tuxedo jacket, shot on the Seven Sisters cliffs in East Sussex. The cover started a loud argument over men in dresses, which only made it more widely seen, and it made gender-fluid dressing a mainstream fashion talking point. Some critics thought the praise overstated how new the idea was.
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British Vogue
February 2022: nine African models, photographed by Rafael Pavarotti
Adut Akech, Amar Akway, Majesty Amare, Akon Changkou, Maty Fall, Janet Jumbo, Abény Nhial, Nyagua Ruea and Anok Yai shared the cover, the largest group of Black women Vogue had put on a single front. Edward Enninful styled it as a tribute to a new generation of African models. The reaction was divided, with some critics objecting that the images misrepresented the models' skin tones, and both the praise and the criticism belong to its story.
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Vogue (magazine)
May 2026: Anna Wintour and Meryl Streep, photographed by Annie Leibovitz
After almost four decades of choosing other people's covers, Wintour appeared on one herself for the first time, beside the star of The Devil Wears Prada, timed to the sequel. Editors were never meant to be cover subjects, and Grace Coddington styled the shoot that broke the rule. Wintour first replied that it was not really her style, and some critics saw nostalgia rather than a turning point, so this is the newest entry and the one whose long-term weight is still being decided.
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