When Anna Wintour took the reins at Vogue in 1988, no one expected her to rip up the rulebook on day one. But that’s exactly what she did with her very first cover – a decision that would come to define her legacy and reshape fashion media.
Who featured on Anna Wintour’s first Vogue cover?
The cover, published in November 1988, wasn’t planned. It was an outtake. A candid shot of Israeli model Michaela Bercu, snapped by Peter Lindbergh, wearing a beaded Christian Lacroix couture jacket with a pair of stonewashed Guess jeans. Not only was the model not looking at the camera – her eyes were nearly shut and her hair was whipping across her face. Worse, by traditional Vogue standards, she looked relaxed. Casual. Human.
The skirt that matched the jacket didn’t fit Bercu – she’d gained a little weight on holiday. But Wintour was happy with this. “It only served to reinforce the idea,” she later wrote, “to take couture’s haughty grandeur and playfully throw it headlong into real life.”
The Vogue printers, used to tight close-ups and heavy makeup, were so confused they rang up to check it wasn’t a mistake.
But Wintour saw the future in that frame. “To me it just said, ‘This is something new. This is something different,’” she told CBS years later.
And just like that, a new era of fashion – and of Vogue – began.
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