Featured Article: Jason Seife for GQ Middle East November 2021

The cover is shot by David Urbanke with styling by Keanoush Zargham. Grooming by Nastya Milyaeva, set designer Izzy Garcia. (source)

Featured Article: Maurizio Cattelan for GQ Italia September 2020

The cover is shot by Daniel Riera with art direction by Federigo Gabellieri. (source)

Vogue Australia September 2020 Cover

Vogue Australia‘s September issue issue is dedicated to the theme of hope and features an artwork by Anangu/Aboriginal Pitjantjatjara woman and spiritual healer Betty Muffler, the first time an artwork has covered the monthly publication in its 60 year history.

The piece, titled Ngangkari Ngura (Healing Country) (2020) was commissioned by Vogue Australia in collaboration with the National Gallery of Australia, where it is currently on display. Betty Muffler hails from Iwantja Arts in the remote Indulkana Community in far north-east South Australia, approximately 400 kilometres south of Alice Springs and her artwork forms part of a global initiative between all 26 Vogues internationally, which have united behind this theme of hope. (source)

Vogue Greece September 2020 Cover

Dimitris Papaioannou draws his interpretation of the face of hope for Vogue Greece September 2020 issue, the title’s first illustrated cover.

The internationally-acclaimed Greek artist believes that if hope had a face, this would not be gender, skin color or age specific. This face would not resemble any of us, precisely because it resembles all of us together – “Hope lives in us”, as the issue’s cover title states, within each and every one of us. (source)

Two Covers of Vogue US September 2020

For Vogue US September 2020 issue, Kerry James Marshall and Jordan Casteel were given complete freedom to decide who would be on their covers, a real or imaginary person, and how that person would be portrayed.

For her Vogue cover, Casteel chose a real person as her subject, fashion designer Aurora James, who made headlines in June with her @15percentpledge, a campaign to support Black-owned businesses. “I believe that what Aurora is doing is hugely important in creating the long-term change that Black people deserve and this country owes us,” Casteel says. “I see her as a light in a lot of darkness, and a potential for hope, a representative of change across all creative industries. What’s most exciting to me is being given artistic integrity and being able to choose the person to be my sitter—someone who reflects a portion of my own identity—and then to do that truly in the medium of my choice. This is the way that I speak to the world. And this is the way I’ve been speaking to the world and talking about the humanity of our people, talking about humanity in general. It’s a really profound experience. I do think I’m participating and a change is happening.”

Marshall created a fictional character, as he typically does in his paintings. “I’m trying to build into her expression that she’s not dependent on the gaze of the spectator,” he says. “‘I’m here and you can see me, but I’m not here for you.’ That’s a critical element. The great word, ultimately, is going to be self-possessed. That’s what I’m aiming for.”

The Black figures Marshall paints have skin so dark that it is, as he says, “at the edge of visibility.” To achieve this, Marshall begins with three different shades—carbon black, iron oxide black, also called mars black, and ivory black, also called bone black, and then adds cobalt blue, chrome green, carbazole dioxazine violet, yellow ochre, and raw sienna. “The color comes up when you stack them on top of each other,” he says. “If you’re going to be painting a face as black as I’m painting them, they can’t just be a cipher, like a black hole. They have to be mysterious but available. If you say ‘Black is beautiful,’ you have to show it. And what I’m doing is showing it at the extreme. Yes, it is black—very black—and it is very beautiful.” (source)

Click here to view last year cover featuring Taylor Swift, here to view 2018 cover featuring Beyoncé, here to view 2017 cover featuring Jennifer Lawrence, here to view 2016 cover featuring Kendall Jenner, here to view 2015 cover featuring Beyoncé, here to view 2014 cover featuring Joan Smalls, Cara Delevingne and Karlie Kloss, here to view 2013 cover featuring Jennifer Lawrence, here to view 2012 cover featuring Lady Gaga, here to view 2011 cover featuring Kate Moss, here for 2010 cover with Halle Berry, and here for 2009 cover with Charlize Theron.

Breonna Taylor for Vanity Fair September 2020

Vanity Fair presents their September 2020 cover with Breonna Taylor painted by Amy Sherald.

Five months have passed since police killed Breonna Taylor in her own home, a violent crime that the magazine’s September issue guest editor Ta-Nehisi Coates ascribes to a belief in Black people as a disaster, as calamity. “I don’t know how else to comprehend the jackboots bashing in Breonna Taylor’s door and spraying her home with bullets, except the belief that they were fighting some Great Fire—demonic, unnatural, inhuman.”

Coates chose the “The Great Fire” as the theme for the issue, which assembles activists, artists, and writers to offer a portrait of hope in a world where the possibility of a legitimate anti-racist majority is emerging for the first time in American history. “Something is happening,” writes Ta-Nehisi Coates, “and I think to understand it, we must better understand the nature of this Great Fire.”

For his cover story, Coates tells Breonna’s story through the words of her mother. (source)

Vogue Japan October 2020 Cover

UPDATED AUGUST 26TH 2020: Added new cover with Vittoria Ceretti by Luigi & Iango. (source)

The magazine commissioned an artwork by the one and only Takashi Murakami for their upcoming issue to coincide with Vogue Hope theme that ran on all 26 Vogue editions worldwide. The artwork features Japan’s Mount Fuji and Cherry Blossoms in true Murakami’s signature style. (source)

Vogue Russia September 2020 Cover

UPDATED SEPTEMBER 02ND 2020: Added new cover with Irina Shayk by Paola Kudacki. (source)

The illustration is created by Erik Bulatov. (source)

Charlize Theron for Harper’s Bazaar Germany August 2020

The illustration is created by Marc Antoine Coulon. (source)

Three Covers of Vogue Mexico July 2020

For their latest issue, Vogue Mexico and Latin America releases three different covers featuring Mexican model Limber Martinez (by Dorian Ulises Lopez Macias), illustrated image by Pia Camil, and Peruvian model Patricia Del Valle (by Egdar Berg). (source)