Editor’s Note: Delving into the archives of pop culture history, “Remember When?” is a CNN Style series offering a nostalgic look at the celebrity outfits that defined their eras.
CNN
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By today’s standards, the front cover of American Vogue’s November 1988 edition seems typical enough. Beside the text “the real cost of looking good,” Israeli model Michaela Bercu gazes past the camera, her windswept hair brushing across the shoulders of a bejeweled $10,000 Christian Lacroix couture jacket.
Yet, the cover signaled a revolution at the storied fashion bible. It also marked two important — and related — firsts: This was the first Vogue cover produced by editor-in-chief Anna Wintour and the first ever to feature a pair of jeans.
London-born Wintour, who on Thursday stepped down from the role after 37 years (she will remain as Vogue’s global editorial director and publisher Condé Nast’s global chief content officer), had been hired to shake things up. The magazine’s previous editor, Grace Mirabella, oversaw a surge in readership but was, by her own admission, increasingly out of step with the 1980s zeitgeist. Condé Nast executives were reportedly worried the title was losing its edge. Mirabella had famously repainted former editor Diana Vreeland’s red office a shade of beige, which became a metaphor for her reputation as being too unadventurous.
Practically every American Vogue cover from 1980 to 1988 had been taken by Richard Avedon, a fashion photographer known for his stark, minimalist style. Models were usually shot against plain studio backgrounds in heavy makeup and statement jewelry. The covers were self-consciously elegant, standing aloof from the more mainstream women’s weeklies they shared newsstands with.
By contrast, Wintour’s debut was warm and easygoing. German photographer Peter Lindbergh held the shoot outdoors rather than in a controlled studio; Bercu’s eyes were neither fully open nor looking directly at the camera. As a result, she came across as a glamorous everywoman. Wintour’s unpretentious approach was seemingly epitomized by another coverline on that first issue: “Paris couture: haut but not haughty.”
“It looked easy, casual, a moment that had been snapped on the street, which it had been, and which was the whole point,” Wintour recalled in a Vogue feature marking publication’s 120th anniversary.
Then there were the jeans. These were not a high-fashion label’s take on Americana, they were stonewashed denim pants straight from Guess. Having launched less than a decade earlier, the denim brand’s highest-profile moment at that point had come courtesy of Michael J. Fox, who wore a pair of Guess jeans as Marty McFly in 1985’s “Back to the Future.”
As such, both in style and styling, Wintour’s first cover was a major statement — one that set the tone for hundreds of issues to follow. She went on to forge an editorial identity her predecessors might have looked down on, from spotlighting pop culture icons to featuring a man on the cover (Richard Gere, who appeared alongside then-wife Cindy Crawford).
But there was an element of luck behind her debut issue, too. Wintour has since revealed that the jeans were a last-minute decision forced upon the shoot’s stylist, Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele, by unforeseen circumstances. Bercu was initially wearing a full Christian Lacroix suit comprising the beaded jacket (which Wintour described as “all very ‘Like a Prayer’”) and a skirt, but the latter didn’t fit properly.
“(Bercu) had been on vacation back home in Israel and had gained a little weight,” Wintour recounted in the 2012 Vogue feature, before qualifying: “Not that that mattered. In fact, it only served to reinforce the idea to take couture’s haughty grandeur and playfully throw it headlong into real life and see what happened.”
Wintour has since recalled that the magazine’s printers were so surprised by the front cover that they called to see whether it had been sent in error. The veteran editor also played down the intention behind the image, though she surely knew, better than most, that magazines are judged by their covers.
“Afterwards, in the way that these things can happen, people applied all sorts of interpretations: It was about mixing high and low, Michaela was pregnant, it was a religious statement. But none of these things was true,” she said. “I had just looked at that picture and sensed the winds of change. And you can’t ask for more from a cover image than that.”