Call me old fashioned but I still enjoy magazine subscriptions! There's something about checking the mail and finding your favorite magazines tucked away awaiting your enjoyment. And just one week into the month of August, September Issues of MAJOR publications are already making their debut: this time, covers being revealed showcasing women of color!
The best thing about September in the fashion industry is that it signifies the beginning of the new year and a fresh start. It is singlehandedly the most important month of the year in the fashion world. Not only does New York Fashion Week begin, but Vogue publishes their largest issue of the year. This issue sets the precedence for what's in for the next 12 months, introducing the world to new designers and trends. Every year the U.S. Vogue issue sells more than 80,000 copies the first few weeks. Not only is it one of their biggest selling issues, they have to elevate the September issue every year in order for it to be different, relevant and big. (If you haven't seen the documentary "The September Issue" I suggest you watch it and prepare to fall in LOVE! It takes you through the entire process of how the infamous issue is born.)
When I was a child, my mom wasn't into the top fashion magazines but my grandmother was. I loved visiting her so I could skim through the latest edition of Vogue and Marie Claire, and her favorite InStyle! I would take her old ones and sit in my room daydreaming for hours wondering what it looked like on the other side of the publication. How did they book the model? Who did the hair? Where did the clothes come from? Who's idea was it to do the makeup that way? Was the photographer cool like Helmut Newton or Peter Lindbergh?
Despite how daydreamy these moments made me, the one thing I couldn't help but notice was that none of the women on the covers, and seldom in the issue as a whole, were women of color. I mean, you had your Naomi Campbell, Iman, Beverly Johnson, Joan Smalls, and in more recently years Chanel Iman and Jourdan Dunn, but they were totally outnumbered. At what point would people that looked like me, be considered beautiful, fashionable and elite like those I read so much about? Eurocentric features set the standard of beauty for years, and in many way, still does. But I sense a paradigm shift in the culture.
You have at the Edward Enninful Editor-In-Chief of British Vogue, Virgil Abloh as the Men's Artistic Director of Louis Vuitton, Naomi Campbell who just won the 2018 Fashion Icon Award by the CFDA (The Council of Fashion Designers of America), Elaine Welteroth who was named editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue, and a host of many many other that are unabashedly brown skinned in HIGH places!
The saying goes "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and I say "Behold! Men and Women of Color are finally getting the recognition they deserve" especially in the fashion industry!
Below are the new September Issues trophying large doses of melanin magic! Enjoy and be inspired!
