Victoria Beckham might just have shown her third clothing collection to great acclaim in New York, but one of fashion's highest honours still eludes her - the cover of US Vogue. After months of speculation, earlier this month it became clear that she was not to star as the cover-girl of the magazine's current October issue. Instead, she is having to make do with the front of October's US Elle. Down but not out, apparently. The internet gossips are now directing their entirely unsubstantiated guesswork on a possible US Vogue cover in the spring, to coincide with Beckham's airing on American Idol. Poor Victoria. She has graced the front of British, Indian and Russian Vogue before, but never the biggie, never the American one. She is said to crave the fashion stamp of approval; she is even said to have had her chest reduced in an effort to lose the "footballer's wife" tag to impress its editor, Anna Wintour.
But what's so special about the cover of Vogue? Everyone was all of a similar fluster when Michelle Obama appeared as its March cover girl. There was a surprised intake of breath that Sienna Miller made the cover again in July this year, because Wintour had famously moaned previously that she was toothy. Oprah Winfrey slimmed down for the cover simply because Wintour had suggested she should. Why the fuss over a single cover? There have been hundreds, there will be hundreds more.
Comment and speculation over magazine covers isn't restricted solely to Vogue, either. A few weeks ago, there was shock over the cover for this October's V magazine, shot by Mario Testino and in which Lady GaGa is wearing even fewer items of clothing than normal. Hardly any, in fact. And there was even greater surprise when Boris Johnson showed up (happily, fully clothed), on the cover of the current October issue of UK Elle in a special edition celebrating the 25th anniversary of London Fashion Week. Even with that lustrous blonde mop, the appearance of the first man on an Elle cover made headlines. Why? What do these covers mean?
For best-selling fashion magazines, first and foremost their covers are a marketing tool. Not only can a splashy cover attract a good deal of publicity, but a magazine's front is the face of that issue, alerting the potential buyer and reader to what lies on the inside. It has to shout "Buy me!" The creator of Vogue, Condé Montrose Nast, understood that well and early when he bought and began to transform a small New York society magazine called Vogue in 1909.
"Condé Nast realised that his version of a woman's magazine had to set itself apart and that on the news-stand it had to dazzle," explains Robin Muir, the co-author of the book, Vogue Covers: On Fashion's Front Page. Vogue's early Art Nouveau and Art Deco covers were illustrated by leading artists of the day, including Georges Lepape and Helen Dryden. But it was really when photography became more widely used that Nast nudged the average Vogue cover ahead of its competition. "He invested heavily in state-of-the-art presses which allowed Vogue to steal a march on its rivals and produced colour photographic covers, for instance, before they could." The magazine published its first colour photographic cover in July 1932, a racy shot of a model wearing a red swimsuit holding a beachball over her head.
Muir is something of an expert on the subject of Vogue covers. He not only penned the book together with Vogue's legendary creative director, Robin Derrick, he also worked there for a decade between 1984 and 1994, the latter three years as the magazine's picture editor, and continues to freelance for it now. But why does Vogue's choice of cover star make such news? Vogue is neither the world's biggest-selling fashion magazine (Elle wins that battle, with editions in 60 countries as opposed to a paltry 24 countries for Vogue), nor the oldest (Harper's Bazaar, formerly just Harper's, gets that accolade having launched in 1867). Muir again attributes it to the legacy of Condé Nast, saying that he was "almost profligate" in his spending on Vogue in his successful attempts to attract the right photographers, who in Vogue's infancy included Baron Adolf de Mayer, Edouard Steichen and Cecil Beaton.
Muir says that this careful, early patronage of photographers remains part of Vogue's ethos today. "It attracts the best: Penn, Avedon, Meisel, Bailey, Testino, Snowdon, and nurtures them. No photographer leaves Vogue willingly. Demarchelier was given a huge contract at Harper's Bazaar. Where is he now? Back at Vogue." The result of this patronage? Vogue covers have always had a preeminent reputation for their creativity and quality, and models and celebrities want to take part in their shoots.
It is easy to forget now, given the perky faces that peer at you from news-stands, but magazine covers have not always been about celebrity. That is a relatively recent phenomenon, the roots of which were laid during the supermodel era of the late 1980s and 1990s. Before fashion magazines became a merry roundabout for celebrity faces, being on the cover of a magazine such as Vogue or Elle made the model famous. Now, the tables have turned and magazines attract publicity based on the cover girl. Last year in America, Vogue's best-selling cover was Keira Knightley, Elle's was Victoria Beckham, Vanity Fair and W both hit their biggest numbers with Angelina Jolie, Harper's Bazaar with Lindsay Lohan. Again, Muir cites today's celebrity obsession as one made due to commercial constraints.
"Vogue has to fight on the shelves because that's where the sales are. Italian Vogue can get away with experimental covers because its core readership subscribes," he explains. "I left before the celebrity era took off, but in my time it was literally a revolving door containing Naomi, Cindy, Christy, Linda, Stephanie Seymour and, later, Kate Moss." This era of the supermodel, as it is known, was in its heyday during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell were known as The Trinity. Linda famously remarked that they wouldn't get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day (Dh36,800). They pushed for the fees, they landed the big fashion contracts. Again, it was Wintour who started the trend by repeatedly using the select group on her covers. Again it was a canny commercial move - the girls were worshipped the world over and they could sell anything.
Wintour's appointment in 1988 came three years after the launch of American Elle, when some Condé Nast figures were worrying about their rival's increasing popularity. Wintour took over and immediately set about making changes. Her first cover in November 1988 featured a little-known model called Michaela Bercu, but the three-quarter length body shot (as opposed to just a close shot of the model's face, as was popular for all fashion magazines at that point) meant that she could shoehorn more clothes into the picture, which was good news for advertisers. What's more, Bercu was dressed in a mixture of haute couture and denim - a jewelled Christian Lacroix top with a pair of jeans. It was the first time that jeans had ever appeared on the cover of the magazine, further signalling Wintour's desire to boost the magazine's appeal with a more inclusive approach to fashion.
But don't feel too disillusioned, it is not all about marketing. Covers also serve to reflect the culture of the moment. The November 1920 issue of Harper's Bazaar featured an illustrated picture by the Russian artist Erté of a Roaring Twenties dancer, the golden tails of her flapper dress fanning out on a vibrant red background. In April 1937, to celebrate the coronation of George VI, British Vogue commissioned an illustration from Pierre Roy, who painted a globe punctured by little British flags, sitting atop a crown. In 1974, the then-editor of American Vogue, Diana Vreeland, published the first cover that featured an African-American model. Italian Vogue famously went one step further with last year's July magazine by featuring only black models with the young British model Jourdan Dunn on the front in an applauded attempt to raise awareness of racial discrimination within the fashion industry.
In the past few years, there have been controversial covers that illustrate the persistent debate about size zero in the fashion world, and the airbrushing tools that magazines often use to slim down their models. (As highlighted most recently by the fuss over Lizzie Miller, the model in October's US Glamour magazine, who is pictured with a roll of tummy fat.) In February, the inaugural cover of Love magazine gloriously splashed an unclothed Beth Ditto on the front. Last November, a Vanity Fair cover of Kate Winslet was criticised for airbrushing down her bottom and thighs, though the magazine denied it. But the episode had shades of the GQ controversy over another Winslet cover in 2003, when the actress was left unhappy over the dramatic digital slimming down of her thighs. The current cover of Tank magazine has been equally discussed for using a semi-clothed shot of Claudia Schiffer in which she supposedly hasn't been retouched. Today, revealing body shots on magazine covers make news whether airbrushed or not.
So, too, do cover shots sometimes have to be flexible, changing to reflect sudden events. Muir recalls a close shave for British Vogue following the death of Princess Diana. "The suddenness of her death meant that Vogue had no cover ready (it was an eventuality no one had considered)," he writes in his book. Patrick Demarchelier was deemed the obvious choice for the best image possible, having shot the princess many times before. But he had to approve such a significant picture personally and was on location somewhere remote. The deadline was perilously close. "The day before the funeral, he arrived back to his office in New York, grabbed the only one he had in his mind and stepped on the plane to London. It was now all but impossible for production of the issue to be delayed any longer. At Westminster Abbey, Vogue had a motorcycle courier ready to take the photograph from him and minutes later the magazine had its cover."
Witness, too, Vanity Fair's decision to publish a double cover of this year's September issue, one with the face of Michael Jackson, one with Farrah Fawcett. "Two covers seemed like the sensible thing to do, given the passing of two major American icons on the same day," remarked Vanity Fair's editor, Graydon Carter. Quite, although what Carter didn't add was that publishing two different covers can also boost sales. Multiple covers not only means a broader appeal to the buying public, but some consumers will buy both as a collector's item. V excelled itself last year by publishing one issue with 14 different covers, which included models such as Agyness Deyn and Naomi Campbell.
"Supermodels are our celebrities, so we've given the covers to a whole range of models," explained the editor, Stephan Gan. Pop magazine also printed six different covers for its autumn/winter edition last year, and the fresh, new Pop rival, Love, printed its second issue with two covers. One featured Sting's daughter Coco Sumner, one the musician Alex Hartley. Of course, magazine designers not only use pictures to lure the potential buyer in. Almost anything goes when it comes to making a magazine stand out from the crowd. V magazine once used a special glow-in-the-dark gloss on its cover so that it lit up from news-stands at night. And the magazine's title, cover lines and choice of cover are also all employed as tools to fight off competition. Nowadays, the most important cover lines ("1,000 top trends this season!" or maybe "20 million pairs of shoes you must own!"), designed to draw you in, are placed on the left-hand side of the magazine, so that they are viewable on the news-stands.
These should often be huge and bold, in vibrant colours and viewable from two to three metres away. Some editors use something called the "floor test"; if the cover lines are viewable when you drop a magazine on the floor, then they are the right size. Dylan Jones, the current editor of Condé Nast's British edition of GQ, has said before that he prefers to avoid questions on the cover ("Is black the new black?"), because it seems uncertain and encourages potential buyers not to take the magazine seriously.
Then there is the significance of colour schemes. Elle's Boris Johnson cover is mostly black and white, denoting a serious nature, but is accompanied by a red line of lyrics from The Clash's London Calling to liven it up. Issues concerned with natural fashion will often try to bump up their eco-credentials by using a green theme on the cover, a colour that is often used for spring issues, too. Red, white and blue are often used on patriotic British and American covers, as seen on Vanity Fair's famed Cool Britannia issue in 1997, with Liam Gallagher and Patsy Kensit splashed on the front along with the Union Jack, and a host of other Brits tucked inside.
Finally a word about the cover date of a magazine, a great source of confusion for some, as most seem one month ahead of time. There has, for example, been much head-scratching about the 2007 September issue of Vogue, as can now be seen on screen in the inspirationally titled film The September Issue. The 840-page tome actually came out at the beginning of August 2007 and would have been worked on months before that, because magazines race to keep abreast of trends and developments ahead of time. Ironically, for magazine deadlines, there's no such thing as fashionably late.