Source/Living Scotsman,com.
STRIKE A Pose
ROBIN DERRICK
LOOKING THROUGH OUR NEW anthology of over 90 years of cover artwork and photographs, Vogue Covers: On Fashion's Front Page, I'm struck by the range of imagery that's been used to sell the magazine.
Who would have thought that, along with the beautiful and pretty, Vogue would have featured a woman spearing a polar bear, in 1917, or riding a zebra, or holding a shotgun? The name of the magazine was drawn differently nearly every month, depicted in the most artful of ways - written in pearls, on the wings of aeroplanes or drawn in the sand. The now famous Vogue masthead was not really adopted until 1950. I joined British Vogue in 1993 as art director and currently serve as its creative director, responsible for the way the magazine looks.
The news stand today is a packed and busy place, with many titles fighting for attention; the cover's job is to sell the magazine and carry the image of the brand. Most modern women's glossy covers can basically be described as "a picture of a girl in a dress", yet for Vogue they have to have a special quality. They have to look like "Vogue covers", yet be different from each other and from the other magazines on the shelf. This special quality comes from different sources: it could be a particularly amazing model, a celebrity, a beautiful hat, a wink in an eye, a special printing technique, a surprising photograph. The "story" that each cover tells is different from the one that preceded it.
The seasonal cycle of Vogue covers begins with the collections issues, published in March and September, the first issues to feature the new-season clothes for spring/summer and autumn/winter respectively. For a collections issue, the cover image always begins with the clothes. This will be an outfit that the editor saw coming down a runway in London, Paris, Milan or New York that not only took her breath away but somehow also encapsulated "the look" of the coming fashion season.
The next thing to be considered is the type of shot. For example, will this be a glamorous red-lipped studio picture, all flashbulbs and sheen, or a romantic location picture, or a calm interior? Once the editor has decided on the dress and the look of the cover, we cast the model and the photographer.
This is where it starts to get a bit complicated. It's one thing to think up fictional covers with the ideal imagery and cover stars, but on a monthly magazine the "art" is that of the possible. The photographers and models that Vogue works with are the best in the world and, as such, the most in demand.
The logistics of getting the ideal pairing of photographer and model into a studio on the same day are often daunting. Then there are the difficulties of getting together hair and make-up teams - they're often even harder to "get dates on" than the models.
Vogue cover shoots, at a prosaic level, are often the simplest photographs that we do for the magazine. Usually they consist of a single model in a studio or on location; the outfit has been chosen and a day is set aside to create the image. A quick look at the "call sheet" for any modern cover shoot, however, shows that this apparently simple job seems to require a crew of as many as 20 people (sometimes more
photographer, perhaps three assistants, digital-camera and computer operators (usually two), hairdresser and assistant, make-up artist and assistant, manicurist, stylist and assistant, set designer and assistants, art director, retoucher, and - finally - the model. The assembly of this team is the most important factor in creating a successful Vogue cover. These most carefully contrived of images are the end result of lots of small decisions. Obviously the dress and the model are vital, but once everyone is on the shoot it's the micro-decisions (about hair, make-up, whether a shoulder strap is up or down) that make a cover good or bad - Vogue or not.
I'm an old hand at attending cover shoots, and yet I always make the same basic mistake. I will sit in a meeting in the office looking at pictures of the proposed outfit and girl, and I will discuss at great length precisely the colour backdrop we are going to have, whether it will be painted or a built set, and whether or not the cover might look good with a foil logo or matt varnish, only for all of these plans to become suddenly irrelevant. I watch Kate Moss's hair being blown back by hairdresser Sam McKnight as she moves her body a inch to the right and it looks incredible. I can plan out the mundane aspects of the cover so that they work on paper, but it's always the smallest detail I have not thought of that makes it great.
AFTER THE "FASHION" COVERS HAVE announced the new season, the spotlight moves on to the magazine's other concerns - beauty issues, Christmas specials, travel issues and celebrities. The world of celebrity covers is more challenging. When you go to a studio with a model and a fantastic team, you can set about creating an image. With a celebrity they already have an image, which you are in some way trying to capture and "Vogueify", to use an in-house word. Sometimes the "talent" may play ball with your vision of them, sometimes not. Most celebrity cover subjects, especially Hollywood stars, have publicists and agents who are very keen to protect a certain kind of image for their client, and they will often need placating with various promises: "Of course we won't shoot her below the waist"; "By all means she can bring her own make-up team"; etc. It can be very frustrating, given that the reason you wanted to shoot the person in question is precisely because you thought they looked great. And, of course, you want them to look even better on the cover of the magazine. These negotiations can become very fraught.
But the thing that depresses me the most about celebrity covers is that their success or failure is completely down to timing. A magazine is on the newsstands for four weeks, and 75 per cent of its sales will be during the first fortnight. That's a two-week period during which people had better be interested in, say, Gwyneth Paltrow or Cate Blanchett. If a movie is slow to catch on, or a new album is not doing as well as we thought it would, we miss our window and sales suffer. If, as can happen, the cover star is in the news (good or bad), then during those two weeks sales soar.
This is regardless of the quality of the image itself. A rather dour cover of Penélope Cruz (February 2002) sold like hot cakes, as it coincided with the news that she was going out with Tom Cruise. An Elizabeth Hurley cover soared away, as the issue was on the stands after news broke about her then partner's antics with a prostitute.
In magazine-land there exists a set of rules or perceived wisdoms about covers. They are a strange set of diktats: a cover must have eye contact; be colourful; green logos don't sell; a design with lots of coverlines does sell; still-life covers don't work; blurring is bad. I can find exceptions to all of these in the history of Vogue, and some of the exceptions did very well indeed.
The most striking covers are often on special issues of the magazine, where the theme of the issue is worked up into an image. I love doing these - they offer an opportunity to play with the conventional cover format. Looking back through the archive, I see that previous art directors have also revelled in these chances to think outside the box - the blue-sky cover at the end of the Second World War and the rich purple for the death of George V are among my favourites.
I produced a silver-mirrored Vogue cover to celebrate the turn of the millennium in December 1999, and a silhouette on a gold-foil background the following year. These special issues (now quite dear on eBay) were instant hits. Such covers have a winning quality, an appeal that seems to reach out from the page. There exists an elusive set of images that have an appeal to both high and low taste: images that are not arch or difficult, but that charm and seduce.
My favourite part of the job is dreaming up and producing these covers. "Let's put Kylie Minogue in a Champagne glass," someone must have said in August 2003. "Let's do Kate Moss with an Aladdin Sane stripe," the editor said - a great idea that was not, sadly, a huge seller. The more offbeat the concept, the harder it is to predict if it will sell. But when they work, they can be hugely successful. We are currently planning our December cover. It will be a special issue. I've got an idea about fashion and global warming ... perhaps we should do Kate Moss spearing a polar bear. sm
Vogue Covers: On Fashion's Front Page is published by Little, Brown, priced £40.
This article: http://living.scotsman.com/
STRIKE A Pose
ROBIN DERRICK
LOOKING THROUGH OUR NEW anthology of over 90 years of cover artwork and photographs, Vogue Covers: On Fashion's Front Page, I'm struck by the range of imagery that's been used to sell the magazine.
Who would have thought that, along with the beautiful and pretty, Vogue would have featured a woman spearing a polar bear, in 1917, or riding a zebra, or holding a shotgun? The name of the magazine was drawn differently nearly every month, depicted in the most artful of ways - written in pearls, on the wings of aeroplanes or drawn in the sand. The now famous Vogue masthead was not really adopted until 1950. I joined British Vogue in 1993 as art director and currently serve as its creative director, responsible for the way the magazine looks.
The news stand today is a packed and busy place, with many titles fighting for attention; the cover's job is to sell the magazine and carry the image of the brand. Most modern women's glossy covers can basically be described as "a picture of a girl in a dress", yet for Vogue they have to have a special quality. They have to look like "Vogue covers", yet be different from each other and from the other magazines on the shelf. This special quality comes from different sources: it could be a particularly amazing model, a celebrity, a beautiful hat, a wink in an eye, a special printing technique, a surprising photograph. The "story" that each cover tells is different from the one that preceded it.
The seasonal cycle of Vogue covers begins with the collections issues, published in March and September, the first issues to feature the new-season clothes for spring/summer and autumn/winter respectively. For a collections issue, the cover image always begins with the clothes. This will be an outfit that the editor saw coming down a runway in London, Paris, Milan or New York that not only took her breath away but somehow also encapsulated "the look" of the coming fashion season.
The next thing to be considered is the type of shot. For example, will this be a glamorous red-lipped studio picture, all flashbulbs and sheen, or a romantic location picture, or a calm interior? Once the editor has decided on the dress and the look of the cover, we cast the model and the photographer.
This is where it starts to get a bit complicated. It's one thing to think up fictional covers with the ideal imagery and cover stars, but on a monthly magazine the "art" is that of the possible. The photographers and models that Vogue works with are the best in the world and, as such, the most in demand.
The logistics of getting the ideal pairing of photographer and model into a studio on the same day are often daunting. Then there are the difficulties of getting together hair and make-up teams - they're often even harder to "get dates on" than the models.
Vogue cover shoots, at a prosaic level, are often the simplest photographs that we do for the magazine. Usually they consist of a single model in a studio or on location; the outfit has been chosen and a day is set aside to create the image. A quick look at the "call sheet" for any modern cover shoot, however, shows that this apparently simple job seems to require a crew of as many as 20 people (sometimes more
photographer, perhaps three assistants, digital-camera and computer operators (usually two), hairdresser and assistant, make-up artist and assistant, manicurist, stylist and assistant, set designer and assistants, art director, retoucher, and - finally - the model. The assembly of this team is the most important factor in creating a successful Vogue cover. These most carefully contrived of images are the end result of lots of small decisions. Obviously the dress and the model are vital, but once everyone is on the shoot it's the micro-decisions (about hair, make-up, whether a shoulder strap is up or down) that make a cover good or bad - Vogue or not. I'm an old hand at attending cover shoots, and yet I always make the same basic mistake. I will sit in a meeting in the office looking at pictures of the proposed outfit and girl, and I will discuss at great length precisely the colour backdrop we are going to have, whether it will be painted or a built set, and whether or not the cover might look good with a foil logo or matt varnish, only for all of these plans to become suddenly irrelevant. I watch Kate Moss's hair being blown back by hairdresser Sam McKnight as she moves her body a inch to the right and it looks incredible. I can plan out the mundane aspects of the cover so that they work on paper, but it's always the smallest detail I have not thought of that makes it great.
AFTER THE "FASHION" COVERS HAVE announced the new season, the spotlight moves on to the magazine's other concerns - beauty issues, Christmas specials, travel issues and celebrities. The world of celebrity covers is more challenging. When you go to a studio with a model and a fantastic team, you can set about creating an image. With a celebrity they already have an image, which you are in some way trying to capture and "Vogueify", to use an in-house word. Sometimes the "talent" may play ball with your vision of them, sometimes not. Most celebrity cover subjects, especially Hollywood stars, have publicists and agents who are very keen to protect a certain kind of image for their client, and they will often need placating with various promises: "Of course we won't shoot her below the waist"; "By all means she can bring her own make-up team"; etc. It can be very frustrating, given that the reason you wanted to shoot the person in question is precisely because you thought they looked great. And, of course, you want them to look even better on the cover of the magazine. These negotiations can become very fraught.
But the thing that depresses me the most about celebrity covers is that their success or failure is completely down to timing. A magazine is on the newsstands for four weeks, and 75 per cent of its sales will be during the first fortnight. That's a two-week period during which people had better be interested in, say, Gwyneth Paltrow or Cate Blanchett. If a movie is slow to catch on, or a new album is not doing as well as we thought it would, we miss our window and sales suffer. If, as can happen, the cover star is in the news (good or bad), then during those two weeks sales soar.
This is regardless of the quality of the image itself. A rather dour cover of Penélope Cruz (February 2002) sold like hot cakes, as it coincided with the news that she was going out with Tom Cruise. An Elizabeth Hurley cover soared away, as the issue was on the stands after news broke about her then partner's antics with a prostitute.
In magazine-land there exists a set of rules or perceived wisdoms about covers. They are a strange set of diktats: a cover must have eye contact; be colourful; green logos don't sell; a design with lots of coverlines does sell; still-life covers don't work; blurring is bad. I can find exceptions to all of these in the history of Vogue, and some of the exceptions did very well indeed.
The most striking covers are often on special issues of the magazine, where the theme of the issue is worked up into an image. I love doing these - they offer an opportunity to play with the conventional cover format. Looking back through the archive, I see that previous art directors have also revelled in these chances to think outside the box - the blue-sky cover at the end of the Second World War and the rich purple for the death of George V are among my favourites.
I produced a silver-mirrored Vogue cover to celebrate the turn of the millennium in December 1999, and a silhouette on a gold-foil background the following year. These special issues (now quite dear on eBay) were instant hits. Such covers have a winning quality, an appeal that seems to reach out from the page. There exists an elusive set of images that have an appeal to both high and low taste: images that are not arch or difficult, but that charm and seduce.
My favourite part of the job is dreaming up and producing these covers. "Let's put Kylie Minogue in a Champagne glass," someone must have said in August 2003. "Let's do Kate Moss with an Aladdin Sane stripe," the editor said - a great idea that was not, sadly, a huge seller. The more offbeat the concept, the harder it is to predict if it will sell. But when they work, they can be hugely successful. We are currently planning our December cover. It will be a special issue. I've got an idea about fashion and global warming ... perhaps we should do Kate Moss spearing a polar bear. sm
Vogue Covers: On Fashion's Front Page is published by Little, Brown, priced £40.
This article: http://living.scotsman.com/
