UK Vogue May 2021 : Thandiwe Newton by Mikael Jansson

Long overdue.

 

gorgeous covers!

 

I like it a lot, so surprised to see her here coz I don't follow her career but I thought she was over like 10 years ago.

 

Editorial preview from vogue.co.uk

 

Wow, no! Way to ruin a stunning cover.
Can't believe Mikael Jansson had the gall to run an edit with such cheap and sloppy set design in the same magazine that publishes Meisel's work. This is like the budget version of Meisel's work for Zara. Styling is terrible too. I expected a more simpler, classic cover editorial.

 

No it was not. It was Thandie, when you auto-corrected your own name in order to make it in the industry led by old white men. Now, when it's cool to be different in any possible way, you are using your unusual African name. So, hush. God, I hate hypocrisy. Either fight from the start, or stay silent about it.

Also, can British Vogue stop doing the ''what's in my bag'' videos, it's so humiliating? I can't believe these women agree to film it.

 

She started out in the industry when she was still a child, so I’m guessing she was advised to use the name “Thandie” instead because it was considered easier to pronounce. Or, frankly, it might’ve been blatant racism and she was told Thandiwe was too African sounding. Perhaps she’ll get into that in the interview. That she prefers and now wants to be called Thandiwe doesn’t show any hypocrisy, in my opinion.

Funnily enough, Thandiwe is actually her middle name, though. Her first name is Melanie.

 

Beautiful shot, so happy to see Thandiwe here, she is long overdue a cover.

Once again, the layout is horrible. I’m a graphic designer for work and I would be embarrassed to put my name to this. There are such basic layout mistakes here: the kerning and leading on the cover lines is dreadful, it’s not well balanced, the typeface isn’t great. Seriously Vogue, hire me!

I hate how inconsistent Edward’s Vogue has been when it comes to design, it worked better with the sans-serif, Carine-era French Vogue style font in my opinion. Also, these new designers they’ve hired are obsessed with teeny-tiny headlines in weird places, it’s annoying.

 

^she still had plenty of time to tell the world she preferred to be called Thandiwe, long time ago.
why now?
coz, and I agree with @Srdjan even if maybe I wouldn’t go so far by calling it hypocrisy BUT it does feel like jumping on the bandwagon and who better to exploit that than Edward and his Vogue.

Marilyn Monroe was Norma Jean, Meryl Streep is Mary Louise...

 

Ok, and if Meryl announced she wanted to now go by Mary Louise, because that was her real name, would people be calling her a hypocrite or assuming her reasoning was anything beside wanting to be more... herself? I think not. Though that’s not a fair comparison because I think we all know the likelihood that a mixed-race child actor was told by those in power to de-Africanize their name in order to have a career is extremely high. I think we know there is a very good chance this wasn’t just a case of an actor choosing a stage name that differed from their birth name. And frankly, even if none of that happened and she simply preferred “Thandie” earlier on, what exactly is the problem with her embracing her heritage and her name?

 

The editorial is a mess, that first shot looks like the cover of some awful erotica that your aunt bought at CVS.

 

The background of the eds is too cheap... looks like it was shot in a photo studio with limited budget.

 

Or perhaps she was raised and taught to believe anything other than an Anglo Saxon-friendly name was inferior and 'unusual'? There are many of us with non-Anglo Saxon names who were taught/coerced into anglicizing them to make ourselves more palatable/being taken seriously in a professional environment. It isn't hypocrisy; it's brain-washing.

That being said, I agree with many other posters: beautiful images but the art direction on this magazine is just atrocious. For such a huge, huge publication, i'm baffled every month by their cover design.

 

So she was forced to de-Africanize her name by changing Thandiwe to Thandie? Both of which have African origins. All the while she could've simply used her actual first name Melanie, if anyone was truly trying to make her sound "less African". Some of y'all sure do love to invent your narratives.

 

Very elegant. It reminds me of their covers under Alexandra Shulman if you remove the cover blurbs.

 

Well it seems not only Thandiwe is showing her true colours by reclaiming her name Good for her by the way. I’m happy for her that she feels confident and safe enough to do so.

 

“Either fight from the start, or stay silent about it” lmaooooo what in the colonialism..... it’s literally HER name she can do whatever she wants lol

 

Yeah, she most likely was suggested to alter her name and that is a form of xenophobia, but if she (and her parents) agreed to that and chose to pursue entertainment career instead of staying true to themselves, why do we now have to hear how unfortunate it was for her back then? Poor little millionaire actress. That's why said hypocrisy. My great grandfather ended up in a concentration camp due to his surname/origin so something like this enrages me.

Anyway, not to go off topic much - I don't mind the cover, but it's nowhere near the last month's ones. 2021 is not a great year for British Vogue so far.

 

And for those who haven’t read the interview, the discussion about how she was mistreated by Hollywood’s system stretches far beyond the name itself. She detailed how John Duigan, the director of “Flirting”, asked her to be a shade darker by the next time they met. So clearly what she wanted to reclaim here transcends everything about her name itself. I found the commentaries regarding her decision here to be a form of gaslighting and quite frankly dubious to the bigger story she wanted to deliver. You don’t consider it worthy of a headline? Fine. But dismissing her experience right off the bat is a choice especially if one hasn’t experienced anything remotely similar to her struggle.

 

Amen!