US Vogue April 2008 : Gisele Bündchen & LeBron James by Annie Leibovitz

[Milho]

Faith thx for ur scans as wonderful as the Testino's shots

for the first time, I kinda like the Requel in Vogue US, the "Perfect Ten" is really beautiful

 

[sidrasgaya]

Thanks a lot for the scans! I don't like the cover, is just awful... and I think it's really difficult to make something awful when Gisele is on it! but Anna could... This flower editorial is too obvious, I mean, it's ok, but maybe they could think better in something more different than just flower prints+flowers.

 

[Nemezide]

*refrains from dissing Trentini*

At least she doesn't look too bad here (in ALL FOUR of her eds )

karma
when i saw all this wealth of trentini i thought about you

 

[L0VE]

I don't get the controversy that's going on with this cover. Finally, a model on the cover again =)!!

 

[bluecandyboy]

and jumping is made for trentini not gisele

i can prove to you that gisele may not be the original jumper but she was doing it way before carol first did it on vogue. karen elson might be the first. anyway, most of them are shot by steven meisel so i guess the jumping thing has been started by meisel. love meisel!

 

[kimair]

there's a separate thread for the u.s edition of vogue living...
please post eds and comments in that thread...thank you...

 

[Manuva]

LOLVogue is back!
-gawker.com

 

[taben]

 

[kahlilg]

I was about to say. Am i the only one who finds the cover offensive?

No... but all I wanted to say was that even though the cover may have some double meaning going on, I kind of think Anna knew what she was doing. Anna knows that US Vogue is kind of a joke when it comes to fashion and editorials, so to keep her magazine interesting, she must resort to this type of thing. To be honest, I do find this cover offensive but I have other things to be worried about, so to speak. As Jason Whitlock said in Am I Supposed To Be Man About LeBron:

I'm black, and I'm pissed off most of the time, but I wouldn't leave home without the handbook. Not in these racist-ly confusing times. I can barely keep up with when I'm supposed to be disappointed as opposed to offended as opposed to being pissed smooth the **** off.
Right now I need to know where this LeBron James-Gisele Bundchen-Vogue-cover controversy falls. And just who am I supposed to be mad at, LeBron, the photographer, the editors at Vogue or Tom Brady?

Anna Wintour has done a lot worse. I think the Jennifer Hudson cover was awful (*Edited* she avoids black models anywhere near her magazine unless it's Chanel Iman and then she had too basically deal with both in 1 cover). I also find it interesting that it created so much buzz outside of the fashion community. Like I said before, she has done worse, so why pay attention now? Maybe people are a little sensitive because it seems like America isn't progressing like it should. What I really want to know is how Andre L.T. feels about this? I take his concerns more seriously since he is the Editor-At-Large.
Sorry if you guys talked about this before but I just wanted to spend my 2 cents.

 

[Deleted member 82231]

What the hell? He looks like he is about to cannibalize her...and not in the Helmut Lang way.

 

[maffam]

^i doubt this debate belongs in this thread, but i don't think it's fair to say that anna "avoids black models anywhere near her magazines" excepting chanel iman. liya kebede has been a vogue staple for years, and even had a solo cover awhile back. vogue uses a very small handful of girls (and trentini over and over again), and both liya and chanel appear in issues frequently, which is more than most models, black or white, can say.

 

[kahlilg]

^i doubt this debate belongs in this thread, but i don't think it's fair to say that anna "avoids black models anywhere near her magazines" excepting chanel iman. liya kebede has been a vogue staple for years, and even had a solo cover awhile back. vogue uses a very small handful of girls (and trentini over and over again), and both liya and chanel appear in issues frequently, which is more than most models, black or white, can say.

it was a tongue-in-cheek comment. i wasn't entirely serious. My main point was that there are plenty and plenty of black models she could use but yet we see very few time after time.

 

[tigerrouge]

Jill Scott's only in there because she's currently starring in a HBO/BBC adaptation of the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency book, directed by the late Anthony Mingella. It's like her reputation needed the validation of being associated with a top male director and a best-selling male author before magazines like Vogue thought she was worth bothering with.

Vogue wasn't knocking on the door to ask about her shopping habits when she was making all those fantastic songs on her own, in her first career as a singer.

 

[prettypouf]

LOLVogue is back!
-gawker.com

PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE IMAGES! See tFS Community Rules.

I laughed, I cried... I fell out of my chair.

 

[smartarse]

Trentini the Brazilian jumping bean ...

 

[kissmesweet]

Thanks for all of the scans, Faith! We really appreciate it!

The main athletes editorial is wonderful; beautifully shot and a wonderful cast of models and athletes.

The Caroline in bikinis editorial is quite boring, but she does look gorgeous.

Raquel's is fantastic; Lanvin always looks amazing in print.

As for the cover, it's quite terrible... I don't think that it's racist though; people may interpret it as that, but Anna Wintour isn't that stupid to mirror it to the King Kong images.

 

[I_killed_couture]

I'm black and I really don't get the controversy. Both of them look pretty horrid on the cover, it was just not a great selection. The King Kong reference isn't nice at all either...

 

[liberty33r1b]

^i agree, i wouldn't so much see the cover as a race issue, it just looks terrible overall....

 

[carioca]

I was about to say. Am i the only one who finds the cover offensive?

Please Do Not Quote Images. See tFS Community Rules.

LeBron James seems to be embodying ugly stereotypes about black men: The wild, savage, white-woman-obsessed beast.

I wonder wtf Annie Leibovitz or Vogue where thinking.

i definitely find it offensive, so you aren't alone. i've been doing an anti-racist workshop and we've been studying the different stereotypes of African-Americans (during slavery, after the Emancipation Proclamation, during the Jim Crow Era, until today) and one of them being "The Brute," big, black, murderous, harmful to white women etc.

granted both look pretty awful on the front, it should make us all wonder then why they would choose that photo at all!?
and for people saying that it's just "his game face," i'll be honest i don't watch basketball much, but i've never seen LeBron with that face as he dribbled a ball. it's really shameful especially as the cover is suppose to be something progressive A.) a person of color on the cover and B.) a man.
although i can do without males on Vogue covers, as it is targeted for women, people of color on a high fashion magazine cover is something really progressive to me. but portraying them in a stereotypical way is just doing nothing really. the two other photos of LeBron and Gisele were much better, the one where they are sitting is a beautiful photo imo because it displays both their beauty. but more the one on the basketball court as it displayed his athleticism as a basketball player.

 

[LUXXX]

Not bad...