Tuesday, January 14, 2020

Vogue Italia's Illustrated Issue

The fashion magazine Vogue Italia used a series of illustrated covers for its January, 2020 issue in order to reduce the magazine's impact on the environment.
 January 2020 Vogue Italia Special Issue on newsstands
January 7th 
@Yoshitaka_Amano
They explain: "All of the covers, as well as the features of our January issue, have been drawn by artists, ranging from well-known art icons and emerging talents to comic book legends, who have created without travelling, shipping entire wardrobes of clothes or polluting in any way. The challenge was to prove it is possible to show clothes without photographing them." 
@MiloManara_official featuring @OliviaVinten in @Gucci
They continue: "This is a first, Vogue Italia has never had an illustrated cover: and as far as I know no issue of Vogue in which photography is not the primary visual medium has ever been printed. Thanks to this idea, and to these artists' process, the money saved in the production of this issue will go towards financing a project that really deserves it: the restoration of @FondazioneQueriniStampalia in Venice, severely damaged by the recent floods.”


Whether there's any real environmental benefit to this decision, or whatever their motivation in choosing it, a side benefit is that they're hiring more art. They say having art on the cover is a first for Vogue Italia. Perhaps so, but it's not a first for Vogue itself, as a quick search of 1930s-era covers will attest.
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Comments on their Instagram post include:
hayden_williams
Obsessed with this!! We need to see more of this as us illustrators are very under appreciated in the fashion industry.
fawxden Surprised you kids have not done this concept before. It’s pretty fabulous. Do an all black and white edition next!! 🖤
begasquish Supporting artists is also a wonderful idea again! Bravo !! 👏💙🙏
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4 comments:

arturoquimico said...

Having a degree in chemistry and being an industrial chemist for over 40 years, I merely ask that folks consider the Laws of Thermodynamics before making rules and lofty pronouncements that defy nature. Aside from using more water as a solvent, I've not met an engineer, physicist or chemist that can show me what the "green" movement has changed. I was part of the "green" revolution in agriculture whereby crop yields were doubled and tripled 50 years ago, but those techniques are now savaged as being unnatural and anything but "green". I am all for artists getting more of the work, but using common sense it would seem to me that the biggest energy user for a printed magazine is not in the set up, but in the production and distribution. Maybe this is just a marketing ploy... most green labeling is these days...

James Gurney said...

Good points, Arturo. Whether there's any real environmental benefit to this decision, or whatever their motivation in doing it, a side benefit is that they're hiring more art. They say having art on the cover is a first for Vogue Italia: perhaps so, but it's not a first for Vogue itself, as a quick search of 1930s-era covers will attest: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=vogue+magazine+covers+1930s&t=h_&ia=images&iax=images

Warren JB said...

I'll have to be cynical too, and guess that the environmental benefit is a drop in the ocean of industrial consumption; but I appreciate the focus on illustrators.

Lydia said...

Thank you, James Gurney, for sharing this blog post. Congrats to Vogue Italia! I see value in this on many levels. Raising money for a good cause, fabulous. Minimizing waste, very important. More work for illustrators, wonderful. Softening the edges of expectation through the use of interpretive illustration, speaks volumes. Fashion is big business. But it is also an art form. It can be fun as well as serious. I hope the trend of including illustration grows and it is not just a one-off marketing experiment. A combination of illustration and photography would be a perfect end result. Thanks again for sharing.