Having been a Vogue subscriber for most of my teenage years, I can personally testify to the excitement of tearing open that white, Condé Nast package each month.
The Vogue cover is the pinnacle of success for many, so lately, why are we left disappointed?
Firstly, the dreaded grey background. Each month, my Instagram feed fills with complaints of a plain background on the latest British Vogue cover, and I agree. Simplicity can be timeless. However, sometimes they are just boring! Take Dua Lipa’s July 2025 cover as an example. Dua Lipa looks great, but from Vogue I expect this: a cover that is captivating, showcases beautiful garments, modelled in an interesting and dynamic way. These are high standards — but it’s Vogue. She sports a baby pink Miu Miu bra and matching star hat against a background of the same colour. It is super monochrome. Surely the cover of the fashion magazine should give us more than one piece of underwear.
This leads to my second question — is Vogue choosing the wrong image for their covers? Working with the likes of Annie Leibovitz, Mario Testino, David Sims, Vogue produces some incredible images. However, too often I find myself thinking: ‘Why didn’t they choose that image for the cover?’ Take January 2026’s cover, which has Margot Robbie draped in Chanel silk and feathers, perched upon a stone wall against a backdrop of grassy fields. Now, it is not a boring studio shot, which I appreciate. But it is not super captivating either. This is not to say that Margot doesn’t look amazing and the garments she’s wearing aren’t incredible, but for a Vogue cover I want to see art! Flicking through her feature, I stumbled across a black, and white photograph of Margot in the rain. She wears a Schiaparelli knit cardigan with satin ruffles that bunch, and falls as she folds her arms, slouches her shoulders, and stares intensely down the camera. It looks like a still from an old movie. It’s elegant but powerful, timeless but exciting — aren’t these the kind of values we’d expect from Vogue magazine? Most importantly, it would still be as amazing of an image if it wasn’t the beautiful — and famous — Margot Robbie modelling the clothes.
This was a huge change for Vogue — using celebrities instead of actual models. This was an idea that Anna Wintour brought in to appeal to the consumer more. A great business strategy, but has it commercialised Vogue too much? The obvious fact is that models wear clothes better than celebrities. Their experience means they can pose and move in a way that helps viewers fully grasp the essence of the garments, providing dynamic shots for covers. Although supermodels have celebrity status too, when I see Bella Hadid on the front of a magazine, I’m thinking about the clothes she’s wearing. Conversely, when I saw Millie Bobby Brown’s December 2025 cover, I thought about Stranger Things. Bobby Brown’s shoot (which I loved) was followed by an 11 page shoot showcasing designers and their debut collections. This shoot featured real models, and outshone Bobby Brown’s farm fashion shoot, which was cute, and natural, but not high fashion. Models do it better, obviously.
All in all, Vogue has changed a lot. But high fashion has been placed on a pedestal too high for so many years, and maybe Vogue is bringing us back to Earth. At first glance, Gwyneth Paltrow in a hoodie should not belong in Vogue, but am I too brainwashed by the standards of the fashion industry?
Image provided by Hannah Doran for The Student