Why Fashion Illustration Matters in the Digital Age

March 29, 2020

Vogue Italia is starting 2020 off with a bang. For the first time in its 55-year history, the magazine has an illustrated cover (there are seven variants by different artists). The features, too, are all photography-free. This decision was motivated by more than aesthetics; sustainability and philanthropy are also part of the equation. As editor in chief Emanuele Farneti wrote in all caps on his Instagram, “No photo shoot production was required in the making of this issue.” The money saved in the process will be donated to the restoration of the flood-damaged Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice.

Vanessa Beecroft for Vogue Italia January 2020. Female figure in Gucci. Delphine Desane for Vogue Italia January 2020. Assa Baradji in Gucci.

“We cannot save the world,” Farneti said in a phone conversation, but this donation ensures that “something specific remains of this issue”—which is sure to become a collectible, especially as the pillar of the magazine will remain photography.

The December 17 1892 and September 2017 issues of Vogue — *Vogue’s* first, and most recent, illustrated covers.
Illustration by A.B. Wenzell, *Vogue,* December 17, 1892; Portrait by John Currin, *Vogue,* September 2017

Image may contain Clothing Apparel Human and Person — Fashion illustration is nothing new, of course—“Fashion starts from a drawing; *Vogue* started as an illustrated magazine,” comments *Vogue* Italia’s creative director Ferdinando Verderi. But in our digital age of photographic overload, illustration stands as a refreshing oasis in the midst of the continuous scroll. And in most cases it retains the sense of the hand. Its charming analog irregularities stand in contrast to the postmodern, hyperreal world described by the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, as being dominated by spectacle and image.

Edward Steichen’s painterly, and history-making, cover.
Photographed by Edward Steichen, *Vogue,* July 1, 1932

The history of fashion illustration in Vogue dates to the first issue, published in December 1892, under the creative direction of Harry McVikar, an illustrator whose work appeared regularly in the magazine. Fashion photography was then a nascent art, one that was fostered by the publisher Condé Nast. Edward Steichen’s photographic cover for Vogue’s July 1932 issue can be considered a tipping point in photography’s favor. Illustration would never again be dominant. Illustrated covers continue to be used, however; the penultimate, by René Bouché, was published in 1958. The most recent was created in 2017 by painter John Currin for Vogue’s 125th anniversary.

In choosing to work with (mostly) fine artists, rather than illustrators, Italian Vogue continues a tradition of collaboration that resulted in covers, for U.S. Vogue, by painters like Salvador Dalí, Giorgio de Chirico, and Pavel Tchelitchew, and also nods to a legacy of fashion drawing in Italy. Anna Piaggi, for example, worked with many illustrators when she published Vanity, and continued to do so for her DP (double-page) feature for Italian Vogue. It’s interesting to note that the Italian edition of the magazine was launched in 1965, smack in the middle of the decade that gave birth to the celebrity fashion photographer. Michelangelo Antonioni documented this phenomenon in his 1966 film Blow-Up, in which David Bailey was the model for the skirt-chasing lensman, Thomas, played by David Hemmings.