The most important cover of fashion magazines’ most important month of the year may remind you of its editor: Halle Berry has exchanged her signature cropped hairstyle for a little Anna Wintour–esque bob on Vogue’s September issue. Berry is the first black woman to appear on Vogue’s September cover since Naomi Campbell in 1989 (Campbell was the first black woman ever to appear on the magazine’s September cover). So Berry is the first black celebrity to enjoy the honor — and she looks gorgeous doing so.
We don’t have our paper copy of the issue yet, so it’s unclear if the lack of September cover-girl diversity is something Wintour will address in her editor’s letter. The magazine has used the Internet (bravo!) to take a look back at the last ten September covers, but doesn’t acknowledge that they all have white people on them. Berry briefly acknowledges her cover’s significance in explaining why she finally agreed to do a big interview after being silent for so long:
The only reason she is submitting now, she says, is that Vogue made her an offer she couldn’t refuse: the September cover. “What that means for a woman of color and what that means in the fashion world, what that means to pop culture, there was no way I could say, ‘No, I’m not going to be on the biggest issue of the year.’”
Berry also fails to say anything truly provocative about her recent breakup with Gabriel Aubry (they’re still friends, committed parents, love each other but are not IN love, etc.), which many speculated Vogue editors would count on for this issue. The magazine also left those bits off the cover, unlike the strangely tabloid-y treatment they gave Jennifer Aniston. But who cares about gossip when they can say they have 726 pages of fall fashion? It’s quite a step up from last year’s 584.
Halle’s Hollywood [Vogue]
