Vogue September 2020

THE CONVERSATIONS BEGAN MONTHS AGO, and they included every global Vogue editor in chief. How should we engage with our turbulent moment? As we look toward our fall issues, what sort of statement should we make? It quickly became clear that what we all longed for—from Britain to Russia, from Mexico to Australia—was optimism, a statement of positivity, even joy. And so all of the editors decided on a common theme: hope. This month every Vogue expresses that idea on our covers, in our pages, and across all of our platforms. There is no uniform notion of what hope means, of course—it can be represented by a glorious sunrise in Hong Kong (see above) or a portrait of an infectious-disease expert in Germany, just two of the international contributions that…

VOGUE COVERS TALK TO US about who we are and the world we live in. This year, as our world has been turned upside down by the plagues of coronavirus, racist violence, and presidential incompetence, we invited two Black artists, Kerry James Marshall and Jordan Casteel, to make paintings for our September covers. Artists have created Vogue covers before, on rare occasions—Salvador Dalí, Marie Laurencin, Giorgio de Chirico, and John Currin, who painted Jennifer Lawrence for the September 2017 issue. What’s different this time is that Marshall and Casteel were given complete freedom to decide who would be on their cover and how that person would be portrayed. The only requirement was that they choose a dress by a Vogue-curated designer for their subject to wear. Marshall, 64, whose 2016…

Hope—it’s an interesting concept, right? First of all, hope has an aspirational quality. We want to have hope. We are attracted to hope. It is in many ways necessary for the human condition to have hope. But hope is not a blind feeling. It’s not a blind belief. It has to be educated, and it has to be informed. I have hope based on information and experience. I have hope because I see evidence of a better tomorrow. It is realistic for me to have hope. It is evidence-based. Look at what New York did with the coronavirus. When New York’s outbreak started: highest infection rate per capita on the globe. And the highest infection rate of any state in the country. In June I announced the lowest infection rate…

For me, an Afro-Latina trans girl and artist, activism is inherent in my existence. It’s no longer a singular identifier. It’s everyday life, it’s art, it’s community. It gives me hope. I run a small creative studio and digital zine called TEAM Mag. We’re Afro-Caribbean-founded and -run, femme-run, queer-run, and for a long time, it’s just been a small group of us. But we’ve been bringing on new creatives from all over: a group of kids producing socially distanced content during COVID-19. They have said, “I need this. This is what allows my gears to turn every day.” Community looks so different for so many people: For some, it’s a group chat they have on Facebook, or an Instagram chat or a zine collective at their school that’s now online.…

Maybe surprisingly, I’ve never been more hopeful than I am right now. You know, most of history happens very slowly, but then there are these times when you hit an air pocket and—wham—things change in a hurry. I think that’s happening right now with racial equity. I think you have to look back 60 years to find an equivalent. You have to look back to the late John Lewis marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Or fast-forward a few years, and you have Stonewall. Both of these were key moments that kicked off a sudden change—for African Americans and for the LGBTQ community. And I think this is an exciting and hopeful time because as a nation we have struggled with racial equity for our whole existence—and it feels good…

Early this spring, in the first months of the pandemic, an interesting trend emerged in the data: Countries led by women appeared to be controlling the outbreak more successfully than countries led by men. Certain women leaders—Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand, in particular—received praise from all corners of the globe for navigating impossibly challenging times with skill and vision. There’s something quite incredible about that: At a critical moment in world history, effective leadership had a woman’s face. Of course, what happens at the highest levels of power is only part of the story. Women’s leadership takes many forms and manifests in many ways. There are so many examples I could point to. Activists like Greta Thunberg, a voice of conscience on…