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Saturday, January 03, 2015

'Vogue' UK Finally Breaks Its All-White Streak With Jourdan Dunn

'Vogue' UK Finally Breaks Its All-White Streak With Jourdan Dunn:

Photo: Robin Marchant/Getty Images
Photo: Robin Marchant/Getty Images
2015 magazine covers are already rolling in, and Jourdan Dunn is Vogue UK's February 2015 cover girl, the model revealed on Instagram Friday. Though she has covered Miss Vogue UK, the glossy's teen offshoot, it's surprisingly her first time covering the magazine.

Not only is the cover gorge, showcasing the British beauty's newish blonde bob and a dress from Prada's spring 2015 collection, but it's also a long time coming, for a few reasons. For one, just about every one of Dunn's top model contemporaries — Cara Delevingne, Georgia May Jagger, Kate Upton, Freja Beha — has covered the magazine at least once. In fact, Delevingne got two covers in 2014 alone, as did Kate Moss, who has covered the glossy at least once per year since her career began. One thing all of those models have in common? They're all white; so is every single Vogue UK cover star of 2014, which the magazine (perhaps accidentally) made abundantly clear with the below Instagram.

Most significantly, Dunn is the first black model to cover the magazine solo since Naomi Campbell in 2002. Vogue UK EIC Alexandra Schulman once defended the homogeneity of her cover stars thusly in an interview with BBC radio: "[She's] the most perfect girl next door, better than yourself. People always say, 'Why do you have thin models? That's not what people look like.' But nobody wants to see a real person on the cover."

Dunn, who has been outspoken about racism in the fashion industry, currently stars alongside Campbell in the spring 2015 Burberry ads.

While we're glad Vogue UK has finally broken this disappointing and, frankly, embarrassing all-white streak, the magazine industry still has a long way to go when it comes to cover star diversity. The Fashion Spot recently found that in 2014, white models got almost five times more covers than black models. Other publications that failed to use any cover stars of color last year included Harper’s Bazaar U.S. and U.K., Vogue U.K., Vogue Netherlands, Vogue Paris, Vogue Ukraine, Vogue Russia, Teen Vogue, Numéro, Love and Porter.

On the other hand, as The Cut pointed out, Vogue U.S. actually made an improvement in cover diversity in 2014, featuring Rihanna, Lupita Nyong'o, Joan Smalls (alongside other models) and Kanye West. Though, unfortunately, that seemed to be an exception to the rule. Here's hoping editors make up for it in 2015.

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