HISTORY's Moment in Media: The Vogue September Issue
The September 2022 issue of the fashion bible Voguewas released on August 9, with a rollout centered on its cover story, an as-told-to profile of the tennis icon Serena Williams. The article made international news, as Williams announced in it that she would retire from the sport after this summer's U.S. Open (now underway at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens).
Beyond inaugurating a season of celebration for the all-time great who fundamentally changed the sport, this year's September issue of Vogue also served its usual purposes: a kickoff to the new year of fashion, a preview for the significant new fall looks -- on shelves as the fashion world focuses on the important spring-summer fashion weeks in Paris, Milan and New York -- and an ad-packed demonstration of the magazine's eminence in the fashion world.
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It also filled the issue's historical role as a doorstop: The September 2022 Vogue clocks in at 378 pages, not including its front and back covers. That's about five times the size of a typical issue of Time or People.
But it's nowhere close to the behemoth that the Vogue September issue has been in the past. In fact, in 2012 -- ten years ago this month -- Vogue published the largest single magazine issue in history, a September issue with Lady Gaga on the cover that ran to 916 pages and weighed about five pounds. It was perhaps the crucial symbol of the last major moment of print magazine dominance before Internet media undercut the business for good. This year's September issue, after all, was announced by tweet.
And that one, while the biggest, wasn't even the most famous September issue. That honor goes to the September 2007 Vogue, with actress Sienna Miller on the cover, the previous record-holder for biggest magazine issue ever. (Unlike the 2012 September issue, which merely noted its page count on the cover, the earlier record-setter boasted that it was setting that record: "Extra-Extra Large! Our Biggest Issue Ever," a coverline screamed. "840 Pages of Fearless Fashion.")
That's the issue that was immortalized in the 2009 R. J. Cutler documentary The September Issue. Cutler's film turned editor Anna Wintour into an (almost) real person and introduced viewers unfamiliar with the inner workings of fashion to larger-than-life figures like then-creative director Grace Coddington and then-editor-at-large André Leon Talley. It went inside the process of creating the issue, and it demonstrated how the interplay between the icily efficient Wintour and her longtime partner, the more passionate Coddington, was a key engine in Vogue's success.
The film cemented the unique role of a fashion magazine's September issue in popular culture. But, then, those issues had always been important. Because they come at such a pivotal time of the year for the industry, September issues had long been packed with eye-popping features and fattened with prodigious advertising.
The first Vogue September issue arrived in 1893, with an illustration of a begowned woman in "a September reverie." They turned into more glam images over time, and by the 1980s and '90s were populated by the era's reigning supermodels. In the 21st century, celebrities more often graced those covers, and in recent years -- as print magazines have become less dominant players in the culture -- the relationship between the magazine and its cover subjects has changed. By 2018, when Beyoncé graced Vogue's September issue, the magazine largely turned control of that cover over to the star.
That's the model Serena followed this year. At a time when social media matters as much as traditional editors dictating traditional media, and at a time when mega-celebrities drive global culture, it's a model that works. It's also a model that does good. In 2018, Beyoncé insisted that she be photographed by then 23-year-old photographer Tyler Mitchell -- who became the first Black man to shoot a Vogue cover.
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