How Framestore revived the previous for British Vogue
Much of the publishing industry in Covid-19 has proven impossible to evade the context in which magazines are made. In fact, many titles lean on as a focus.
British Vogue is no exception. The July issue of the magazine focused on key workers at the front of the Covid 19 pandemic, handing over the valuable title points to an engine driver, a midwife and a salesperson. While this issue focuses on people, the newest issue, reset, is concerned with nature instead. On the 14 covers and accompanying photo story, artists such as David Hockney, Martin Parr, Alasdair McLellan and Nadine Ijewere highlight natural scenes across Britain at a time when most people want to return to nature after spending most of it have been surrounded by the same four walls for the past four months.
With photo shoots disrupted by blackout rules (namely, social distance requirements and travel restrictions), the new edition features selfies by celebrities and British Vogue employees, a fashion shoot art by Nick Knight about zoom, and a plethora of photographs taken from the archives of the UK Vogue were unearthed instead of new pictures. The latter approach took an ambitious twist in an unusual distribution created with the visual effects company Framestore.
With the title "Back to the Future", the photo story revives famous fashion pictures from 1947, which were originally taken by personalities such as Cecil Beaton, Norman Parkinson, David Bailey and John Deakin. The difference is of course that the outfits wear the models. Here are Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton and a young Kate Moss with Doe-Eyes, photographed by Corinne Day in 1993 for their first British Vogue cover, all dressed in new seasonal collections.
Corinne Day's Kate Moss, 1993, wears Alexander McQueen AW20. All images courtesy of British Vogue / Framestore