Vogue Magazine: Its History, Famous Covers and National Editions from Britain to Latin America

The Vogue cover dated 1 July 1932 shows a woman in a red swimming costume and white cap, a beach ball held above her head, set against a blue sky. Edward Steichen took the photograph. It was the first colour photograph to run on the front of Vogue magazine, and it ended the long habit of putting an illustration there. Looking at Vogue covers now, it is easy to forget that for its first four decades the front of the magazine was drawn, not photographed.

This page follows the history of Vogue magazine from New York in 1892 to its national editions, with a table of launch years that can be checked, and a longer look at the Spanish-language editions where the sources do not agree.

Vogue covers: from drawings to photographs

Vogue was founded on 17 December 1892 by Arthur Baldwin Turnure. Condé Nast bought it in 1909 and remade it as a fashion magazine with a growing set of foreign titles. In its early decades the cover was a commissioned illustration, and the best of those drawings are still printed in books about the period.

The change to photography took years and happened in stages. The colour photograph of July 1932 was the visible marker. Within a generation, a Vogue cover meant a woman photographed by a named photographer, and the masthead, the portrait and a handful of cover lines became the look. The guide to how a magazine cover is built explains these parts in detail, and the page on famous magazine covers looks at which covers have lasted.

Some Vogue covers matter because of who is on them. Beverly Johnson, 22 years old and from Buffalo, New York, appeared on the August 1974 cover of American Vogue, the first Black model to do so. Naomi Campbell reached the cover of French Vogue in August 1988, and the reported reason is that Yves Saint Laurent threatened to withdraw his advertising from a magazine that had refused to feature Black models on its front. In April 2008 LeBron James appeared on the American cover with Gisele Bundchen. In December 2020 Harry Styles became the first man to appear alone on it.

Those are the covers that get quoted, and the gaps between them are as telling as the dates. Johnson’s cover came eighty-two years after the magazine began. Anna Wintour’s first cover as American editor, in November 1988, featured the model Michaela Bercu. The September 2012 issue ran to 916 pages and is recorded as the largest monthly magazine ever published, which says something about what a cover was selling by then: not just a woman in a dress, but a volume of advertising behind her.

A short history of Vogue magazine, by owner and editor

Ownership is the simplest way into the history. Turnure founded the title, Nast bought it in 1909, and Condé Nast has run it since. Everything after that is a story of editors.

In America, Anna Wintour edited Vogue from 1988 to 2025, a longer tenure than almost any editor of a major magazine. Chloe Malle took over the American edition’s top editorial job in 2025. Before Wintour came Grace Mirabella, who edited from 1971 to 1988, and Diana Vreeland, from 1963 to 1971. Edna Woolman Chase held the post for thirty-eight years, from 1914 to 1952. Wintour had spent two years at British Vogue earlier, from 1985 to 1987. The documentary The September Issue, released in 2009, followed the production of the record-breaking September 2007 American issue and made Wintour’s methods briefly famous outside the trade.

Editors of the other editions are quoted below under each title. One general pattern is worth stating: Vogue gives each edition a good deal of editorial independence, so the “Vogue magazine” you read in London is not the same publication as the one read in Milan or Mexico City, even though the logo and many photographers are shared.

British Vogue and the first foreign edition

British Vogue began in 1916 and is the oldest of the international editions. The reason was practical. During the First World War the American edition could not be shipped to Britain, so Condé Nast launched a British one. The publisher today is Condé Nast Britain, and the title appears monthly, twelve times a year.

The roll of British editors is short and distinctive. Audrey Withers was in charge from 1940 to 1961. Beatrix Miller held the post from 1964 to 1984. Alexandra Shulman edited from 1992 until 2017, which is the longest stretch in recent memory. Edward Enninful followed from 2017, announced his departure in June 2023, and had his last cover in the March 2024 issue. Chioma Nnadi succeeded him in 2023. The magazine’s own site, Vogue UK, carries current issues, and the reference entry on British Vogue gives the full list.

If you want to compare British Vogue with its rivals rather than its siblings, the guide to the best fashion magazines sets it beside Harper’s Bazaar, Elle and the independents.

Vogue editions and launch years

The table lists the editions whose launch years appear in the reference sources consulted. It is not complete, and the Spanish-language entry carries a caveat explained in the next section.

Wikipedia’s article on Vogue counted 28 international editions as of March 2025. A foreign edition is licensed, staffed and commissioned locally, and the number changes as licences begin and end. A reader who needs the current list should check the publisher’s own pages rather than a table that will date.

The editors behind the covers

Vogue covers reflect the editor more than the owner. Chase’s thirty-eight years ran through the First World War, the Depression and the Second World War, and the shift from illustration to photography happened under her. Vreeland edited from 1963 to 1971 and Mirabella from 1971 to 1988. According to the reference entry, the magazine became a monthly in 1973, so Mirabella oversaw that change, and American Vogue is now listed at eight issues a year.

Since 1988 the picture has been of one editor and a very stable house style. Wintour’s tenure ended in 2025, and what the next period looks like is not yet knowable. For a reader, the useful habit is to check the name on the masthead of whichever edition is in hand, and to treat an old issue as the product of that person’s preferences, not of “Vogue” in general.

What a national edition actually is

A national edition is not a translation. Vogue Italia chose its own cover in 1964, Wilhelmina Cooper by Irving Penn. The Italian magazine’s July 2008 issue used only Black models, and it is the sort of decision a translated edition would never have made. Vogue Mexico was started, stopped and restarted on the schedule of the Mexican economy. British Vogue exists because of a wartime shipping problem. Each edition’s history is the history of one market, which is why a single account of Vogue magazine can only be a list of local stories joined by a logo.

This also explains why the most useful comparison for a UK reader is rarely with another country’s Vogue. It is with other fashion titles on the same shelf, or with the editions of the same magazine that share a language, such as the US and Australian ones. If you want to see how different the covers can be, buy the same month from London and Milan and put them side by side.

Paris, Milan and the editions with their own personalities

Vogue Paris began in 1920 and kept that name until 2021, when it became Vogue France. The renaming is in the reference record. The reasons are not explained in the sources consulted here, so none is offered.

Vogue Italia is the edition with the most distinct reputation. Its first issue was dated October 1964, with the model Wilhelmina Cooper photographed by Irving Penn. Franca Sozzani edited it from 1988 until her death on 22 December 2016, aged 66, and worked extensively with the photographer Steven Meisel. The issue of July 2008 used only Black models and became the magazine’s best-selling issue. It was reprinted twice, a first in Condé Nast’s history, though the advertising pages were criticised for showing few Black models. Emanuele Farneti took over in January 2017 and left in July 2021, after which the editor-in-chief post was replaced by a head of editorial content. Details of the current post are on the Vogue Italia reference page.

Germany is a stranger case. Vogue Deutsch started in 1928 but did not survive the end of the decade, and the edition people know today dates from 1979. It is one reason the numbers in the table are launches rather than unbroken runs.

Vogue Latin America and the Spanish-language editions

Here the sources disagree, and it is better to say so than to choose.

Vogue Mexico began in 1980. In 1995 it was suspended because of the Mexican peso crisis. According to Wikipedia’s entry on Vogue Mexico y Latinoamerica, Condé Nast, together with Ideas Publishing Group, relaunched Vogue Mexico in October 1999 and launched Vogue Latin America in the same month, at first under the title Vogue en Espanol and with an office in Miami.

The magazine’s founding editor tells it differently. Eva Hughes says on her own site that she launched Vogue Mexico and Latin America in September 2002. Wikipedia lists her as editor from 2002 to 2012. One reading is that 1999 was the first relaunch under another title and 2002 the start of the combined magazine that people now think of as the one; the other is that one of the dates is simply wrong. The sources consulted do not settle it, and no verdict is offered here.

Later editors, per the same reference page, were Kelly Talamas from 2012 to 2016, and Karla Martinez de Salas from 2016. Vogue Mexico is edited from Mexico City and Vogue Latin America is edited from Miami, serving a group of markets that the reference entry puts at more than twenty countries. One cover that the entry singles out is Joan Smalls, photographed by Russell James for the September 2015 issue.

For readers searching for the Spanish name, Revista Vogue Mexico is the same publication. The current site is Vogue Mexico. Anyone looking for a Vogue Latin America as a separate title should check the current masthead first, since the combined name, Vogue Mexico y Latinoamerica, is how the reference sources list it.

The peso crisis detail matters for the history. A Mexican edition that stopped in 1995 because of a currency crisis is a good example of how a licensed magazine lives and dies on the local market. The Latin American edition, based in Miami, was set up differently: one office, many countries, a single Spanish-language product aimed at readers from Argentina to the Spanish-speaking United States. Whether that approach produced one magazine or twenty depends on the reader, and the sources consulted give no way to measure it.

Asia and the later editions

Vogue Japan began as Vogue Nippon in 1999 and became Vogue Japan in 2011. Vogue Korea is older, from 1996. Vogue China published its first issue in September 2005, and Vogue India followed in October 2007. Turkey (2010), Thailand (2013), Czechoslovakia (2018), Hong Kong (2019) and the Philippines (2022) are the more recent additions, which gives the list its odd shape: a European and American base from the first half of the twentieth century, and a series of Asian and eastern European editions added in the last thirty years.

Launch year tells you little about local standing. Germany’s edition has the longest gap in the table, a 1928 start and a 1979 relaunch, while China’s, begun in 2005, is among the newest of the large ones. Neither date predicts which edition a given fashion house now treats as the more important.

Three photographers and a pattern

Three names recur in the verified record, and together they sketch how Vogue covers were made. Edward Steichen shot the swimmer for the July 1932 cover, working in colour with the encouragement of Condé Nast. Irving Penn photographed Wilhelmina Cooper for the first Vogue Italia cover in October 1964. Steven Meisel worked extensively with Franca Sozzani during her 28 years at the same magazine. Between them they cover the three moments a reader is likely to meet: the arrival of colour photography, the founding of a national edition, and the long collaboration between one editor and one photographer.

The pattern is that a Vogue cover is the product of a pairing. The editor decides what the magazine will say that month, the photographer decides how it looks, and the cover subject is the third party. When the pairing is stable, as in Milan under Sozzani, the covers have a recognisable style. When it changes, the style changes with it, and the effect is visible on a newsagent’s shelf within a few months.

How to date and identify a Vogue cover

Collectors and students often need to identify a cover quickly. A few habits help.

First, find the edition, because the same month exists in many national versions. Second, read the date line; the 1932 cover, for one, carried a full day and month. Third, check the editor against the lists above, since the cover subject, photographer and typography often belong to a single editor’s period. Finally, treat any reproduction with caution until the edition and date are confirmed against the original.

Libraries are the other route. Libraries may hold printed runs, and the individual edition sites carry recent covers, for example Vogue Mexico for the Spanish-language editions. The page on how a magazine cover is built explains what each element on the front is called, which makes dating much easier.

Why the number of editions keeps changing

A fixed total of Vogue editions is hard to give. Wikipedia counted 28 as of March 2025. Some editions are licences that end, others are relaunches of earlier titles, and a few appear in more than one form, such as the Mexican title and the Latin American one that now share a combined name. The Vogue Deutsch edition is counted from 1979 although an earlier version appeared in 1928. A count of editions therefore depends on whether you count launches, relaunches or titles currently on sale.

For anyone writing about Vogue magazine, the safest course is to state the date of the count and its source, as this page does, rather than to quote a number from memory.

Reading Vogue today

Because the editions are separate, the best way to read Vogue magazine is to choose by country and language. British Vogue is the obvious choice for UK readers; Vogue Italia remains the edition that the trade watches for photography; Vogue Latin America and Vogue Mexico are the choice for Spanish readers. For a fuller comparison with other titles, the page on the best fashion magazines gives the wider field.

If a printed copy matters, check the schedule. The reference entries list British Vogue as monthly and American Vogue as eight issues a year as of 2026, so the idea that every edition appears every month no longer holds.

The timeline of how magazines in general began, with Vogue arriving late in it, is on the page about the oldest magazines, the page on types of journals explains how a fashion monthly differs from a periodical in other fields, and the wider set of guides is on the magazines hub.

The very first cover photograph is less settled. One reference entry gives 13 May 1893 for an early photographic cover, which sits oddly beside the 1932 date for the first colour one, and the sources consulted do not say how the two fit together.