Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast, Cover: Steven Meisel/British Vogue
Superstar young actor Timothée Chalamet graces the cover of British Vogue’s October issue this year, but this isn’t your typical magazine cover: Chalamet, who’s starring in the upcoming Dune franchise sequel, is the first man ever to appear alone on the cover of British Vogue, a choice, Editor-in-Chief Edward Enninful says, that was made very carefully after much deliberation.
“I always held off from a man-only print magazine cover,” Enninful, who became the publication’s first Black Editor-in-Chief in 2017, said in his editor’s note. “Forever conscious of Vogue being a space that celebrates women first, I didn’t want it to be a stunt or a statement. Yet, in turn, it increasingly felt to me that there was something at best old-fashioned, at worst dangerously retro, about these tired old gender boxes. Fashion doesn’t always work that way—is every last piece in your wardrobe strictly designed for the gender with which you identify? I doubt it.”
And so, Enninful waited until the time was exactly right to tap a male star for the cover, and Chalamet, whose angular beauty and demographic-spanning appeal has landed him in big-budged franchises and tender indies alike, is an inspired choice.