Anna Wintour and Hamish Bowles went on CBS Sunday Morning yesterday to plug Vogue’s new archive website and the magazine’s upcoming 120th anniversary, as well as Dodie Kazanjian’s new coffee-table book of the magazine’s most famous covers. Interviewed by CBS correspondent (and Vogue subject herself) Serena Altschul, Anna discussed some of the magazine’s more controversial covers, including her very first cover as editor-in-chief in 1988, which raised eyebrows because it featured an informal-looking image of Israeli model Michaela Bercu wearing acid-washed jeans and a bejeweled Lacroix jacket. Regarding her decision to put Madonna on the cover in 1989, which was widely discouraged by her peers at the time but is now hailed as one of the most iconic issues, she said:
I didn’t know anything. I never pay any attention. I’m sure it’s not such a good way to be, but I don’t really follow market research. And in the end I do respond to my own instincts. Sometimes they’re successful, and obviously sometimes they’re not. But you have to, I think, remain true to what you believe in.
Meanwhile, Hamish reveals that Vogue subscribers will be able to see the magazine’s first-ever issue — from 1892, when it was an illustrated weekly — as part of their “select” access to the $1,575-per-year archive website in 2012. So, you can look forward to that.
Related: Vogue’s New Archive Site Costs $1,575 for a Yearly Subscription
