UK Vogue April 2022 : Anya Taylor-Joy by Craig McDean

[LastNight]

I got my issue earlier in the week and it took me a couple of days to get around to it. At this point the Royal thing has been so played out in magazines that an old shot of the Queen wasn’t really enticing me. A new portrait would’ve been fantastic… imagine if she’d agreed to sit for Nick Knight?! I expect her poor health recently meant they couldn’t do a new shoot, or I suppose maybe she just didn’t want to. A shame though, she sat for Vanity Fair for her 90th only a handful of years back, it would’ve been nice to get an original shot for the country’s own Vogue edition.

Having said all that, even a new portrait wouldn’t have saved this issue. My goodness, what a dud it is! Anya’s feature is lovely but I’d already seen it 10 times over on Instagram. I looked through the issue only yesterday and I honestly couldn’t tell somebody what else is in it from recollection. I just remember a lot of beige.

And, I have to say, the Anya feature is SO Shulman-era Vogue. I’m tempted to make a version of the cover with the obnoxious blocky text they used to use circa 2010 and I’m sure it’d fit right in with other issues from that time.

 

[vogue28]

A truly dire issue! So unbelievably dark, dull and depressing for an April issue on shelves in the spring. Edward's Vogue has very rapidly became all about covers that generate Instagram hype. The content is starting to feel like an after-thought.

I'm lucky I got Queen Elizabeth's cover via my subscription and I'm thankful the cover itself is even better in person with its silver masthead feels like a collectors piece), because there's just very little else this issue is offering me.

 

[VogueGirl8910]

The Anna's cover is a very i-D's style & her story is a copy of a typical US Vogue's features with a celebrity as the cover girl. Anyway, it's a disappointed issue because the edits are boring (Trindle trying to express his Meisel's style on his photography), only the Sims' story save it.

 

[tigerrouge]

Flicking through this again yesterday, I note the theme - or at least, a special section - of the May issue will be weddings, so we may also see some coverage of Edward's own.

But I started thinking about one of my favourite shots from his tenure at Vogue - Binx on the railroad - and I realised, I'm absolutely sick of studio/indoor shoots. At the start, that was down to Covid, which restricted so much for so long, but these days, it's all about producing a series of very bland shoots for easy export into other editions. Are we ever going to see glorious location shoots again, where you feel like you've gone on a visual adventure?

 

[aracic]

Are we ever going to see glorious location shoots again, where you feel like you've gone on a visual adventure?

That's why we have the East Asian publications, always with the most magnificent locations! If only that sort of content got reprinted in the western magazines and not the other way around...