Why Meghan Markle’s Vogue is bang on trend
If you had told me, when I was a cottage-loaf-shaped 13-year-old with a Meat Loaf ponytail living in provincial Britain, that one day Vogue would cover its September issue with photos of 15 women of different ages, ethnicities, gender identities and political passions, under the banner Forces for Change, I would have burst my DMs from dancing.
This year, the Vogue September issue – the most eagerly awaited edition of the world’s most famous consumer magazine – has been co-edited by Meghan Markle and Edward Enninful. I feel about the royal family the way most people feel about bikini waxes: fine if that’s your sort of thing, but I would really rather not pay for it. And yet it is hard not to take heart in the fact that people all over Britain can pick up a mainstream magazine featuring the former first lady Michelle Obama; New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern; the author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the climate campaigner Greta Thunberg; the boxer Ramla Ali; the refugee and model Adut Akech; the health campaigner Jameela Jamil; the trans actor Laverne Cox and the Hollywood great and human rights protester Jane Fonda all in one place.
It is important to see migrants, artists, models, politicians, people of colour, actors, human rights campaigners and fighters photographed in black and white on the cover of a magazine you can find almost anywhere. It makes me excited to think that in waxing salons, post offices, oligarchs’ bathrooms, dentists’ waiting rooms, law courts, 24-hour garages and gynaecologists’ offices, you will be able to read women – intelligent women – discussing the climate crisis, toe sweat, international law and money. You know, just like real people.
This may be the first time that the September issue has been guest edited, but it is far from the first time a member of the royal family has stepped up to edit something. As Tolani Shoneye said on Twitter, the Duchess of Cambridge has guest edited the Huffington Post UK, Prince Charles guest edited Country Life magazine and Prince Harry guest edited the Today programme. Modern royal duties, whatever they really are, certainly extend to entering the fray of modern media.
Does change come from the top? Rarely. Do the wealthy really want to redistribute power? Who knows? But does it look nice to see people who look like my mum, my neighbours and me on the cover of a shiny magazine? Of course it does.