Long before supermodels and celebrity photo shoots, Vogue sold its vision of style with a paintbrush. When Arthur Baldwin Turnure published the first issue on December 17, 1892, as a weekly journal of New York high society, its cover was a black-and-white drawing of a debutante by illustrator A. B. Wenzel. For the next several decades, artists, not photographers, decided how the world’s most famous fashion magazine would look.
Enigma Elysium, an art community on Facebook, has gathered some of the most striking illustrated covers from Vogue’s history, from women riding crowned peacocks to Salvador Dalí’s surreal dreamscapes. Each one is a reminder of how imaginative fashion publishing could be before the camera took center stage. Scroll down to explore the collection.
