#LOFFICEL100: A Look Back at a Century of Covers

Relishing the freedom and excitement coming from post-war Paris in the 1920s, the first decade witnessed by L’OFFICIEL was a moment of cultural revolution. Modernity was the word on everyone’s lips, and women’s fashions reflected an avant-garde and increasingly liberated attitude toward life and style. This cover photo from April 1926, taken by the photographer Madame d’Ora, perfectly illustrates the pre-war trend for Eastern-inspired styles made popular by Paul Poiret and Jeanne Paquin, coupled with the post-war tendency toward ease and movement. The ensemble, designed by J. Suzanne Talbot, is named after the Roman military commander Titus, and here the model appears ready to conquer Paris in her black silk velvet dress and helmet-inspired head scarf with golden details and embroidery. At once mysterious, inviting, and luxurious, this is one of many L’OFFICIEL covers that captured the unending possibilities of this exciting new era in fashion.

The 1930s saw magazine covers heavily inspired by art movements of the era, beginning with an art deco hangover from the 1920s and softening into feminine illustration toward the end of the decade. This cover from April 1931 is thoroughly modernist, celebrating both the art form and the movement’s taste for constant change. Predating the logo, the L’OFFICIEL name is illustrated by P. Covillot, who supplied many borders for L’OFFICIEL’s covers throughout the decade. Blocky, geometric shapes stack into letters, popping off the page to resemble a physical statue placed beside the cover model. A symbol of the newfound French obsession with bathing and seaside vacations during this time, socialite Mademoiselle Rosine Drean is photographed by magazine favorite Madame d’Ora, modeling a custom Jane Regny bathing suit in a playful pose. This leg-baring look was uncommon for an era characterized in French elegance, but was the precursor to the well-established swim cover of today. Covillot’s illustration blurred the lines between fashion and art, transforming the magazine cover into a modernist, boundary-pushing work.

The evolution of L’OFFICIEL covers throughout the 1940s pays homage to one of the most fraught yet ultimately revolutionary moments in fashion’s history. The last decade to rely mostly on illustrated covers, the years during World War II were characterized by the soft, subtle designs of the Italian artist Léon Benigni. Toward the end of the decade, however, fashion lovers everywhere were desperate for what seemed like a bygone era of the luxurious fantasies offered by French couture. The illustrator René Gruau met this desire with his striking cover illustration for L’OFFICIEL’s 1947 winter collections issue, which featured a Christian Dior fur coat designed in the maison’s hyper-feminine New Look silhouette. As a longtime friend and collaborator of Monsieur Dior, Gruau assured that all eyes were on this iconic creation. Placing the coat on a flat, bright red background and contouring the design with a delicate black outline, Gruau made Dior’s creation jump from the page and into the reader’s imagination, ushering in a return to the grandly exuberant designs of the Paris couture tradition.

Throughout the 1950s, L’OFFICIEL’s covers were systematic, focused, and reminiscent of the magazine’s to-the-trade roots. Where preceding decades focused on artistic direction and mirrored the cultural moment, the ‘50s let couture designs speak for themselves. This September 1953 cover photographed by Studio Pottier features a model dressed in a Christian Dior coat at the height of the golden age of couture. While it is strange for a cover model to be nameless today, prior to the rise of celebrity and supermodels, the magazine was focused entirely on fashion. During this decade it was standard to feature a model posing elegantly in front of a demure studio backdrop dressed in a Lanvin gown or Balenciaga cape, shining the light entirely on the designer’s work. For fall 1953, symmetrical and intentionally minimalist art direction draws the eye directly to Dior’s design, emphasizing the iconic swing coat silhouette which nearly marked this era to the same degree as Dior’s New Look. Complementary styling ensures that X, quite literally, marks couture treasure starring on this cover.

As the youthquake of the 1960s overtook the fashion world with innovative designs by Pierre Cardin and Andrè Courrèges, this era of unstoppable originality was also extended to the covers of L’OFFICIEL. Long gone were the traditional, formulaic couture-driven covers of the 1950s, replaced by bright, inventive photographs representing a new age in fashion, in which dressing for oneself was of the utmost importance. This decade brought fresh photographic perspectives to the magazine as seen in this October 1968 issue photographed by Roland Bianchini, which experimented with new layouts and unconventional angles. The model is pictured in a jersey ensemble by Yves Saint Laurent, who at that time was quickly transforming from designer wunderkind to bonafide fashion icon. Infused with vivid colors and a sense of playfulness, the covers seen throughout the ‘60s brought a feeling of fun back to fashion.

While the celebrity cover became a magazine mainstay at the turn of the new millennium, L’OFFICIEL’s first celebrity fashion cover would occur in February 1974. Two symbols of French pop culture came together as Paris’s favorite Brit, Jane Birkin, was photographed for the magazine’s cover by J-L Guégan. Unlike decades past, the focus of the cover was not the clothes Birkin wore—a Nina Ricci ensemble that received little screen time—but instead Birkin’s persona that welcomed the magazine reader into the publication’s 605th issue. Guégan’s portrait captured Birkin’s free-spirited essence, which rejected the elegant manner of couture fashion touted by L’OFFICIEL in decades past, and instead connected with the more casual nature of ready-to-wear fashion. The cover is extremely personal,emphasizing her natural features and artfully disheveled hairstyle,a marked shift from poised Parisian fashion, but a Jane Birkin signature. The 1970s challenged fashion to lay back and live a little, and bohemian Birkin was the decade’s consummate covergirl.

The ultra-glamorous portraits featured on the covers of L’OFFICIEL throughout the 1980s evoked fashion’s unabashed embrace of the era’s gilded extravagance. Bold silhouettes, bright colors, and heavily defined makeup reflected these years of unprecedented economic growth in which women were increasingly independent and in control of their own identities and futures. Designers like Claude Montana and Thierry Mugler experimented with exaggerated shapes that set the trend for the power suits and structured shoulders that came to notoriously define the decade. For L’OFFICIEL’s December 1980 cover photo taken by Rodolphe Haussaire, this strength and severity is expertly exuded by the model’s fierce gaze, under which reads the simple statement: “Le Fantastique.” Fantastic, indeed, were the unique hair creation and bold dress, both from Montana’s Spring/Summer 1981 collection. Evident in these powerful cover images, the 1980s covergirl became a force to be reckoned with, daring readers to take new fashion risks.

Fashion of the 1990s is synonymous with the supermodel. The 777th issue, covered by Tyra Banks and photographed by Carlo della Chiesa, perfectly encapsulates the playfully glamorous attitude of the decade. Unlike the celebrity cover star, the supermodel personified fashion, matching a face to the latest trends and a spirit to the intangible je ne sais quoi of well dressed women. Banks and her contemporaries Claudia Schiffer, Linda Evangelista, and Christy Turlington covered countless issues of L’OFFICIEL, and while their iconic image drew intrigue, unlike the celebrity cover, this era was all about the clothes once again. For the February 1993 cover, Banks is styled head-to-toe in Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel, sporting a number of brand signatures that peaked in popularity at this time, like tweed on tweed, sailor trousers, cap toe boots, and in true 1990s spirit, a logo chain belt. Not only is this cover about embodying fashion in its entirety, but it is also about defining the revered iconography of ‘90s Haute Couture that has endured decades.

As the 2000s gained traction, supermodels were swapped for on-the-rise celebrities and fashion-forward It girls as the cover stars of L’OFFICIEL. A decade responsible for the meteoric ascent of celebrity and reality television, the early aughts saw an increased interest in the private lives of movie stars, pop singers, and socialites. Coming off the heels of her performance in Sofia Coppola’s Oscar-winning film Lost in Translation, Scarlett Johansson is the epitome of the upcoming starlet in this 2005 cover image photographed by David Ferrua. Pictured in lingerie by Agent Provocateur, which is not-so-subtly covered by a silk trench from Christian Dior by John Galliano, the styling mirrors the overt sexiness popular during the decade. Other cover stars from the aughts range from Vanessa Paradis and Uma Thurman to Lindsay Lohan and Marion Cotillard. Fame was redefined in the early 2000s, but what remains certain is that pop culture’s craving for all things celebrity has become one of the decade’s most enduring elements.

Fashion and culture are mirror images of one another,mutually evolving over time. As equity and representation mounted in importance through the 2010s, fashion worked to shed its exclusive, Eurocentric image in favor of diverse models, creators, and voices. The September 2016 issue of L’OFFICIEL focused on Black beauty in line with cultural movements that centered Black voices and challenged racism across the institutions of education, culture, art, and beyond. The cover, photographed by Ellen von Unwerth, stars models and icons Iman, Ciara, Ajak Deng, Maria Borges, Anais Mali, Grace Boi, Riley Montana, and Adesuwa Aighewi dressed in Dior Haute Couture and styled with an element of regality, consecrating the important contributions of Black women to the fashion industry. The casting and styling of this cover recognizes that fashion is not mere aesthetics, but a tool to shift values through representation. In the 2010s, fashion was political, and the fashion magazine a powerful platform to feature diverse voices and celebrate previously unheard-from perspectives.

L’OFFICIEL’s Centennial Issue is now available on newsstands and to order online here.