Vogue (July 2021)

The British Vogue cover for July 2021, a portrait of Malala Yousafzai by the photographer Nick Knight: a glossy monthly fashion and lifestyle magazine published by Condé Nast for an affluent, mainly female readership.
Media language: the masthead and house style, the central image, colour, the cover lines and layout, what each connotes, and how the cover follows and varies the conventions of fashion covers; the narrative and genre the cover suggests.
Representation: how the cover represents Malala as a young Muslim woman, an activist for girls' education, and how far it challenges the usual representations of women and of ethnicity on fashion covers.
Contexts: the magazine's changing values under its editor at the time, Edward Enninful, and debates about diversity in fashion media.
In the exam a copy of the product is provided, and it can be set for Question 1 (media language, 15 marks), for Question 2(a) (contexts, 5 marks) or for Question 2(b), where it is compared with an unseen product in the same form (representation, 25 marks). In 2025, Question 2(b) compared the representation of ethnicity on this cover with an unseen Grazia cover.
Describe the cover precisely in your own words, quoting no more than a few words of its text.

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