Photography Courtesy of Instagram.com/StellaMcCartney

Oprah Winfrey Is the Latest Powerful, Inspiring Black Woman to Appear on the Cover of British Vogue

Oprah is no stranger to magazine covers – she’s appeared on every single cover of O magazine since its inception in 2000 – but now she’s taking her influence across the pond to appear on the August cover of British Vogue.

Oprah Winfrey is the latest in a series of powerful, inspiring Black women to be featured on the cover of Edward Enninful’s British Vogue, including Adwoa Aboah and Gugu Mbatha-Raw. Enninful was appointed editor-in-chief of British Vogue in April 2017 and is the first Black editor of a mainstream British fashion magazine.

This is Oprah’s second Vogue cover. In 1998, she famously graced the cover of the October issue of American Vogue in what Anna Wintour refers to as “one of our mostsuccessful covers.” Wintour admits she suggested Winfrey lose wight to appear on the cover. “It was a very gentle suggestion,” she revealed in a TV interview. Oprah appeared on the cover wearing a strapless gown under the tagline “Oprah! A Major Movie, An Amazing Makeover.”

No such dictates haunt the new cover of British Vogue. Oprah looks her zaftig self, wearing a ruffled taffeta dress by Stella McCartney – who also dressed Winfrey for the recent Royal Wedding – and poses with the haughty, refined poise of a mid-century model in a Richard Avedon photograph. In addition to the McCartney dress, Oprah wore a made-to-order duchesse-satin dress by Alexander McQueen as well as a custom gown and bejewelled shoes by Erdem.

” Thanks @BritishVogue @edwardenninful @mertalas @macpiggott. for the regal experience,felt like an “Empress 4 a day!,” Oprah wrote on Twitter.

In accompanying story, Oprah quashes any hopes of an #Oprah2020 presidential campaign. “In that political structure – all the non-truths, the bullshit, the crap, the nastiness, the backhanded backroom stuff that goes on – I feel like I could not exist,” Winfrey says. “I would not be able to do it. It’s not a clean business. It would kill me.”

Oprah also took the opportunity to apply her ‘power of positive thinking’ philosophy to the #MeToo movement:  “People talk about ‘these are such dark times’, but what if we shift the paradigm? Because I see it differently. I see, ‘Isn’t this remarkable that we’re waking up?’… You’ve got to lean to the happiness,” she says.

The cover hits newsstands on July 6th.

 

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