I’ve always been fascinated by how the magazines present the most important issue of the year and have to admit that I do judge the magazine by the cover. For this post I’ve taken a look at the covers of some of the leading British fashion magazines. I will try to do more reviews in a couple of weeks when the French, Italian, American and other international editions of these magazines have launched their September issues.

First magazine up in this review of the September covers is British Vogue, which features Kate Moss on the cover. Kate Phelan has done the styling and the photographer is Patrick Demarchelier. The fact that British Vogue has used Kate on the cover doesn’t really come as a surprise. This is Kate’s 30th British Vogue cover and it’s the 6th time she’s on the cover of their September issue. The issue weighs in at 380 pages. What I really like about the cover is that for once Vogue is going for a full body shot.

Kate Moss on cover of British Vogue, September 2010

More covers from Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, i-D and Vanity Fair after the jump.

The UK edition of Harper’s Bazaar features Gisele Bündchen on the cover. The newsstand cover is in colours, whilst the subscriber’s cover is in black and white. The cover was shot by Cedric Buchet and the styling was done by Sophia Neophitou-Apostolou. The issue has 364 pages.

Subscriber's cover on the left, newsstand cover on the right

The UK edition of Elle features Emily Blunt and the photographs are by Matthias Vriens-McGrath. Just like Harper’s, the subscriber’s cover is black and white, while the newsstands one is in colour.

Newsstand cover on the left, subscriber's on the right

The pre-fall issue of i-D magazine has multiple covers featuring Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and Lady Gaga. The pictures have been taken by Nick Knight. In June SHOWstudio posted a series of behind-the-scenes posts from the shoots with Naomi and Kate.

Kate Moss on cover of British Vogue, September 2010

Nick Knight has also shot Lady Gaga for the September covers of the UK and US editions of Vanity Fair. The stylist was none other than Nicola Formichetti who also did Lady Gaga’s i-D cover. Earlier this week SHOWstudio posted a video from this particular shoot.

The September covers of the UK (left) and US (right) editions of Vanity Fair

I think all of the covers are good, but I like the Vogue and i-D covers the best (but then again, I’m a bit biased as I’m a Kate fan). What I like the best about the covers are the full and half body shots. When it comes to Harper’s Bazaar and Elle, I like the subscribers covers the best. The black and white photos add a special touch to it all.

Photo sources: tFS, SHOWstudio, i-D

We spoke on the phone just moments after the Daily Mail broke the sad news of Lee Alexander McQueen’s passing. The news came as a huge shock to the both of us. We’re both huge fans of his work and it was hard to describe what we were feeling. He was such an inspiration and it’s hard to believe that he is now gone.

For the past couple of days we’ve been reminiscing by digging through old scrapbooks, old magazines and looking at pictures from his past collections. In this blog post (which also happens to be the first one we’ve ever co-written) we would like to pay tribute to Lee by sharing some of our favourite Alexander McQueen moments.

One of our earliest memories of McQueen dates back to this iconic image of a young Devon Aoki photographed by Nick Knight for Visionaire in 1997.

Whether he was sending models down the catwalk with wolves on a liege or creating indoor snow storms, McQueen’s shows were always spectacular. In an interview with CNN, Lee stated that “the show comes first for me.” Who can forget the spring/summer 1999 show with Shalom Harlow wearing a white dress, being spray-painted by two robotic jets.

The concept was kind of Edwardian girls lost somewhere. It came about through Harry Potter, when he was doing a chess game in the film, and I thought we’d reinvent the chess game and distinguish the chess sets by changing the nationality of each row. The Japanese and the Americans faced each other. We had to get the girls off the runway, so what did we do? Have a chess match, with a robotic voice dictating the moves.

For his autumn/winter 2009/2010 menswear collection, he lined the catwalk with Victorian-style lamp posts. The whole mood and theme was dark and gothic and brought a certain Tim Burton movie staring Johnny Depp to mind.

Nowadays catwalk designs are widely copied by high-street retailers and sold before the original pieces are available in the shops, but his last spring/summer show (mentioned further up in this post) gathered so much technology and energy, that it seemed as if the show itself was telling the world, “all you just need to wait till I come out.” Plato’s Atlantis (McQueen’s spring/summer 2010 collection) seems invincible and will be a hard act to copy. It’s almost as if the show itself is again murmuring “yes, you lot can appreciate me, watch me and own me, but you can not copy me.”

And yes, this is the true Alexander McQueen spirit. Never one to follow others, always the one to lead.

R.I.P. and long live McQueen.

SHOWstudio has also posted a video on their site of Gareth Pugh making the dress. Very interesting to watch and it made me think about being back in the studio at fashion school! Thanks to Ashluxe for writing about it and that way bringing it to my attention. Read more about it >> here.

First row features Vogue Russia (2001), Kate Moss in Dior for British Vogue (2006) and Kate Moss for Numéro France in 2004 (this cover was reprinted three years later for the first issue of Numéro Korea). The second row features Kate Moss for Vogue Paris (2005). This was one of four covers, all featuring Kate. The next cover is from V Magazine (2009) and features style diva Grace Jones. The third and last is the first issue of British Vogue in 2000 – The Gold Issue. The last issue in 1999 was silver. Third row features Vogue Italia (2007), The Face with Stella McCartney and Vogue Paris (2008) with Kate and Naomi.

And the favourite cover from this decade? Find out after the jump!

Choosing just one cover from each year was really hard. Especially the past couple of years have had some really good covers. Vogue Italia’s Black Issue from 2008 for instance, or i-D’s twelve cover special honouring British models and fashion icons such as Twiggy, Kate and Agyness, Kate as the Cat Woman for Interview Magazine in 2007, V Magazine’s Lady Gaga cover or Love Magazine’s Beth Ditto cover from earlier this year – and the list goes on.