Vogue Italia’s April cover will be blank in tribute to the pandemic 

Vogue Italy has announced the cover of their April issue will be blank, in tribute to those lost to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Italian style bible’s editor-in-chief Emanuele Farneti released a statement on Instagram, explaining they had chosen the colour white as it signified ‘respect, rebirth, and silence’.

The white cover, the first of its kind in history, was designed by creative director Ferdinando Verderi, and in a statement Emanuele refers to white as the colour commonly worn as a symbol of ‘purity and hope’ following The Great Depression of the 1930s.

Revealing they had dropped the projects they were working on, he said that the magazine’s ‘noblest tradition’ is never to look the other way, and that to ‘speak of anything else while people are dying’ is not in the DNA of Vogue Italia. 

Sharing a picture of the magazine’s white cover, he wrote: ‘The Vogue Italia April Issue will be out next Friday 10th.

‘In its long history stretching back over a hundred years, Vogue has come through wars, crises, acts of terrorism. Its noblest tradition is never to look the other way.

‘Just under two weeks ago, we were about to print an issue that we had been planning for some time, and which also involved L’Uomo Vogue in a twin project.

‘But to speak of anything else – while people are dying, doctors and nurses are risking their lives and the world is changing forever – is not the DNA of Vogue Italia. 

‘Accordingly, we shelved our project and started from scratch.’

Explaining the significance behind the colour white, he wrote: ‘The decision to print a completely white cover for the first time in our history is not because there was any lack of images – quite the opposite. We chose it because white signifies many things at the same time. 

‘White is first of all respect. White is rebirth, the light after darkness, the sum of all colours. White is the colour of the uniforms worn by those who put their own lives on the line to save ours.

‘It represents space and time to think, as well as to stay silent.

‘White is for those who are filling this empty time and space with ideas, thoughts, stories, lines of verse, music and care for others.’

Referring to the severe worldwide economic depression in the 1930s, The Great Depression, he concluded: ‘White recalls when, after the crisis of 1929, this immaculate colour was adopted for clothes as an expression of purity in the present, and of hope in the future.

‘Above all: white is not surrender, but a blank sheet waiting to be written, the title page of a new story that is about to begin.’

The magazine also contains the first portfolio of fashion under quarantine, with remotely-taken images of more than 40 leading figures in the fashion industry, including Gigi and Bella Hadid. 

The title of the event and the hashtag of the initiative is #imagine: an invitation to hope and imagination at such a difficult time.

The issue also contains the first major fashion feature of the lockdown era, created over the course of a week in several countries around the world by more than 40 artists of the Vogue Italia community (photographers, models, stylists, creative directors, make-up artists), who used seasonal garments or their own personal collections to create images of themselves, their families or distant friends via internet.

‘It’s effectively the first photoshoot published by a fashion magazine in the new world – everyone at a distance, yet nobody alone’, Farneti explained.