David Bailey isn’t known for sentimentality, which makes discussing the latest in his long line of Vogue covers an interesting proposition. When told that his August 2020 cover is, in fact, his 99th for British Vogue, he says simply, “I’ve done over 300 covers, for all the Vogues.” This isn’t ego talking – even though this is the man who almost single-handedly mythologised the modern fashion photographer in the ’60s – rather, it nods to the sheer scale of Bailey’s body of work over his six decades in the business.
“They’re the hardest pictures to do,” he says, “when you do one everyone’s got an opinion.” A fair assessment, but not enough to dissuade us from pressing the 82-year-old on how he approached some of the most memorable cover moments in the magazine’s history.
Does he remember his first? “Yeah I remember it. I remember [former Vogue fashion editor] Sheila Wetton, because she swore, and I thought Vogue editors didn’t swear. She said, ‘What the fuck are you doing up that ladder, Bailey?’” Bailey was up said ladder photographing Enid Boulting (“I also did covers with her daughter Ingrid, quite a few…”), for the February 1961 issue, at the beginning of a decade his fashion and portrait photography would help to define.
Bailey is equally phlegmatic on the topic of other landmark moments, like shooting Vogue’s first Black cover star, Donyale Luna, who fronted the March 1966 issue. But he does allow himself a wistful moment recalling one particularly memorable shoot in the ’70s. “The cover I remember most was Anjelica [Huston] and Manolo [Blahnik],” offers Bailey of the now iconic January 1974 cover set against a Côte d’Azur sunset, a picture that has been reinvented in a special archive story in the pages of the August 2020 issue. The shot was one of British Vogue’s first fold-out covers and, like so many wonderful fashion moments, came about without a great deal of ceremony. “I just did it and said that would make a great cover, but it wasn’t really a cover shoot. That was an incredible trip, imagine being on a trip with Manolo and Anjelica together...”
We bring Bailey back from his French Riviera reverie to London, and the rather less rose-tinted present day. His brief for the August 2020 cover was to submit a simple landscape, which could seem a tame proposal for the man who blasted his way through staid rules around fashion and society in the ’60s, but actually allowed Bailey to take a quietly reflective, and very personal approach. His cover image of a bird in flight over Wanstead Park plays into both the photographer’s love of east London, his lifelong home, and his respect for the past. “I quite like Wanstead because it’s got a history, most parks have got no history. It’s really Epping Forest round there, but I think it’s only a park because it belonged to somebody, it was somebody’s garden.”
Captured on a daily outing just after lockdown was imposed (Bailey has been constantly armed with a camera for the past 60 years, and lockdown was no different), the image is a perfect fit for the August issue’s theme of reset. “Everywhere I go, I never go out without a camera. Now I have a triple lens camera on my phone maybe I won’t take it so much” he says.
Whether his number of British Vogue covers will be rounded up to a neat 100, only time will tell (and we suspect the question isn’t keeping Bailey awake at night). In the meantime, his 99th offers us a perfect chance to reflect, rally, and move forward.
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