Celebrity Covers: Low fashion?

Once the epitome of élitist style, 'Vogue' is now running celebrity covers. But it's not the only one. Susannah Frankel on the new face of fashion journalism

Fashionable eyebrows were raised last week at first sighting of the cover of the December issue of British Vogue. What has Sir Elton John – dressed, like the ultimate buffoon, in Santa Claus red, bejewelled Versace trouser suit and rhinestone-studded sunglasses – got to do with high fashion, exactly? A scantily clad Elizabeth Hurley, whose "incredible body, chestnut in colour, oiled and muscular as a thoroughbred" is straddled across him not entirely convincingly, is, equally, enough to make a fashion purist run a mile.

The powers that be at the magazine would no doubt argue that there's sound editorial thinking behind what may seem to the rest of us to be just another cynical mass-market move. It is the party season, after all, and the one time of year when it may just be acceptable, if hardly ground-breaking, to dress like the proverbial Christmas tree. Elton John has thrown some of the world's most lavish parties, attended by Hurley, of course, whose career as a film star is clearly questionable but as a seasoned socialite and model is not. Add to the mix the fact that the cover is shot by Mario Testino – whose ultra-flattering vision holds up the perfect mirror to a vain world – and scattered with gold stars... It's all as camp as Christmas, neatly enough.

So, what's the problem? Well, there wouldn't be one were the title not Vogue – fashion bible and ivory tower par excellence – and the image not symptomatic of a far wider merging of celebrity culture and designer fashion in the media and, more significant, the commercial power of celebrity over and above any interest in clothes.

Vogue's December cover only extends a controversial move. The infamous "TV blondes" November cover – which featured Amanda Holden, Hermione Norris, Tamzin Outhwaite and Ulrika Jonsson – was berated by, among others, Sir Roy Strong as celebrating the "trash-ocracy". It is true that it was hardly inspirational or aspirational, which has always been the magazine's raison d'être. All four faces would have been more at home on the front of the Radio Times, which only confirms that the current issue, far from being a light-hearted one-off, seems to be following magazine policy.

Whichever way you look at it, French and Italian Vogue would be unlikely to employ such mainstream tactics. American Vogue, meanwhile, their more commercially successful sister, might. But that magazine's celebrity cover stars are, without fail, the most glamorous, wealthy and/or powerful women in the world. Persuading Hillary Clinton, to name just one, to model for the magazine was a coup by anybody's standards. The celebrities currently trumpeted by British Vogue are, conversely, B- and even C- and D-list – just as likely to be featured, on a good day, in Tatler and, on a bad, in Hello! and, whisper it, Now and Heat.

Alexandra Shulman, the editor of British Vogue, is the first to acknowledge that her choice of November cover stars was unusual: "Yes, we wouldn't normally put people like these on the cover, but then, we wouldn't normally do television. It was a very deliberate statement." She goes on to say that it is a coincidence that celebrities are featured on two consecutive covers. "Vogue has always featured personalities on its covers," she argues; "it's no new thing." Kate Winslet, she says, will be January's cover star. "Models come and go so quickly these days that they have no recognition factor." That "recognition factor" is the key, apparently. "We are not a boutique magazine aiming to sell 35,000 issues. When you want to sell as many magazines as we do, it's very important."

At the British Fashion Awards in 2000, Hussein Chalayan was named designer of the year. His acceptance speech caused ripples across the fashion establishment: "I'd like to take this opportunity to say how disappointing it was this week that all the press was still so impressed by celebrities appearing on designers' catwalks."

Victoria Beckham, opening and closing Maria Grachvogel's catwalk presentation days earlier in a wholly unremarkable dress that she had already been seen in several times, knocked every other designer, including Chalayan, off the news pages. The Independent was only one of many newspapers that put it on the front page. Six months earlier, a fashion spat of large proportions broke out between Victoria Beckham, again, and Alexander McQueen. When the former rang McQueen's office to demand her front-row seat, she was unceremoniously dismissed. Her presence, McQueen's spokesperson said at the time, was inappropriate and might detract from the clothes. Posh responded with a barrage of not-so-posh expletives. McQueen was duly branded a snob by the tabloid press.

There are few designers today who would have such confidence – such an idealistic belief in the importance of their vocation. Versace even provides advance lists of the celebrities attending its shows to journalists, and less-established names have followed suit, with the result that the collections are now celebrity-fests. More often than not, the star-studded front row forms the opening of any news coverage.

But what designers gain in publicity they stand to lose in credibility. The same goes for titles that endorse them. High fashion should, by its very nature, be inaccessible – a closed world committed to scaling imaginative and innovative heights. Appeal to the masses and you might just as well sell your proud-to-be-élitist soul.

Increasingly, what we see today is a mind-numbing, depressing homogeneity, a bland aesthetic spanning every aspect of the media – and, all too often, fashion itself. True, times are hard and even so-called cutting-edge magazines are playing the game: the most recent issue of Pop, edited by Katie Grand, featured Hurley, again; Another Magazine, the fashion biannual published by the brains behind Dazed & Confused, came up with Pamela Anderson.

In the Eighties, the fashion image as creative collaboration between designer, stylist, photographer and model was deemed powerful enough in itself. Witness the iconic purity of Yohji Yamamoto's clothing shot by Nick Knight, for example. Or how about the iconoclastic brilliance of Vivienne Westwood, styled by Michael Roberts to look like Margaret Thatcher on the cover of Tatler? Vogue, meanwhile, was ultra-glamorous and deliberately remote, promoting a fantasy world in which just to be featured was an honour. Who can forget Peter Lindbergh's black-and-white cover of the supermodels in crisp white shirts in January 1990? Kate Moss photographed by Corinne Day three years later in a seedy flat and far-from-glamorous underwear similarly said more about fashion at that time than any other photo and spawned a million imitations.

Vogue, once in the vanguard of visual culture, is subject to market forces just like every other title. Far from setting the agenda, it is following it. And for now, at least, that agenda suggests that there's no longer a place for unapologetic beauty in the world, beauty that needs no explaining and whose sole purpose is – with not a Day-Glo cover-line in sight – to sell us a dream.

Suannah Frankel is fashion editor of 'The Independent'