August 1974. The cover of American Vogue — the most powerful fashion magazine in the country — carried a face it had never carried before. Beverly Johnson looked back from that cover, and a door that had stayed shut for the magazine’s entire history finally opened.
This is a first worth getting exactly right, because the exact wording is what makes it true. Beverly Johnson was the first Black woman on the cover of American Vogue. Not fashion covers in general. Not every edition of Vogue in the world. American Vogue, specifically — and in August 1974, that had never happened before.
The photograph was taken by Francesco Scavullo, and the issue is now part of fashion history, preserved and presented through the Condé Nast Archive.
The distinction that keeps this story honest
You may have heard another name in conversations about Vogue firsts: Donyale Luna. She matters here too, and naming her does not shrink Beverly Johnson’s moment — it sharpens it.
Donyale Luna covered British Vogue in 1966, eight years earlier. That was a real first, on the British edition. What had not happened, in all the years between and before, was a Black woman on the cover of the American edition.
That is the line this page will always draw carefully. Two women, two editions, two firsts — each one true, neither one needing to borrow from the other. When a viral post drops the word “American” and just says “first Black woman on Vogue,” it actually makes the story weaker, because it makes it arguable. With the word in place, Beverly Johnson’s August 1974 cover is airtight.
Why one cover could carry this much weight
A magazine cover is not just a photograph. Especially in 1974, the cover of American Vogue was a statement about who the fashion world considered beautiful, marketable, and worth putting in front of every newsstand, salon, and waiting room in the country.
For generations, Black women bought the products, set the trends, and created the styles — while being kept off the very covers that sold beauty back to the public. A cover is the storefront. Whoever is on it is who the industry is willing to be seen standing behind.
That is why one August issue still gets talked about more than fifty years later. Beverly Johnson did not just pose for a picture. She became the proof, printed and distributed everywhere, that a Black woman belonged on that cover — not as an exception explained away, but as the face of the issue itself.
And once a first like that exists, it becomes a reference point for everyone who comes after. Every Black model who has covered American Vogue since August 1974 has walked through a door that, before Beverly Johnson, had never been opened at all.
Join the conversation
Do you remember the first time you saw a woman who looked like you on a major magazine cover — and did it change what you believed was possible for yourself? Tell us below.
Source note: Beverly Johnson’s August 1974 American Vogue cover — the first by a Black woman on that edition, photographed by Francesco Scavullo — is documented by the Condé Nast Archive via Google Arts & Culture and covered by NPR. The distinction from Donyale Luna’s earlier British Vogue cover in 1966 is part of that record: Luna’s first was the British edition, Johnson’s was the American edition.
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