Vogue Turkey Dares To Differ

You can say a new fashion market is getting mature once a city or country launches its own edition of Vogue and manages to offer juicy commercial opportunities to the models staying in town. Lately, a lot of new places around the world have set themselves as reliable fashion destinations and, among this growing number, Turkey and especially Istanbul have a good rank on the list. This being said, these emerging markets are often considered as not really open to a subersive, controversial or even inventive imagery.
Asia might be the perfect example of this trend when you take a glimpse at the countless Vogue, Numéro and others that have popped up in asian countries and look much less daring or creative than most of their european counterparts. Vogue Turkey, though, has just released its latest issue and the cover alone should be able to change our percpetion of magazines from rising fashion markets. And the message is clear: creativity can be everywhere as long as someone is ready to get involved and push the boundaries.
Not so long ago, Turkey wasn't a common place for models to fly and Istanbul unlike Tokyo or Singapore didn't attract many mother agents as a suitable destination for the development of their new faces' portfolio or as a source of income for allround commercial models. Within the last couple of years, the situation has changed, dramatically. And now, with the profusion of quality magazines published in Turkey, the country has earned its place among the locations that matter, fashion wise. The launch of a turkish edition Vogue is certainly the most obvious symbol of that stylish revolution that took place there and the magazine has built its reputation with covers featuring models of the caliber of Natasha Poly, Lara Stone, Laetitia Casta or Karolina Kurkova (for this year alone). That should already be enough to consider Vogue Turkey as one of the main editions of the title worldwide, at least among the "new generation" of Vogues, but the most recent issue places the bar one step higher again, thank to a genuinely inventive and daring cover.
You had to scratch your eyes to believe it at first sight but this is it, this Vogue cover looks like everything but a Vogue cover. In the very best possible way. While many of the other editions don't seem to do much efforts to renew the genre, Vogue Turkey's november issue steps far away from the usual and overused pattern. No glam, no gloss, no gossip girl on the cover yet a highly inventive and refreshing visual featuring the artwork of Taner Ceylan. And instead of the countless lines of text that often pollute a big magazine's cover, just a few birds flying around and between the V and the O and the G and the U and the E. Indeed, this is the Art issue and no seasonal shopping theme. But, then, how many famous publications release some Art issues that are, in reality, just some artsy remakes of their most generic covers? You would have to dig a good one of Dazed and Confused to find something bearing a similar relevance.
While many of the international editions of Vogue are proposing to their readers the same old soup, over and over again, and their newborn siblings such as Vogue Netherlands fail to place themselves as alternative to mainstream titles like Marie-Claire, the concept of this new Vogue Turkey issue (with no model, no celeb, no cheesy headlines) is rocking the boat right in time to let us question ourselves why some of the major players are just resting on their laurels.