Vogue Italia replaces photographs with illustrations in an effort to be sustainable

Morgan Hines | USA TODAY

Vogue Italia has released its January issue, but it doesn't look like what one would typically expect. Gone are the glossy photographs that typically grace the magazine.

Instead, the fashion publication substituted illustrations. The change comes as Vogue Italia looks to become more sustainable. The illustrations are part of an effort to reduce the environmental cost that comes with staging photo shoots around the world.

"The Italian team wanted to show that art and stunning fashion imagery can be created without causing any costs – travel, shipping or waste – to the environment," Condé Nast said in a release.

Emanuele Farneti, editor-in-chief of Vogue Italia, said the first issue of 2020 is a first in other ways, too. It is believed to be the first time a Vogue magazine has gone photo free since photography was invented, he said in an editorial published on the magazine's website. And it is the first time that Vogue Italia has not had a photo cover.

The illustration initiative is part of Vogue’s new environmentally focused mission statement, which was articulated last month and signed by the editors of all 26 editions of the Condé Nast publication.

Vogue Italia’s September issue, which is usually Vogue’s largest of the year, showed how large a fashion magazine’s carbon footprint really is and what was conserved for this month’s production, according to Farneti.

“One hundred and fifty people involved. About twenty flights and a dozen or so train journeys. Forty cars on standby. Sixty international deliveries. Lights switched on for at least 10 hours non-stop, partly powered by gasoline-fueled generators. Food waste from the catering services. Plastic to wrap the garments. Electricity to recharge phones, cameras…” he detailed in the editorial (translated from Italian).

Vogue Italia’s January issue features different illustrated covers that involved no travel and articles about clothes that are “reborn” from scrap fabric and hand-me-downs.

"*NO PHOTOSHOOT PRODUCTION WAS REQUIRED IN THE MAKING OF THIS ISSUE," reads the caption of the fifth cover on Vogue Italia's Instagram. "A preview of the January 2020 Vogue Italia Special Issue on newsstands January 7th."

Last year, the McKinsey & Company consultancy projected that the global garment industry would expand by two-thirds by 2030 and be responsible for one-quarter of the global carbon footprint by 2050 compared with 2% in 2015.

But Vogue is looking to make a change. In December, Vogue’s editors penned a mission statement vowing to celebrate diversity and community, and to preserve the planet that will be shared by all 26 editions of the magazine.

And the trend of sustainability is industrywide. Experts say luxury consumers in particular are willing to pay more for sustainable garments and items that don’t exploit workers.

In November, Fortune reported that consumers are turning toward sustainable products on the whole, based on data from New York University's Center for Sustainable Business.

Farneti said the savings from producing an issue without costly photo shoots would go toward restoring a Venice student foundation that was severely damaged by flooding in November.

The special issue will be released Jan. 7.

"This month we wanted to send a message: that creativity - a pillar of Vogue for almost 130 years - can, and must, make us explore different paths," Farneti said in the editorial.

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Contributing: Associated Press.