New York Magazine’s August 30–September 12, 2021, issue features a flip cover, with the cast of Succession on one side, and, on the other, Naomi Campbell starring in the Cut’s Fall Fashion issue.
Marking the magazine’s first-ever triple gatefold cover, the New York side of this issue showcases the cast of Succession as they gear up to release their third season. “The idea was to do Succession gone wild,” says New York photography director Jody Quon of the cover, which was shot in Tuscany. Photographers Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari wanted to capture the Roys as if they had just had a blowout fight. “We wanted readers to come upon this cover and wonder what had happened.”
Writer Hunter Harris says she’s always been obsessed with Succession’s skewed perspective on this family of weirdo-ambitious billionaires. “It sounds trite, but Succession isn’t just the greatest thing on TV, it’s the greatest thing anywhere,” she says. “It’s as interested in the machinations of powerful families and corporations as it is in their fights, their foibles, their Red Table–worthy messes.” Harris, who spent two weeks with the cast as it was filming in Italy, says writing this article made her appreciate the show even more. “The story is about the actors, but my favorite interview was with one of the executive producers, Tony Roche, the writer of season two’s ‘Boar on the Floor’ episode,” she says. “I asked him about the dynamic in the writers’ room, how it feels when they’re working on these sometimes agonizingly funny story lines: ‘It’s like school,’ he said laughing, ‘but with a bunch of people you really like, where you never get bullied.’” (Diehard fans of the show will remember a plotline in episode six of the show’s second season, in which a New York reporter writes an exposé for the magazine, which makes this arguably the second time the Roys have landed on the cover.)
On the other side of the magazine, the Cut brings its Fall Fashion issue to life with model mogul Naomi Campbell on the cover. At a time when the fashion industry at large is reckoning with its racist past, no one felt better suited to an issue celebrating Black talent in fashion than Campbell, who paved the way for a generation of Black models. Marking her first fashion issue since taking over as editor-in-chief of the Cut earlier this year, in her editor’s letter, Lindsay Peoples Wagner writes, “I still don’t think I have been able to properly fathom the honor of having Naomi Campbell on our cover with a story written by Michaela angela Davis, along with a portfolio and visual anthology of iconic Black models orchestrated by our new fashion director, Jess Willis, and the first proper profile of Peter Do, who will be showing at New York Fashion Week for the first time this season.” Peoples Wagner hopes readers will find this issue is for those who never fit into the fashion industry’s narrow idea of something worthy, and that it will be the beginning of a bigger, more inclusive conversation.
