Amanda Gorman, who read her poem The Hill We Climb at Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration, has become the first poet to be featured on the cover of VOGUE.
Gorman is a 23 year old Harvard graduate and the first ever National Youth Poet Laureate. She gained international attention with a reading of her poem The Hill We Climb at President Joe Biden’s inauguration.
She will release her first poetry collection, The Hill We Climb and Other Poems, in September.
Since speaking at the inauguration, the poem immediately rose to the top of The New York Times best sellers list. She has been interviewed by Oprah Winfrey for an Apple TV Special, and recently signed a modelling contract with IMG.
Gorman appears on the May cover of VOGUE, shot by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz and styled by Gabrilla Karefa-Johnson. The story was written by Doreen St Felix, a Haitian-American staff writer for The New Yorker.
On the cover, Gorman is styled in a Louis Vuitton blanket styled as a robe, created by acclaimed designer Virgil Abloh.
Abloh is the first black artistic director of Louis Vuitton’s menswear label, and is also the founder of fashion brand Off White.
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Gorman also featured on the cover of TIME in February, where she was interview by Michelle Obama, who she described in the VOGUE story as “the cool auntie”. She has been frequently shot in yellow after she appeared at the inauguration in an instantly iconic bright yellow Prada jacket.
While VOGUE has frequently featured models, singers and actors on their cover, Gorman is the first poet in the publication’s history.
Speaking to the publication, she reflected that, “it took so much labor, not only on behalf of me, but also of my family and of my village, to get here.”
She also spoke about the significance of speaking at the inauguration after the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol.
“Not that no one else could have done it…but if they had taken another young poet and just been like, ‘A five-minute poem, please, and by the way the Capitol was just almost burned down. See you later.…”
“That would have been traumatising.”
The issue is now available.
