News from the Natural World: Vogue features a Chimpanzee on its front cover for the first time.
For the first time ever the fashion magazine Vogue has featured a Chimpanzee on the front cover. Rumours were circulating in the fashion world that they might put the eponymous ape on the front cover but few believed they would go through with it. But the Platypus can confirm that the rumours are indeed true, in a world first, a Chimpanzee has stolen the fashion limelight. But it wasn’t just any old Chimpanzee that graced the front cover.
Cordelia had always been the prettiest Chimpanzee in her troop in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. From a very young age she had big beautiful brown eyes and long fluttering eyelashes. She would strut around as if on a catwalk and was the envy of all the other Chimps. One day she saw a magazine that one of the human conservationists was reading, it was full of stunning pictures of skeletal looking humans. Cordelia loved the extravagant outfits that they wore, without knowing she had her first experience of Vogue.
Cordelia vowed that one day she would grace the front cover, not only would she be the first Chimpanzee, she would be the first non-human animal. She entered the world of fashion and took it by storm. Agents, photographers and fashionistas flocked to her like bees to honey. They all wanted a piece of the next big thing, the new species on the block. Cordelia starred in Paris Fashion Week and it was her walk on that catwalk that sealed her fate and catapulted her onto the front cover of Vogue.
Vogue features Chimpanzee for first time
But there were many critics, lots of humans didn’t want an ape on the cover! How could “Vogue features Chimpanzee” possibly be a good strategy for the company. It would surely make a mockery of high fashion. But the editor of Vogue was adamant, they would take this giant leap. Species diversity was the latest trend and Vogue would be the first magazine to have a non human animal on the cover.