Here’s an Inside Look at How Vanity Fair’s Hollywood Issue Comes Together
Ever wonder how Vanity Fair puts together its Hollywood Issue? Here’s an inside look—starring all of..
Ever wonder how Vanity Fair puts together its Hollywood Issue? Here’s an inside look—starring all of this year’s most notable celebrities, legendary photographer Annie Leibovitz, and, of course, V.F.’s longtime editor-in-chief Graydon Carter, who launched the magazine’s first Hollywood Issue more than 20 years ago and retired from the magazine in December.
After the success of the magazine’s first Oscar party, Carter remembers that legendary Condé Nast executive S.I. Newhouse was the one who suggested focusing an entire issue on Hollywood. “I said, ‘I don’t think that’s a great idea,’” Carter says in this commemorative video. “And then he brought it up again the next lunch, and I said, ‘Maybe.’ And then by the third lunch, I said, ‘Yeah, that’s a great idea.’ And that’s what we did.” Carter wasn’t sure that any one actor could stand as the sole representative of the entire industry, so each year, the Hollywood Issue features a handful of the biggest names in show business. This year, as always, the group comprises a wide range of stars, including Harrison Ford, Oprah Winfrey, and Zendaya.
As seen in the video, it takes serious work and persistence to gather a representative group of Hollywood’s biggest celebrities—but once everyone’s in, the fun begins. Enter Annie Leibovitz, who has a fan in Winfrey: “The thing about working with Annie Leibovitz is allowing yourself to lean into the power and grace of her,” the mogul says. “She’s a force; she knows what she wants. She sees things that you can’t see.”
After that come the Q&A’s, which give us banter like Ford advising Carter to “get out of the restaurant business” now that he’s retiring. Once all of the pieces come together, the Hollywood Issue is born—each a snapshot of the entertainment world as it exists in a particular year. “Magazines, I always found, especially the magazines like Life and Time and Esquire, they gave you more of an idea of what it’s like to be alive at that point,” Carter says. “They told you about sort of the essence and the soul of the period.”
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