Departures celebrates its 30th anniversary with a little help from Lin-Manuel Miranda

As part of Ad Age’s continuing media coverage, here’s our ever-expanding annual survey of fall magazine covers, which have been hitting newsstands and subscribers’ mailboxes. We’ll be adding to this post throughout August, so keep coming back.

Departures, the lifestyle magazine for American Express Platinum Card members published by Meredith Corporation, is turning 30, and to mark the occasion it’s celebrating “visionaries” including Lin-Manuel Miranda. The “Hamilton” creator, seen on the cover in a portrait by Billy Kidd, is joined inside (and on selected additional covers) by “twelve standout individuals whose ideas and actions are helping to move us forward toward sustainability and inclusiveness,” in the words of Departures Editor-in-Chief Jeffries Blackerby. The other honorees are: Swizz Beatz, Jordan Casteel, Hank Willis Thomas, Derrick Adams, Behati Prinsloo, Dereck Joubert, José Andrés, Anna Deavere Smith, Jeremy O. Harris, Cyrill Gutsch and Yves Béhar.

Serena Williams, photographed by Kwaku Alston, is the star of the September cover of Essence, the monthly magazine for African-American women that went independent last year (see “Time Inc. Sells Essence to Company Formed by Co-Founder of Sundial Brands” from The Wall Street Journal) right before Meredith Corporation swallowed Time Inc.

Timed to the release of its biggest issue of the year, Essence also just announced it’s planning on regularly putting out fatter issues—while cutting from monthly frequency to what it’s calling an “enhanced double-issue” format starting with the January/February 2020 issue. Each issue “will offer up to 80 additional pages of content,” according to a statement from the magazine—and Essence also plans to produce four special-edition/collectible newsstand-only issues (so-called book-a-zines) next year.

Remember “Twilight”? Let’s ... not. In its September cover story, Vanity Fair’s Durga Chew-Bose profiles Kristen Stewart, the female lead of the now-decade-old vampire-flick franchise, who has moved on to starring in the upcoming “Charlie’s Angels” reboot and has a feature-length directorial debut in the works. Alasdair McLellan shot the cover and the pictures inside the Condé Nast monthly.

In June, Hearst Magazines announced that Michael Sebastian was taking over as editor-in-chief of Esquire (he’d been serving as the magazine’s digital czar). Since the last issue under the direction of the outgoing EIC, Jay Fielden, was the glossy’s summer issue, Sebastian had a healthy runway to produce the September issue, shown above. Actor and “national treasure” Woody Harrelson lands the cover—and the magazine has been promoting his interview on social media with teasers such as “Woody Harrelson Once Had to Escape a ‘Brutal’ Dinner With Donald Trump.” Read the entire profile here.

Oscar-winning actress Julianne Moore is the star of InStyle’s September cover and helps the Meredith-owned glossy celebrate its 25th anniversary. This is actually Moore’s sixth time fronting the fashion/style monthly, and in a retro move she’s wearing Tom Ford-era Gucci, circa 1995, in a photograph by Phil Poynter.

A brief note posted online by T: The New York Times Style Magazine explains the idea behind “The New Androgyny” cover of its Aug. 18 issue:

Crisply tailored suiting gets dressed up with corsets, ruffled collars and classic ties for T’s fall Women’s Fashion issue cover story, enchantingly captured by the London-based photography duo Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott and styled by Olivier Rizzo. Down to the details—jeweled buttons, transparent blouses and velvet trims among them—these fashions subvert gender lines.

For our money, the stark, elegant cover, starring model Anok Yai, doesn’t quite convey that, but you can get a better idea of “The New Androgyny” by scrolling through the images in this T mag Instagram post.

 

Stay tuned; more covers to come.