They really WERE going for the full Steve McQueen experience with Ricki Tarr and Tom Hardy, weren’t they?
“The 1965 Steve McQueen cover came about because the editor was often dissatisfied with certain elements that we always seemed to ignore, for instance, that we didn’t show enough men in the magazine. That’s how we decided on Steve McQueen. If we had used Cary Grant it would’ve been less of a surprise. McQueen’s face, with his bad-boy smile, wearing a tux on the cover of a woman’s high-fashion magazine was a first. As my friend and critic Vince Aletti recently said, ‘McQueen occupies the cover with the female presence used mostly as a prop for the diamond bracelets. The impact of this surprising idea taking up the whole cover makes it truly new.’” - Ruth Ansel, art director
