How A Swimsuit Magazine Transformed Glamour Modelling

One of the most interesting aspects of glamour photography is that it is both transformed by and subsequently transforms the world and culture surrounding it.

There are a lot of industries, some of which are quite unexpected, where glamour modelling has influenced in some way, with effects that range far beyond an individual marketing campaign.

Some glamour shoots and their subsequent campaigns are even found in prestigious museums.

However, in one surprisingly singular and unexpected case, a particular modelling assignment for beachwear was so successful it transformed fashion, sports and modelling as a whole in one fell swoop.

The magazine Sports Illustrated has run a swimsuit edition of their magazine every year, traditionally during the winter months when a lot of the sporting coverage that makes up the magazine’s primary content has dried up.

Andre Laguerre, the editor of SI in the early 1960s, tasked Jule Campbell, the fashion reporter for the magazine, to take pictures of model Babette March that could be used to fill space with features and striking imagery.

Unlike later Swimsuit Issues, which became a special publication from 1997 onwards, the glamorous part of the magazine took up just five pages, but those five pages would make a massive impact.

The first, and by far the most obvious, is that Ms March’s white bikini that she wears whilst bombarded by the sun-kissed beach surf of California became a cultural icon and helped to legitimise an item of clothing that was already on the rise thanks to Ursula Andress and Dr No.

It also changed the fundamental look of models around that time, away from Twiggy and towards a more diverse range of body types, with SI in particular promoting the individuality of their models far more prominently. 

They printed their names and created the era of the supermodel in the process, as well as legitimising glamour photography through an intermingling of the tasteful and the risque.