Michaela Bercu appeared on the cover of the first American Vogue issue edited by Anna Wintour in November 1988.
The cover showed Bercu wearing a Christian Lacroix haute couture jacket with faded Guess jeans. The combination was considered unusual for Vogue because it mixed expensive couture with casual denim. The image helped signal Wintour’s more modern editorial direction when she became editor-in-chief.
Bercu was born in Romania in 1967 and began modeling internationally as a teenager. Her career included work with prominent photographers and designers, and the Vogue cover became her most widely remembered appearance.
The issue is often remembered for launching Wintour’s tenure, but the model is sometimes incorrectly identified as one of the better-known supermodels who became famous later in the decade. The cover also differed from the tightly posed studio portraits common in earlier fashion magazines because Bercu was photographed outdoors and smiling.