In January 2020, two months before the pandemic hit, Vogue Italia published an issue of their magazine, in which they produced no new photography. They did this to draw attention to the vast number of resources that just one issue of their magazine uses :

• One hundred and fifty people involved.
• About twenty flights and a dozen or so train journeys.
• Forty cars on standby.
• Sixty international deliveries.
• Lights switched on for at least ten hours non-stop, partly powered by gasoline-fueled generators.
• Food waste from the catering services.
• Plastic to wrap the garments.
• Electricity to recharge phones, cameras 

I’m not great with numbers but even I can work out that this is a lot, especially when you consider that there are 26 different editions of Vogue monthly, and around 80 mainstream fashion magazines globally per month.

I think this intervention was partially successful – it worked because it drew attention to how wasteful editorial shoots can be and the impact that they have on the planet. It allowed the industry and consumers to see that is actually possible to produce an issue of a magazine without new photographs. I think another success from this intervention was that artists were showcased on a Vogue front cover, which is a big deal. It allowed their art to be seen by people who maybe would never have seen it otherwise.

However fashion needs photography so this was never going to be sustainable going forwards. I think this worked as a one off intervention but there is not obvious path forwards from it. Nowhere did they state their next steps, apart from saying that their packaging was now recyclable.

Another problem I have with this intervention is that it seemed performative – everything went back to normal the next month. So in actuality, Vogue Italia drew attention to something that people had previously been blissfully unaware of. This was now something that their readers knew about. Whereas before they might have speculated about how many flights were taken per issue, now they had a concrete number to think about. I am curious as to whether drawing attention to this impacted the number of subscribers to their magazine in any way. Vogue subscribers are at an all time high but would there have been more without drawing attention to this issue?

If an intervention occurs and no changes occur because of it, what was the point to creating the intervention in the first place. I think it would have been interesting for Vogue Italia to publish their findings from creating this issue – did they receive positive/negative social media comments? Was there criticism within the fashion industry? Did they get praised? How did the photographers who would normally have been used feel? The whole purpose to an intervention is to change something, and analyse the data from doing so. Maybe they did this internally, but I wish they would have shared this with the general public/

https://time.com/5760459/vouge-italia-illustrations-photoshoots-sustainability/