Winnie Harlow Covers FASHION Magazine, Lensed in Joshua Tree by Greg Swales

Winnie Harlow (IG) covers the November 2020 issue of FASHION Magazine’s, wearing futuristic looks from Alexander McQueen, Dion Lee, Iris van Herpen, Louis Vuitton and more styled by Chris Horan . Photographer Greg Swales (IG) captures the warrior goddess in Joshua Tree, California, which is seriously under assault by the California fires.

Cima Dome's Joshua Tree forest — one of the largest and densest in the world — burned in mid-August in the Dome Fire, a savage event that scorched 43,273 acres in the northern part of the preserve. Besides climate change, the spread of invasive grasses across the desert renders it far more flammable. This is not the first time that the 8,000,000 acre park has burned. In 2005, roughly 1 million acres of the Mojave burned, including part of the preserve to the southeast of Cima Dome.

Winnie’s Fashion Magazine cover message declares: “My Skin Is None of Your Business”. Of course, Harlow does speak to the topic of her childhood vitiligo diagnosis.

“I don’t think I realized at first that I was different,” says Toronto-raised, Los Angeles-based model “That was due to my upbringing. It wasn’t until I was out in the world that I could sense the differences.”

“My grandmother took me with her to pick up my cousin at school one day, and a little kid came up to me and was like, ‘What’s on your skin?’” she recalls. “My grandmother has a very strong personality and is very confident, and I was raised around her. She remembers me replying ‘Child, my skin is none of your business.’ That was my energy growing up.”

A journalist in Toronto named Shannon Boodram saw Winnie’s Facebook page and told her she was "strikingly beautiful.” Boodram made a viral video clip in 2011 about vitiligo and the fact that it didn’t diminish Harlow’s standout qualities. 

“I’m grateful for Shannon’s eye — for seeing a story there,” says Harlow. “She was the first person to say she could see me on the cover of Vogue. It wasn’t something I could visualize because I hadn’t seen it. But she had that visionary eye.”

Interviewer Odessa Paloma Parker sums up just how far Winnie Harlow has come:

Touting her Jamaican grandmother (a fellow Leo) as a strong influence in her life, Harlow now counts Naomi Campbell as a “powerful force” in her career, adding that the legendary supermodel called her on her birthday this year. This connection is a long way from her attempts to enter the fashion industry so many years ago, when she was told that if she wanted to work in the industry, she “should be a makeup artist.”