The ‘More Demi Moore’ Vanity Fair cover of August 1991 was the photoshoot that had everybody talking.
Selling a record number of 1.2 million copies that month (a major boost from the usual 800,000 for the publication), Annie Leibovitz’s snap of a naked, glowing and seven-month-pregnant Demi Moore certainly got attention.
Then Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown revealed to CNBC’s ‘The Brave Ones’ that photographer Annie Leibovitz took the iconic photograph of Moore for their private collection, but Brown insisted it became the cover.
Brown recalled: “[Leibovitz] said, ‘But there is this other picture that I took, but I really did it for just Demi and Bruce Willis.”
“And I said, ‘Well, show me it,’ and then I saw the picture of Demi, naked and pregnant, in all her glory, and I said, ‘Annie, we just have to have this for the cover. This is the cover.'”
Immediately, Brown called Moore to check that they could use the other photo – which she agreed to – but while she was a quick one to win over, retailers weren’t so easy.
Speaking with supermodel Naomi Campbell for her No Filter series on YouTube, Moore reflected on what the photo meant at the time.
“I understand what impact it had on the world. On women, on our permission to embrace ourselves in a pregnant state,” she said.
“But it was a moment that I was taking to really be in myself and be expressing myself and not trying to be anything other than me.”
