2016 has been a truly rough year, but all has not been totally lost. Some good news is that magazines went to work improving the racial diversity of their covers over the last 12 months compared to 2015. Fashionista conducted an analysis of 147 U.S.-based magazine covers from the past year and discovered a 16.9 percent increase in representation of people of color on covers for a total of 36 percent of covers featuring a person of color.
This number is still not where it needs to be, but the increase is notable. Of the 147 covers that Fashionista checked out in 2016, 53 of them featured photos of people of color, compared to 27 people of color in across the same magazine titles in 2015.
Fashionista gives a special nod to Teen Vogue who had actresses and activists Rowan Blanchard and Yara Shahidi grace their cover (and let's not forget the mag also dedicated a cover to actress and activist Amandla Stenberg in February of this year). In fact, Teen Vogue had the most representation of people of color, featuring women of color on seven of their 11 covers for the year.
Nylon was the most improved of all the titles compared to 2015. The mag had only one person of color on its cover last year, but this year featured five people of color.
Elle magazine also gets props from Fashionista for featuring Aja Naomi King and Haley Bennett. InStyle and Vogue both had covers starring first lady Michelle Obama this year, according to Fashionista.
