Britney Spears Stars in the 100th Issue of 'V Magazine'
Mario Testino takes it back to 1999 for the commemorative cover story.It’s a blast from the past as V Magazine celebrates 100 issues, following up its Karl Lagerfeld x Hedi Slimane collaboration with a special cover star for issue 100: none other than Britney Spears. V explains:
In January of 1999, Britney Jean Spears released her debut album …Baby One More Time — a record that would catapult Spears to the forefront of the public arena (with multiple hit singles and Grammy nominations for Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance), and ultimately change the trajectory of pop music forever, influencing young musicians through the aughts into today.
As fate would have it, while Spears was driving the music industry Crazy, a different act in another Circus was beginning to take shape; in September of 1999, just nine months after Spears’s debut studio album hit shelves, the inaugural issue of V was born into the fashion fold. Seventeen years later, these parallel paths have converged, with Spears on the cover of our 100th issue (photographed by Mario Testino, who also shot the cover of V1 — and Spears’s V70 cover).
Spears’s appearance on the cover of V100 speaks not only to where we V started, but to how it has evolved over the years. When founder and editor-in-chief Stephen Gan set out to release the first issue, he had a specific vision in mind for the magazine: V was to be the ultimate insider glossy for a new generation of die-hard fashion followers. Now, V has come to be held in a similar regard for music—a factor that Gan took into heavy consideration when deciding who should grace the anniversary issue’s cover.
“When looking for cover worthy subjects for our 100th issue, we had to ask ourselves, Who do pop stars and musicians—who have become an integral part of what V represents—look up to and admire?” says Gan. “There was only one answer: Britney! She has entered icon status, and who in our world did not grow up listening to her music?”
You can check out imagery above while the full cover story appears over on V‘s website. V100 is set to hit newsstands March 8 and can be pre-ordered online now.
