French Vogue Casts its First Transgender Cover Model

French Vogue has announced its March issue, the 2nd largest of the year, will be covered by Brazilian model Valentina Sampaio, making her the first transgender model to cover the title. The entire issue will center on the changing standards of beauty, with the cover line, "Transgender Beauty: How they're shaking up the world."

Emmanuelle Alt, editor-in-chief of French Vogue, knew she found her March cover girl last year while scrolling through Sampaio's Instagram: "We are living in a world at the moment, what is happening right now, we are stepping back." Alt said in an interview with American Vogue. "Instead of being in a constant evolution, which is what should happen, human rights . . . they're not going in a good direction. This cover is about the importance of those rights, and that we still need to make progress on an awful lot of stuff."

She continued, "Valentina is on the cover of Vogue this month, not just for her looks or her sparkling personality, but because despite herself she embodies an age-old, arduous struggle to be recognized and not to be perceived as something Other, a gender exile."

The editorial, which was shot by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, is classic French Vogue--an absurd amount of glamour, set within a bright neon color story that takes Sampaio to a whole new realm of gorgeous.

Valentina's day ... Two (covers) are better then one #repost #MertandMarcus #vogueparis #sanvalentino #valentinesday #cover #2 #beauty #vsstorm #ValentinaSampaio #valentts #brasil

A post shared by Valentina Sampaio (@valentts) on Feb 14, 2017 at 3:34am PST