Instagram Takeover! Social Media All-Star Jeanne Damas Covers Relaunched Travel + Leisure
Exotic landscapes in far-flung locals, visions of Mediterranean beaches and Moroccan markets, hotel vistas in Costa Rica, St. Bart’s, Tuscany, and beyond—these ultra-scenic images are what we’ve come to expect from the covers of Time Inc.’s monthly lifestyle mag, Travel + Leisure. Not anymore. The new T+L, re-launching today, veers away from the usual formula of showcasing strictly landscapes or anonymous beauties walking through lush locals and into the world of style stars by way of two major Parisian Instagram-famous it-girls—blogger Jeanne Damas (with 88.2K Instagram followers) and Marieke Gruyaert (a regular on Damas’ social media).
“I wanted our fashion shoot for this issue to capture something quintessential about the spirit of travel—the pure fun of it,” explained Travel + Leisure editor-in-chief Nathan Lump of the cover. This big re-launch—Lump is a relatively new EIC having come in in August—recasts the magazine in the digital era, with a focus on fashion as a main (including features on Edun’s Danielle Sherman and jeweler Edie Borgo) for the first time. Of course, it is significant that the publication went for Instagram girls—as opposed to well-known models, celebs, or one of the designers featured in-book—for it’s big style reveal.
“I wanted it to have a feeling of authenticity,” related Lump of his choice to go with Damas and Gruyaert. “Jeanne was a natural choice because she’s not only beautiful and a great model but she’s also a personality—a blogger with a big social following, someone who is interesting in her own right as an individual. And then we decided to shoot her with Marieke, who is not a professional model but an all-around cool person, and also beautiful, and also one of Jeanne’s friends, so that we could capture that sense of two women genuinely enjoying the city together.”
The shoot, lensed by Alistair Taylor-Young, shows the girls frolicking around the city in Dior and Nina Ricci. “I wanted the flavor of that city now—not an old-fashioned or clichéd idea of Paris, but what’s cool in Paris now,” said Lump. Of course, it couldn’t hurt that what’s cool now comes with quite the following.
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