The historic image of Davis, shot by photographer Dario Calmese, shows the 54-year-old in profile, her back facing the camera.
Davis is wearing a glue gown with a deep plunge in the back, hand on hip.The publication has “had a problem in the past with putting Black women on the covers,” Davis says in an interview for the magazine.Radhika Jones, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, writes in the issue that 17 Black people have been on the cover in the 35 years between 1983 and 2017, and that she was determined to fix the lack of representation when she took over the job.