The 15 Incredible “Esquire” Covers that Perfectly Captured The 1960s

9. Claudia Cardinale – December 1966

This is what George Lois calls his second “cheesecake cover”

10. A Truman Capote cover – December 1967

A reference to Truman Capote’s infamous 1966 masked ball when he invited 540 of his closest friends!

11. The Face of a Hero – September 1965

Lois created a composite image of the leading four heroes to American college students at the time: Bob Dylan, Malcolm X, John F. Kennedy, and Fidel Castro. Their faces were all joined together by the crosshairs of a rifle sight.

12. Tamest Event on Kids TV That Day: Ruby Kills Oswald – May 1967

For Lois, the cover represented “the moment [Nov. 24, 1963] when an all-American kid started to grow up with live violence in his carpeted den, complete with an all-American hamburger and Coke.”

The slowly growing feminist movement served as an inspiration for the cover. Lois said he wondered, “Was there a point where sexual equality would end and confusion begin?” Many people mistake the actress on this cover with Marilyn Monroe; she’s actually Italian actress Virna Lisi. Marilyn had died almost three years before this picture was taken.

14. Bizarre Harper’s Cover – October 1963

According to Lois, the cover was a swipe at magazines like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. His focus was on showing real versus imagined glamour

15. A Nation’s Tears – June 1964

Lois’s trompe l’oeil cover of Kennedy in tears was published seven months after the assassination. According to Lois, “…showed the opposite symbolism-of Kennedy himself, crying for his lost destiny.”

Credits: vintag.es

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