Vogue Australia: Magnolia Maymuru a model of hope and a life reborn

A photograph of Proud ­Yolngu woman Magnolia Maymuru has already become one of the most popular Vogue Australia covers.

Gemma Chan on the cover of British Vogue

The Gove Peninsula in northeast Arnhem Land where proud ­Yolngu woman Magnolia Maymuru lives is a unique part of the Northern Territory known as sunrise country.

So the 24-year-old model and actress was a natural choice for the “new beginnings” cover of the prestigious September issue of Vogue Australia – part of an initiative bringing together all 27 international editions with an interpretation of the sun’s power as the world looks ahead to a post-pandemic world.

In the story, which features ­exquisitely intimate photographs of Maymuru breastfeeding, she speaks of being “reborn” in a place where the “sun first rises and then shines on the rest of Arnhem Land” following the birth of her daughter, Djarraran.

“She’s given me so much. She’s given … a purpose. She’s given me a new role as her mother. So, now it’s my job to teach her ways, and her grandmother’s Yolngu culture,” Maymuru tells Vogue Australia.

Magnolia Maymuru with her daughter, Djarraran. Picture: Charles Dennington/Vogue

From English actress Gemma Chan photographed on the Thames to dancer Jinghan Fan atop the Zhangye mountains in China, Vogue Australia editor-in-chief Edwina McCann joins international Vogue editors, including Edward Enninful and Vogue China editor-in-chief Margaret Zhang, in capturing the power of dawn.

On sacred, solid land, Maymuru reveals how a sunrise can “make life glow” in a way that connects all of Australia’s countrymen.

“It seems new whenever we’re trying to do something or going somewhere, but really, our people have experienced it, practised it before in different ways, our ways,” she says in the conversation with Yuwaalaraay writer Nardi Simpson. “New things repeat over and over again so they are fresh, and they are old. That’s what we’re taught.”

Vogue Australia’s September issue

Since the cover’s release ­on social media, McCann says it has become one of Vogue’s most popular. “Of all the covers I’ve published featuring the most incredible fashion ... worn by the world’s most beautiful ­people with interesting stories to tell, I have never been more proud than I am of this cover: Yolngu woman Magnolia Maymuru and her baby daughter Djarraran ­before an Australian sunrise. So stunning, full of meaning, and pointing to new beginnings, which are calling us all,” she says.

Over the past decade, McCann says, Vogue has transformed into more than “just a magazine” as the editors embark on their third worldwide editorial collaboration, led by Anna Wintour and ­Enninful. “From the spark of this uniting, positive idea, our team pulled ­together an Australian interpretation of the concept featuring Magnolia Maymuru and Djarraran.”

Magnolia modelled the work of First Nations designers Lyn-Al Young and Maree Clarke to mark Vogue Australia’s 60th anniversary in December 2019.

Vogue Australia’s September issue is on sale from August 23.