Portrait of change captured in Vogue

Vogue Australia changed everything for indigenous model Samantha Harris.

Vogue Australia editor Edwina McCann and model Samantha Harris pose at The National Portrait Gallery last night. Picture: Sean Davey

Vogue Australia changed everything for indigenous model Samantha Harris.

Only a few months after her first fashion shoot for the magazine in 2010, she was on the cover, aged just 19.

“It still means the world to me,” Harris told The Australian at the opening of the Women in Vogue exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra on Thursday night.

“Even seeing it (in the exhibition) today, it felt like it didn’t happen, because there are so many incredible, inspiring women and out of all these amazing covers Vogue has shot, I’m still in there.”

She said that while her mother was always proud, this was something different.

“When she was growing up she didn’t have those opportunities. She never would have dreamt that an Aboriginal woman would be on the cover of Vogue, let alone her daughter.”

For 60 years, Vogue Australia has reflected the faces of Australian women and their roles in ­society.

The exhibition includes photographic portraits of several women across fashion and the arts, including Maggie Tabberer, Nicole Kidman, Kylie Minogue and its first indigenous cover model, Elaine George, in September 1993.

The exhibition finishes with a diverse cast of models who have recently appeared in the magazine, including South Sudanese sensation Adut Akech, a former refugee, transgender model ­Andreja Pejich and indigenous model Charlee Fraser.

For editor-in-chief Edwina McCann, these contemporary faces represent something of a full circle in the magazine’s long ­history.

“(Vogue Australia) was the ­vision of (founder) Bernie Leser, a German Jewish refugee who looked outwards to imagine what Australia could look like,” she said.

“Vogue today, with Adut Akech, a refugee looking outward from her home in Australia to the most glamorous of worlds is what Bernie did as well.”

Last night’s event was the first to celebrate the magazine’s 60th anniversary, and was opened by Julie Bishop, who also appears in two portraits in the exhibition.

The former foreign minister said Vogue Australia was much more than a fashion magazine.

“It really has influenced how we live, who we are, where we’re going and it has chronicled the changing role of women in Australian society over 60 years, so that’s worthy of a significant celebration,’’ she said.

Assistant curator Aimee Broad noted that the first issue, for September 1959, showed a model in soft focus with a “very demure gaze”.

“We see that shift from the 60s and 70s right through into the 80s and 90s when the women become a little more ­feisty and with more attitude,” Broad said.

The exhibition covers the full history of the magazine in Australia, now the fourth-oldest ­edition of Vogue globally.

For McCann, Vogue has ­always been a mirror for women in Australian society, seen through the fashion lens.

“Originally we did start as this almost colonial vision of ourselves,” she said.

“Then as we matured under (former editor) Sheila Scotter, we saw homegrown pride, but there was still a very English sensibility. Then as Australia became more multicultural and a very different nation we’ve evolved with it,” McCann said.