Kiera Knightley in vogue

Kiera Knightley looks absolutely magical in this Vogue interpretation of The Wizard of Oz. Annie Leibovitz and Vogue are getting rave reviews for this little piece of perfect fanstasy and I’ll tell you why. Some of you may not remember the once a year airing of this classic movie, but for those of us of a certain age, it was the one night a year you got to stay up past 9pm. If you were lucky your brothers and sisters didn’t notice you hiding your eyes everytime the wicked witch and those creepy little monkeys came on screen and tell everyone at school the next day.


The 1939 film served as the main inspiration for Annie Leibovitz’s shoot for this month’s Vogue. The young actress Keira Knightley was chosen to step into Judy Garland’s ruby slippers—not to mention a variety of top designers’ takes on her gingham frock. Knightley may hail from across the ocean and lack the barely hidden sadness that made Garland’s performance so heartbreaking, but her smile is as wide open as the Midwest.

To give The Wizard of Oz’s iconic characters fresh life and new meaning, Vogue assembled an A-team of contemporary artists, whose images have become part of our collective visual consciousness. Jasper Johns, whose boldly painted maps, targets, and flags helped lead his contemporaries away from Abstract Expressionism and pointed ahead to Pop Art and Minimalism, appears here in good humor as the Cowardly Lion. And John Currin, who famously keeps an ironic distance from his subjects in paintings widely hailed for their technical virtuosity, is the Tin Man, following the Yellow brick Road in search of a heart.