Have you read your copy of Dogue, yet? It’s become an annual project: Vogue’s dog issue. Instead of hungry, cross models in elaborate costumes and articles about the sartorial importance of the earlobe, it’s all dogs. A dog on the cover and dog ‘interviews’ alongside fashionable people talking about their dogs.
Fittingly, the Dogue competition winner and cover star does look quite hungry. He’s a thin dog (of course) called Sir Spud who appears to be an Ibizan hound. Very Dogue, though, to have an Ibizan dog on the cover. Sir Spud was apparently named by Catholic nuns, would be voiced by Ian McKellen in a film about his life, is a Cancer ‘through and through’ and likes cashew nuts.
Dogs mustn’t be left alone for too long and should wear coats if it looks like rain
Elsewhere in the issue, the world’s biggest pop star, Bad Bunny, reveals that his four-year-old beagle, Sansa, likes bananas. Lena Dunham says her hairless dog Ingrid apparently likes to roll in fox poo ‘to the point where we have to wash deep inside her ears’, and Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown solemnly declares that her poodle Winnie’s best quality is her mastery of English: ‘She fully understands sentences.’
Dogue comes just a few weeks after Country Life published its own dog issue. ‘Hang on, isn’t every issue of Country Life a dog issue?’ my friend Joe remarked in the pub when I raised the topic of magazines becoming increasingly dog-focused. Yes, Country Life often has rare breeds on its covers and the Queen’s terriers, Bluebell and Beth, have appeared on the ‘girls in pearls’ page wearing pearls around their furry necks. But this was its annual dog special, featuring Peggy the miniature bull terrier on its cover (‘Britain’s naughtiest dog’) and doggy articles including an etiquette guide and a piece examining the role of dogs in art. Meanwhile, I have it on good authority that Tatler is considering throwing a Pet Gala next May, shortly after the Met Gala takes place in New York.
