FACES of NOW ALEX CONSANI, PALOMA ELSESSER, and ANOK YAI MEET the MOMENT with GRIT and GRACE

When Richard Avedon guest-edited the April 1965 edition of Harper's Bazaar, the issue was billed as "a partial passport to the offbeat side of Now."

- LEAH CHERNIKOFF

For the cover, he snapped the model of the moment, Jean "the Shrimp" Shrimpton, with her face framed by a Day-Glo fuchsia cutout that evoked an astronaut's helmet.

This April marks the 60th anniversary of Avedon's celebrated issue, and we've taken many cues from it as inspiration for this one, which is dedicated to the idea of "now." As in the 1965 issue, we gathered artists and writers, from Lorna Simpson to Torrey Peters, to fill the pages with their responses and reactions to these times.

One big difference between then and now is that today it would be impossible to identify a single face that defines the moment. If politics seem to be regressing to a pre-1965 era, at least the standard of beauty has changed. Where Shrimpton's features-big, wide-set blue eyes, high cheekbones, light hair, light skin-were once considered the pinnacle of beauty, the definition now is mercifully broader, more encompassing and diverse.

Take the models who grace the cover of this issue: Alex Consani, Anok Yai, and Paloma Elsesser. They each hail from different backgrounds, ethnicities, and communities, and all walk the most coveted runways, secure the biggest campaigns, and are featured in the glossiest magazines.

Yet even as recently as a decade or so ago, the landscape was drastically different.

"When I first started, the beauty standard was the opposite of who I am," says Yai, who is 27. "I remember being on sets at the beginning of my career and seeing girls who didn't look like me at all, and I knew that they were the standard. And I remember, in my head, deciding, 'I'm going to force myself to be the standard.""