Where have all the interesting people gone? And why have they been replaced by Paris Hilton?

InStyle creative director John Korpics (formerly of Esquire) on George Lois’s Esquire covers from the ’60s and why they’re sadly no more:

The reason some of those celebrities were able to have the mystique that would make such fascinating covers is because it was the ’60s. You had Martin Luther King, and you had JFK, and you had all these amazing people at a really turbulent time in our history. Lois was allowed to create these fantastic covers that were statements, as opposed to “Pick celebrity X and try and sell your magazine that month.”

The approach was to try and pick the most interesting person in the media that month and do an interesting cover on it. It’s possible you could get close to some of those covers, but you’re right—they probably wouldn’t sell. They didn’t sell when he did them.

Related: Esquire cover gallery, 1966

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