It's nearly August, the retail fashion industry is in an uneasy slump, and summer issues of women's magazines are gaunt for want of advertising. Yet in the past four weeks, the 'black issue' of Italian Vogue has caused such a phenomenal demand at news-stands in Britain and the United States that Condé Nast, the publisher, has rushed to reprint and distribute 40,000 more copies.

The explosive content of what, by any standards, is a small-circulation magazine with an average monthly sale of 109,000, is now being spoken about as a cultural watershed in fashion. With the next show season six weeks off, its influence might finally end the 'white-out' that has come to dominate catwalks and magazine pages.

On Friday, a saleswoman on the till at WH Smith in Hammersmith Mall, west London, was proudly gesturing to a Vogue Italia propped up at her cashdesk. 'We've managed to get 10 more,' she said, as a group of black and mixed-race schoolgirls broke ranks in the queue and doubled back to the shelves, hollering with delight. They have reason to celebrate, and to hope. One of the covers of Vogue Italia features Jourdan Dunn, the 18-year-old who was discovered by a Storm scout at Primark in that same mall. Perhaps those girls were her former classmates.