How many John Johns does it take to change a lightbulb? One. The same number of John Johns it takes to look uncomfortable in the shower.
John John Florence is Vogue Italy’s newest cover boy. That’s big time. He’s made it! Although surf fashion has long been one of those “in” things (which is weird, because surf fashion essentially means not giving a shit how you look), the actual act of surfing hasn’t exactly been a major shaker of global industry. Of course, it seems that way to people who surf, but there are far more people that know nothing about surfing than those who do. But when a surfer is on the cover of a decidedly non-surfing magazine, it’s kind of a big deal.
Remember when Gabriel Medina made all those videos for Gillette? The ones in which he showed us all how to shave various parts of his body? Oh, how the internet exploded! So much so, in fact, that the Gillette advertisements were made private on Youtube. And remember when Luke Davis was in the weird naked fetal position for that music video? Or when Kelly Slater ran naked through a field for ESPN’s Body Issue? For a sport that normally shows a lot of skin, it seems that when a surfer shows a lot of skin for anything other than a surfing outlet, someone’s upset. “Ha ha!” we laugh at our computer screens. “Gabriel Medina just got paid a fortune to shave his armpits! What a kook! I’m going to comment on this!” And then we trundle off to our shitty jobs not making fortunes for doing easy things. Classic us!
Wanna see my picture on the cover/ Wanna buy five copies for my mother /Wanna see my smilin’ face/ On the cover the cover of Vogue Italy
This is actually John John’s third appearance in Vogue, the first of which was some time before he was 10-years-old. Then last year, he was in the British version. This Vogue Italia spread is by none other than Bruce Weber, with words by Dibi Fletcher–wife to Herbie–and photos by Brian Bielmann and Herbie Fletcher–absolute titans in surfing’s history.
Love it or hate it, surfing will always be of interest to more than surfers. And because of that, there will always be someone selling the surfing lifestyle. More and more, it seems, surfing is making its way into the general population’s thoughts by way of non-surfing media, and John John Florence, with his flaxen hair and superhuman skills, is somewhere near the top of those thoughts.
