Serena Williams has created history as the first female to ever appear on a Teen Vogue cover with cornrows.

The magazine’s December issue has the 37-year-old tennis player with braids on the cover. She is wearing a voluminous coral jacket and gold dangling earrings.

Teen Vogue tweeted on Wednesday, “We put cornrows on the cover of the publication for the first time in the publication’s history.”
For many years, Serena has worn cornrows both on and off the tennis court. Cornrows and Senegalese twists were the mother-of-one’s hairstyle for her friend Meghan Markle’s royal wedding in May.

The latest issue featured the first cover designed by Lindsay Peoples Wagner, Teen Vogue’s new editor-in-chief and the youngest black editor of a major newspaper.

Photographer Ronan McKenzie, a British woman, also took the photos for the cover.

In the opening to her interview with the athlete and 12-year-old gun control activist Naomi Wadler, the 28-year-old editor wrote, “My mother once told me that to sustain myself in this industry, I would have to be what I needed when I was younger.”

Here we are, then, with Serena wearing cornrows for the first time on a cover and a pair of young black ladies who are merely attempting to understand our magic.

Lindsay talked with Serena and Naomi at Teen Vogue’s Summit on the value of showcasing and extending opportunities to other black women.