Transparent

V Magazine’s spring issue came with a transparent plastic cover—tilt it one way and Kate Upton’s wearing something, tilt it the other and she isn’t. That’s the whole concept.

It’s pretty shameless, honestly. The cover mechanics do exactly what the appeal promises: let you cycle through undressing an attractive woman without any pretense or narrative. Most magazines would dress this up with talk about photography, light, form, the human body as art. V just went for it: what’s the actual draw here, and how do we make that the entire product?

That kind of honesty is rarer than you’d think. Not trying to hide what’s happening, not wrapping it in taste or artistic justification—just a transparent gimmick that does one job. There’s something kind of perfect about a magazine being that clear about what it is instead of performing something else.