Was Marion Hume fired from Vogue Australia for putting a black woman on the cover?

Naomi Campbell is never far from the headlines. On Sunday she managed to inadvertently embroil an Australian publisher in one. In a story headlined 'Editor sacked in racism row', Campbell told the UK Telegraph, "One time, I went to Australia. The editor-in-chief of a magazine there told me that she got fired for putting me on the cover. I do remember going there and saying, 'Where's the Aboriginal model? There should be one. They're beautiful women.'" No names are mentioned. But coincidentally, another Brit by the name of Marion Hume edited Vogue Australia for 18 months in the late 1990s, during which time she commissioned Peter Lindbergh to shoot Campbell for the June 1997 cover, above. In 1998 Hume was fired, following a controversial tenure, during which, it should be noted, she did not manage to stem the erosion of circulation and advertising that had begun prior to her appointment with the arrival of marie claire in 1995 and continued with the 1998 rebirth of Harpers Bazaar Australia. From 1995-1999 Vogue lost almost a quarter of its readers and two-thirds of its ad share. In 2002, Conde Nast withdrew from Australian publishing, selling the Vogue license to FPC Magazines, which in turn was acquired by News Limited in November 2006.