Swimsuit

Yumi Nu Stuns on the Cover of ‘Vogue Japan,’ 2 Years After Making History With the Magazine

The SI Swimsuit star was the first plus-sized model to grace the front of the publication in 2022.

Ananya Panchal

Yumi Nu
Yumi Nu / Alexander Tamargo/Getty Images

Yumi Nu is used to breaking barriers while making the fashion and modeling industries more size and ethnically diverse and inclusive. The SI Swimsuit model, who has posed for the magazine four years in a row, made her debut in Tampa, Fla., in 2021 and has since traveled to Belize, Dominica and Montenegro with the brand. She visited the latter in 2022, landing on the front of the magazine and making history as the franchise’s first plus-sized Asian model to do so. That same year, Nu made waves in the industry when she also became Vogue Japan’s first plus-sized cover model ever.

Now, she’s gracing the front of Vogue Japan yet again, two years after her historic moment. The 27-year-old, who is also a talented musician, donned a super cool series of colorful, unique beachy looks for the feautre. She was styled by Giulia Revolo and photographed by Felicity Ingram for the September 2024 issue.

“Japanese culture values being skinny, dainty and small, so for me to be on the cover of Vogue Japan meant being seen and being honored by a culture that often makes people with bigger bodies like mine feel invisible,” Nu wrote in an essay for SI Swimsuit‘s digital site that accompanied her 2022 cover story. “Of course, it’s not just Japan where there’s a premium on being thin. Even here in the U.S., where a lot of the fashion industry has become more inclusive toward people with bodies like mine in the last few years, some people—for example, designers at certain high-fashion houses and dumb, angry guys on the internet, among others—just haven’t quite figured out yet that people who look like me belong everywhere everyone else does. But to them I say: We’ll wait. We’re here, and we’re not going away.”

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Ananya Panchal

ANANYA PANCHAL

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