“Beauty is not only the most relevant and exciting passion point for young people today, but it is also the most accessible because it is the most personal.

Issue Zero is kind of like the de facto Dazed Beauty primer: a physical version of our weird and wonderful virtual world, a celebration of our launch theme: the future of beauty in all its many guises.

With this in mind, what could be a more appropriate inaugural cover than Kate Moss and Travis Scott reimagined as mythical creatures by some of our favourite digital artists, Darío Alva and the Travis Brothers? We wanted to portray two of the world’s most recognisable faces in a way that would defy conventional beauty and fashion imagery, and defy expectation.

In a ten-page story called The Children of Ixion, Kate and Travis – two very different global beauty icons in their own right – are brought together for the first time in a celebration of futurism, tech and imagination. Half beast, part machine, Kate and Travis roam a dystopian landscape listening for a signal. Manacled in barbed wire, and lashed by stormy weather, our anti-heroes are more fallible than they look. But what are they searching for… An escape? One another?

Just when you thought you’d seen Kate Moss in every possible context she shapeshifts again. Meanwhile, Travis Scott’s release of his third studio album, Astroworld, in August of 2018, consolidated his status as one of the most progressive and experimental artists working in rap today, especially due to the accompanying album imagery by David LaChapelle. We thought that turning him into a CGI centaur using the same 3D head and body scan he used for the Astroworld artwork seemed to speak well to this.