Raúl Martinez on Shaping the Global Image of Vogue

With more than three decades in the fashion industry under his belt, Raúl Martinez has defined how generations have come to see beauty, celebrity, and pop culture — first across magazines and advertising, now across an increasingly interconnected global media landscape. Back at Vogue as Global Creative Director since 2024, Martinez oversees the creative vision of the international tome across all owned and operated editions, guiding the visual identity of 12 markets — the U.S., U.K., Italy, France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Arabia, Spain, Taiwan, and China — while keeping a cohesive creative dialogue running across print, digital, social, and video. That global fluency was earned in two very different rooms. Martinez arrived at Vogue in 1988 as associate art director, working alongside Anna Wintour from her debut issue and rising to art director by 1990, before leaving in the mid-nineties to co-found AR New York with Alex Gonzalez, then the creative director of ELLE and his partner in both life and business. Over the years that followed, the boutique branding agency grew to over 100 employees, building campaigns for Calvin Klein, Valentino, Versace, Dolce & Gabbana, and Yves Saint Laurent while extending beyond fashion to clients like PepsiCo and Mattel. By the time AR was sold to Publicis Groupe, it had become one of the industry’s most quietly consequential shops. In January 2021, Martinez took on one of fashion’s most scrutinized rebuilds, joining Victoria’s Secret