Malika Favre illustrates this year's edition of The New Yorker anniversary cover

Malika Favre is the latest artist to illustrate a riff on the first ever cover of The New Yorker released on 21 February, 1925. The original illustration, The Butterfly Effect featuring a character known as Eustace Tilley, was by Rea Irvin the publication’s first art editor. A variation of his illustration has appeared on the cover of The New Yorker’s anniversary issue the majority of years since.

“I wanted to capture the poise and the pose of the original Eustace Tilley dandy, but do it as something extremely simple and modern,” Malika tells The New Yorker’s art editor, Francoise Mouly, in the publication’s weekly article telling the story behind its cover.

Rather than the original man who has been reinterpreted by artists including Robert Crumb, Christoph Niemann, Chris Ware and last year Barry Blitt, Malika has depicted 2018’s version of Eustace Tilley as a woman. “Like the originally Tilley, I had her look slightly up, which shows her curiosity — and of course it was delightful to have the flight of fancy, the poetic touch, of the butterfly.”