Vogue.Co.Uk — HRH THE DUCHESS OF CAMBRIDGE is today unveiled as the cover star for Vogue’s centenary issue. Photographed by Josh Olins in the Norfolk countryside, the Duchess appears in a 10-page shoot within the June 2016 issue, the first magazine shoot that she has ever consented to.

“It’s a huge honour and incredibly exciting for us to have HRH The Duchess of Cambridge featuring on the cover of British Vogue and as part of our centenary issue,” Vogue editor-in-chief Alexandra Shulman said today. “For me personally it has been a wonderful experience to have had the opportunity to work with her on this, and I am immensely proud of what we have produced. This special issue of the magazine is very close to my heart as it had to reflect on 100 years of British Vogue, and so I am hugely grateful that we have been able to continue with our tradition of outstanding royal portraiture with these pictures.”

As patron of the National Portrait Gallery, and with a keen personal interest in photography and portraiture, the Duchess has also agreed for two images from the shoot to be installed within the Vogue 100 exhibition at the gallery. She will attend the NPG next week, on Wednesday May 4, to view the portraits in situ. The exhibition will run until May 22 before moving to Manchester, allowing visitors to view the pictures for themselves alongside more than 280 other images from Vogue’s historic archive.

“Josh has captured the Duchess exactly as she is – full of life, with a great sense of humour, thoughtful and intelligent, and in fact, very beautiful,” Nicholas Cullinan, director of the NPG, said today. “Not only do they reflect her love of the countryside, interest in photography and championing of the National Portrait Gallery as our very committed patron, but they also encapsulate what Vogue has always done so brilliantly – to pair the best photographers with the great personalities of the day, in order to reflect broader shifts in culture and society. We had fun in making and choosing these images, and I hope that comes across.”

The images see the Duchess dressed casually, reflecting her love of the countryside and particularly Norfolk, where she lives much of the time with her family. She was involved in selecting pieces for the shoot – from Burberry to Petit Bateau – along with Vogue’s fashion director Lucinda Chambers and editor-in-chief Alexandra Shulman. The resulting images – captured outdoors in January this year – are the most personal and natural royal portraits ever undertaken by Vogue, which has also photographed Diana, Princess of Wales, Princess Margaret, the Queen Mother, and the Queen over the past 100 years.

“It’s a privilege to have been chosen to photograph the Duchess of Cambridge for the centenary issue of British Vogue and an honour that two of those portraits will hang in the National Portrait Gallery,” Olins said. “This was the Duchess’s first sitting for a magazine and she was a joy to work with, a natural. I am extremely grateful to Alexandra Shulman for placing her faith in me for such an important and historic assignment.”

The June 2016 centenary issue of Vogue will be on newsstands nationwide and available to download from Thursday May 5. “Vogue 100: A Century of Style” is at the National Portrait Gallery until May 22, and tickets are still available from Npg.org.uk