George Lois's incredible Esquire covers

Andy Warhol drowning in a can of Campbell's soup: "This cover has become a symbol of Esquire's juxtaposition of the celebration of pop culture...with the deconstruction of celebrity"
© George Lois/Esquire

Muhammad Ali poses as a martyr for refusing to fight in the Vietnam war and the cover becomes a protest poster hung in college dorms all over America
© George Lois/Esquire

Virni Lisi, about to debut in How to Murder Your Wife with Jack Lemmon, lathers up in this humorous cover pegged to an article on the masculinisation of women
© George Lois/Esquire

Lois's trompe l'oeil cover of Kennedy in tears was published seven months after the assassination, and accompanied an article that attempted to objectify Kennedy at a time when America was still traumatised by the murder
© George Lois/Esquire

This issue has Lois exposing the high end fashion shoot
© George Lois/Esquire

By simply using the words of an American soldier in Vietnam in 1966, Lois makes clear the magazine's view of America's involvement in the war
© George Lois/Esquire

Ursula Andress dramatizes violence against women, a subject at the time considered taboo, and a cover which even shocked the National Organization for Women
© George Lois/Esquire

A classic composite cover satirising Nixon in his run up to the 1968 election
© George Lois/Esquire

Lois's refusal to deliver a typical cover girl for an issue that led with a travel feature ended up with a beauty pageant of forty stewardesses from fifteen international airlines. It became one of Esquire's biggest selling issues on the newsstands
© George Lois/Esquire

In December 1963 Sonny Liston becomes the first black Santa and "All hell broke loose when the cover came out."
© George Lois/Esquire

On the cover of Esquire's definitive 35th anniversary issue, Lois shows the three assassinated American leaders; John F Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King hauntingly watching over the Arlington National Cemetery
© George Lois/Esquire

This is what George Lois calls his second "cheesecake cover"
© George Lois/Esquire

A reference to Truman Capote's infamous 1966 masked ball when he invited 540 of his closest friends!
© George Lois/Esquire