Kate Upton’s SI Swimsuit 2013: Antarctica Cover with Derek Kettela

Sports Illustrated’s 2013 Swimsuit Issue put Kate Upton on the cover for a second consecutive year—and sent her to Antarctica to finish a seven-continents brief. The assignment belonged to a different genus than a beach club or a resort pool. SI Swimsuit sells a magazine fantasy of place: ice, ship decks, polar light, wildlife, and swimwear styled as expedition editorial. In Antarctica that meant glaciers as backdrops, penguins as curious extras, deck rails against open water, and a cover frame built from a white fur-lined parka, a bikini bottom, and enough cold to make every second of exposure count.

By early 2013 Upton was already the franchise’s defining face of the moment. She had debuted in 2011 as Rookie of the Year, taken the 2012 cover, and returned here as the model asked to hold her own against the grandeur of the seventh continent. The gallery gathers frames from that issue’s circulation—vertical portraits, ice-field tableaux, shipboard looks—without treating the shoot as gossip or modern tabloid fuel. It is a 2013 magazine destination package, and that historical framing is the point of revisiting it.

Antarctica as the real co-star

Destination swimsuit editorials live or die by location. Antarctica offered SI a visual toolkit no Mediterranean cliff or Caribbean cay could match: blue-white ice walls, floating bergs, near-midnight daylight in December summer, and wildlife that ignored the fashion schedule. Photographer Derek Kettela’s frames use those surfaces as characters. A bikini against glacial ice is not the same sentence as a bikini against painted studio paper. The continent supplies awe; the swimsuit supplies fashion; the model supplies continuity across SI’s annual cast.

Period coverage described a roughly ten-day production window sailing from Ushuaia, Argentina, to the Antarctic Peninsula aboard the expedition ship Le Boreal, with Abercrombie & Kent handling logistics for a small crew. Temperatures sat well below comfort even in polar “summer.” Daylight stretched late enough to shoot outdoors toward midnight. Crew members bundled Upton between short exposures—twenty or thirty frames, then coats again—because the place would not negotiate. That production reality is part of the franchise grammar: SI wants the reader to feel travel risk and wonder, not a retail fitting room.

Cover energy versus interior travel pages

The difference between the cover and the interior spread is structural. The cover sells a single, memorable myth: a model in extreme cold, fur and bikini, ice as headline. Inside pages sell itinerary—deck sequences, shore landings, multiple suits against changing ice, penguins walking into the frame. Suits can be fashion-forward, graphic, or nearly sculptural because the primary product is the magazine experience. Readers flip for place and persona; the swimwear is costume for geography.

Watch how wardrobe and setting change across the set. Soft fur against hard ice reads as deliberate contrast. Bright one-pieces punch through muted polar blues. Deck-rail poses borrow the ship’s architecture the way Seville tiles borrowed Andalusian history in other 2013 destination packages. Variety is the point. An SI continent package rarely commits to one silhouette; it builds a portfolio of moods under one place name so the feature feels like travel, not a single product ad repeating the same suit in five angles.

That editorial freedom also explains poses that would be odd in pure commerce: arms open to wind, body braced against cold air, quiet standing frames where the landscape does most of the talking. Commerce wants the SKU clear. Magazine fantasy wants the place unforgettable. Upton’s job is to hold both—readable as a cover star, never so dominant that Antarctica becomes mere wallpaper.

Where 2013 sits in the SI timeline

Upton’s Swimsuit arc in the early 2010s moved from breakthrough rookie to back-to-back covers with uncommon speed. The 2013 Antarctica installment sits at the peak of that print-event era: the issue still functioned as an annual cultural release, images traveled through the magazine, the SI Swimsuit site, and fashion blogs that mirrored galleries almost shot-for-shot. Editor MJ Day framed Antarctica as critical to completing a seven-continents theme—African dunes and Asian cliffs elsewhere in the issue, polar ice here—and chose Upton as the model who could match the place’s scale.

Historically, that choice matters for how to read the gallery. This is not a generic “Kate in a bikini” dump. It is franchise destination storytelling with cover gravity. Later career chapters, acting roles, or tabloid noise do not rewrite what the ice and the ship already say on the page. A feature like this continues the gallery habit: identify the year, name the place and photographer, keep the production detail visible, and refuse to collapse the story into gossip that has nothing to do with glaciers or Kettela’s light.

Keeping Upton’s 2012–2013 magazine jobs from blurring

Readers who bounce between early-2010s Upton galleries can easily mush every set into one mood. Resist that. V Magazine’s spring preview was indie fashion narrative—ironic housewife staging with Sebastian Faena. Vogue Italia was Meisel’s Helmut Newton urban erotic tribute for Milan’s most serious fashion title. Vogue Germany was Bruce Weber’s European editorial language. Vogue Brasil was a Latin American Condé Nast cover defining “the new sexy” for a Brazilian newsstand. SI 2013 is magazine destination editorial with Antarctica as co-star and cover franchise energy. Same face; five different editorial sentences. Naming the sentence is the whole historical task of pages like this one.

If you only keep one contrast, make it this: SI wants you to feel you traveled to an extreme place; V wants character play; Vogue Italia wants fashion mythology; Vogue Germany wants Weber’s outdoor American-European romance; Vogue Brasil wants market-specific glamour for São Paulo newsstands. Ice and penguins only serve the first of those jobs.

How to read the Antarctica set

• Find the landscape first: ice walls, bergs, open water, ship architecture—place before pose.
• Track cover vs interior: the parka-and-bikini myth sells the issue; the multipage travel suite sells itinerary.
• Notice polar light: long December daylight and hard reflections are location signatures, not retouch accidents.
• Separate magazine from merchant: these frames advertise SI’s annual myth of adventure more than a single boutique label.
• Watch wildlife and weather as props: penguins and cold are production characters, not caption jokes.

Flip once for Upton’s star continuity, then again for Antarctica’s scale. The franchise only works when both stay visible in the same frame.