Anna Wintour Is Getting A Lot Of Shit For Kamala Harris’ First Vogue Cover
Kamala Harris’ “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me” face says it all.
Soon-to-be Vice President Kamala Harris is the star of Vogue’s February issue, and last night, the cover “leaked” (read: Anna Wintour waved her Cartier-decorated claw at a minion to leak it to generate maximum attention). And at first, some people thought the cover was fake, because it looks like a test shot of Kamala Harris was Photoshopped into the backdrop at a low-budget Bridgerton-themed high school prom. But the cover is real, and it’s reportedly not the picture that Kamala’s team thought would be the cover. So this morning, Anna Wintour is probably raising a crystal goblet full of the blood of an intern to herself for stirring up a little promo drama.
The cover and spread was photographed by Tyler Mitchell. Here’s the full cover of Kamala Harris giving you “I’m not a regular VP, I’m a cool VP” casualness while that background is giving you “the Marie Antoinette section of Mood Fabrics.”
That cover may look like it was thrown together in a millisecond, but there was some thought behind it. Kalama is wearing her signature Chucks and salmon pink and apple green are the colors of Alpha Kappa Alpha, her sorority at Howard University. But still, according to journalist and leader of the Pro-Chrissy Teigen Twitter Army, Yashar Ali, this is not the cover that Kamala’s team and Vogue agreed upon. Yashar said in a series of tweets that Kamala’s team thought the official cover was going to be a different one. Yashar also brought up the criticism of how Vogue treats Black employees and Black women, which Anna responded to last year and promised to do better.
In the cover that they expected, Vice President-elect Harris was wearing a powder blue suit. That was the cover that the Vice President-elect’s team and the Vogue team, including Anna Wintour, mutually agreed upon…which is standard for fashion magazines.
To be clear, this Vogue cover of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is real. It’s just that per a source familiar, this is not the cover that was mutually agreed upon. The agreed upon cover had VP-elect Harris in a powder blue suit. So folks feel blindsided this evening.
There are a lot of former Vogue and Conde Nast employees who have told me they believe that Anna Wintour does not truly respect Black women and most of her editorial decisions around Black women certainly reflect that sentiment.
Others also compared Kamala’s cover to Michelle Obama’s three covers, but IN THIS ECONOMY and IN THIS PANDEMIC, Kamala in a fancy ass gown wouldn’t be the look:
It's nowhere near the quality of @MichelleObama 's @voguemagazine covers. pic.twitter.com/AVHX2FpfkL
— Andrea Rodgers (@AndreaRodgers) January 10, 2021
After everyone shook their head at that mess of a cover, Vogue quickly posted Kamala’s full profile for the issue and also released the cover that her team apparently thought would be the official cover. It’s of Kamala in that powder blue Michael Kors suit, standing in what looks like a massage room at Caesars Palace:
Yashar adds that the cover that Kamala’s team wanted is only going to be the digital cover. The other one will be the print one that will be sold in stores and will be mailed to subscribers.
Yes, that cover is sloppy, but it’s a lot better if you look at it while listening to its official soundtrack, which is the sound of Melania Trump screeching with rage over Vogue putting Kamala Harris on its cover before even being sworn in as VP while Melania never got the cover during her dark reign as First Lady.
Pic: Tyler Mitchell/Vogue