Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is poised to appear on the cover of Vogue magazine’s February issue. However, as the cover has been leaked to the public, many fans of Harris and the magazine are scratching their heads, calling the photo underwhelming, at best.
With the caption, “Madame Vice President! Kamala Harris and the New America,” Harris appears on the cover of the fashion publication in a dark pant suit and low-top Chuck Taylor Converse sneakers, with a pink sheet draped behind her on a green wall. When the cover was revealed, numerous people reacted on social media with criticism.
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Some of the fans were angry at Vogue and its editor, Anna Wintour, for a constant pattern of underwhelming covers featuring women of color:
“Anyone shocked by the poor quality of Kamala’s Vogue cover hasn’t paid attention to Anna Wintour’s bullsh– w/people of color. I spans decades,” one Twitter user said.
Fans were disappointed with the style and color contrasts in the photo:
“Vogue cover w the pink and green in the back and w a suit? They did not have to put her a– in them sneakers they wrong for that,” laughingly wrote another.
Even casual magazine readers commented that the cover isn’t very good, questioning its authenticity:
“The Vogue cover looks like such trash I assume it’s fake or was purposely done by editorial to be mean to the next VP,” said Elie Mystal, a writer for The Nation.
“The fact that the girls can’t tell if that Kamala Vogue cover is real or not speaks a lot to the basic-ness of US Vogue,” another user wrote.
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However, Yashar Ali, writer for New York Magazine, may have some insider context. He posted a message to his Twitter page saying that not only is the cover real, but Harris’ team didn’t expect this cover to be used and that another cover was shot.
“In the cover they expected, Vice president-elect Harris was wearing a powder blue suit,” Ali wrote in a thread. “That was the cover that Vice President-Elect’s team and the Vogue team, including Anna Wintour, mutually agreed upon…which is standard for fashion magazines.”
Vogue in a Sunday morning tweet revealed that Harris would be profiled in the February edition, in a post that included two photos of the California Democrat. The full profile, titled “Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris on the Road Ahead,” includes one photo that refers to Harris, wearing a light-blue Michael Kors Collection suit in front of drapes with a gold hue, as “Mrs. America.” The other picture, that of Harris in front of pink and green drapes, a homage to the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, is captioned as “Cover Look.”
Harris nor her team have commented on the Vogue cover at this time.
Harris is no stranger to being on magazine covers. She appeared on the cover of Ebony magazine in 2018, the November 2020 issue of Elle and on two occasions Time, the first as a Democratic presidential candidate in October 2019 and again in December when she and President-Elect Joe Biden were named the magazine’s Persons of the Year.
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