No, Vogue Did Not Do Justice to Kamala Harris With That Cover

Tyler Mitchell/Vogue

As you probably already know Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is on the February 2021 cover of the American Vogue, and many, many people are not happy with the result.

To set the scene for those who may need a recap: Harris is wearing a dark jacket by Donald Deal, skinny pants, Converse and her trademark pearls. The photographer is Tyler Mitchell, who, in 2018, became the first Black photographer to shoot a Vogue cover. Per the magazine, Harris chose and wore her own clothes.

So why the uproar?

For starters, this is a flat out poorly executed image. The lighting is unflattering, the set is messy, the VP-elect looks way too casual as if she is caught in between takes. Many online deem it disrespectful. In addition, it has been a full week since Vogue officially released the cover and the VP’s team has yet to share it on her socials (they did share her Elle November 2020 cover).

Following the bad press the cover received, Vogue released another, more formal portrait of Harris in a blue Michael Kors Collection suit with an American flag pin on her lapel. The image is more formal, well lit and just better. Well, that is the “digital cover” and that this was the print cover Harris’s team had expected.

But Vanessa Friedman wrote at NYTimes Fashion that “according to people familiar with the arrangement, both scenarios had been agreed on in advance, from clothes to backdrops. However, while the portrait had been deemed the “cover try” (magazine-speak for the intended, but not definite, cover) and the standing shot conceived as the inside photograph, Vogue had not granted any kind of contractual cover approval rights to Ms. Harris. That meant Ms. Harris’s team had not seen the final choice, which was left to Vogue, and had not known the magazine had decided to swap the photos.”

Nonetheless, the print cover should not have made the cut. This is the first woman, the first Black woman and the first female vice president of South Asian descent elected to the second-highest post in the land. And inasmuch as Vogue wanted to portray her as “authentic and approachable” this was not the time. She belongs on a pedestal.