Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour is defending an editorial decision to have Vice President-elect Kamala Harris posing in converse sneakers for an issue of the magazine.
The fashion mogul told the New York Times there wasn’t a written agreement on the cover choice for the February 2021 issue of Vogue, which has led to backlash from Harris’s team and others over the past few days.
The magazine swapped out a portrait of Harris for a washed-out image of Harris wearing sneakers in front of a pink and green backdrop, representing her Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority colors.
“Obviously, we have heard and understood the reaction to the print cover, and I just want to reiterate that it was absolutely not our intention to, in any way, diminish the importance of the vice president-elect’s incredible victory,” Wintour said.
Vice President-elect @KamalaHarris is our February cover star!
Making history was the first step. Now Harris has an even more monumental task: to help heal a fractured America—and lead it out of crisis. Read the full profile: https://t.co/W5BQPTH7AU pic.twitter.com/OCFvVqTlOk
— Vogue Magazine (@voguemagazine) January 10, 2021
Wintour added that the magazine’s creative team felt that the casual cover look reflected the current mood of the country, according to a report by CNN.
“When the two images arrived at Vogue, all of us felt very, very strongly that the less formal portrait of the Vice President-elect really reflected the moment that we were living in,” Wintour said in the statement.
Harris’s team was blindsided by the switch, according to a report by the Associated Press, which cited a person with knowledge of the negotiations between Harris’s team and Vogue. The person said Harris’s team expressed disappointment to the magazine over its decision, which it found out about through a social media leak.
Vogue said it had chosen the more informal shot as opposed to the standard portrait because it showed her “authentic, approachable nature.”
Still, online critics blasted the cover as minimizing the significance of Harris’s rise to the second-highest political office and called the picture “disrespectful” to Harris, the office of the vice president, and people of color.
Wintour did not comment on the lighting, which some critics panned as “white-washing” Harris’s skin.
Wajahat Ali, a New York Times contributor, called the cover a “mess up,” adding that Wintour “must really not have black friends and colleagues.”
Vogue faced previous backlash about publishing photographs and articles viewed as insensitive to minorities. Amid a national reckoning on race last year following high-profile police-involved deaths of black people, Wintour apologized to staff members in a letter for the “mistakes.”
In addition, Wintour addressed criticism about former fashion model Melania Trump never gracing the cover of Vogue during her time as first lady when asked about complaints made by her husband, President Trump.
“Well, President Trump is no longer relevant,” Wintour told New York Times contributing opinion writer Kara Swisher. “And I think that what’s amazing about the February cover, to me, is that it is just so joyful and optimistic. And I cannot imagine that there’s anyone that really is going to find this cover anything but that and positive and an image of a woman in control of her life who’s going to bring us where the president-elect, the leadership, that we so need. And to me, it’s just a very important but positive statement about women and women in power.”
Following the public stir, the magazine released a second digital cover of a formal portrait of Harris in front of a gold backdrop in which she is donned in a light blue blazer.
However, the casual cover of Harris in sneakers remains the choice that will appear on covers across the country next month.
Harris will be sworn in with President-elect Joe Biden next week on Jan. 20. Harris will be the first woman, first black person, and first person of Asian descent to hold the office of the vice presidency.
