Kamala Harris stars in her second cover of Vogue, and it couldn’t be more different than the first one

(CNN) – Mucha cosas pueden cambiar en tres años. Al menos ese parece ser el mensaje, tanto simbólica como stylísticamente, de la segunda portada de Vogue de Kamala Harris. Less than a month from the US presidential elections, Harris has been presented as the magazine’s digital star.

Vestida con un traje de lapa afilada color mocha (a piece of Gabriela Hearst from her own collection, according to Vogue) and a blouse of satin color ciruela, Harris assumes a pose de poder relajada pero considerada. Sentada con eleganza en una silla tapizada en un tono complementario de azul claro, Harris está cruzada de piernas con una mano en su regazo y otra en el apoyabrazos. Mira directly a la camara, con su characteristica irónica sonrisa apenas asomando en su rostro.

The image, from fashion photographer Annie Leibovitz, is very different from the first cover of Vogue de Harris in November 2021. At that moment, just elected vice president, Harris was photographed standing, something uncomfortable, trapped in what it seemed to be. una risa a medias (quién sabía que su risa effervescente sería luego utilizado por sus opponentes como una forma de criticarla). Llevaba una chaqueta oscura de Donald Deal, jeans ajustados negros que le rozaban los billos y un par de Converse de caña baja. The New York Times defined the image as “decididamente poco elegante”, while The Hollywood Reporter wrote that the Harris team was “taken by surprise” for the image in its entirety. A source familiar with the discussions said that the Harris team believed that the cover would show her posing with a light blue dress against a golden background, an image that was finally used inside the magazine.

The controversy then arose when the image of Harris en zapatillas circulated on the social networks. “Ella merece una portada, pero una mucho mejor que esta”, escribió un usuario en X. “¿Ya se imprimió esto? ¿Podemos rehacerlo?”, agregó otro. Vogue released a statement shortly afterwards, stating: “The Vogue team was enchanted by the images that Tyler Mitchell took and felt that the most informal image captured the authentic and accessible nature of Vice President Elect Harris, which we believe is one of the hallmarks of la administration Biden/Harris”.

This time, sin embargo, neither Vogue nor the team of Harris seemed concerned about signaling its authenticity and accessibility (the campaign viral llena de memes de Harris seems to have managed that). En cambio, la última portada es formal pero cálida. El espectador se coloca en los zapatos de un funcionario visitante a punto de saludar a Harris; la mente incluso podría llenar la siguiente escena: Harris de pie, estrechando manos, volviendo a sitarse para discutir política exterior. Al mirar la imagen de Leibovitz, uno se pregunta, ¿en cuántas sillas en cuántas salas importantes debe haber estado sateda Harris exactly like this, y en cuántas más lo hará si gana en noviembre?

But no todos are convinced. “Desearía que dieran estas opportunidades a las muchas increíbles fotógrafas negras que hay”, wrote the Nigerian-British photographer Misan Harriman in los comentarios debajo de la publication de Vogue en Instagram. In recent years, Leibovitz has been criticized for his photographic representation of black and brown people. Su sesion de Vogue con Zendaya in April generated negative headlines for what critics considered a mediocre illumination, with some arguing that the model’s skin tone looked gray and disheveled.

But for the majority of Harris fans, the second cover of Vogue is something like a closing moment of the circle, correcting the “errors” perceived from the first one. Ahora se la toma en serio, al menos sartorialmente: con traje, botas y sin zapatillas a la vista.