Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’s team was taken aback by Vogue’s decision to swap a portrait Harris negotiated for the magazine’s February 2021 issue with a washed-out shot of Harris dressed casually in sneakers.
The image stoked outrage after it leaked on social media over the weekend and was believed to be fake.
Instead of appearing in the pale blue suit that she wore for the cover shoot, Harris is pictured in a black jacket and Converse shoes, which the magazine called “styling choices that were her own,” suggesting this was the outfit she wore to the photo shoot.
The incoming vice president stands before a pink and green backdrop, the colors of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the black sorority Harris joined while a student at Howard University. Next to Harris, a headline reads: “By The People, For The People: The United States of Fashion.”
Critics derided the picture as “disrespectful” to Harris, to the office, and to black people.
Her team was not informed that the cover photo had been changed until the leak occurred, a person involved in the cover negotiations told the Associated Press on Sunday. Harris’s office declined to comment.
In a statement, Vogue said it chose the informal picture because it showed Harris’s “authentic, approachable nature, which we feel is one of the hallmarks of the Biden-Harris administration.”
“The team at Vogue loved the images Tyler Mitchell shot,” a representative for the magazine said. Three years ago, Mitchell became the first black photographer to shoot the cover of Vogue, a picture of Beyonce that is now in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s permanent collection. Mitchell drew controversy late last year for his photographs of Harry Styles wearing a dress.
Vogue has now released a second digital cover, featuring a more formal portrait of Harris before a gold backdrop, to “respond to the seriousness of this moment in history, and the role she has to play leading our country forward.”
The casual cover is the one that will grace doorsteps and magazine stands, however, as Harris is sworn in later this month.
Others took issue with Harris’s Converse shoes, which she wore on the campaign trail on occasion, and charged that a lack of formality was demeaning to the vice presidency and the sorority, the colors of which feature in the background.
Why do you have her in sneakers with my Sorority colors as backdrop?? This is DISRESPECTFUL to Kamala, my Sorors, and to black people! In no way this is how you shoot the first black VP or any VP for that matter. Pull it now!!!
— Lynn (@shuluver1908) January 10, 2021
Another user called the shade of pink used “the saddest pink I’ve ever seen.”
“Looks like a pic in your grandma’s basement bar on a wood paneling wall,” he wrote. “They didn’t even try.”
Podcast host Dasha Nekrasova said that “Kamala should put Anna Wintour in jail for this,” referring to the fashion magazine’s longtime top editor.
“The cover on the left is the least dignified & greatest insult to a remarkable woman who shattered multiple glass ceilings & is now the most powerful woman in the US,” said Adrienne Lawrence, a left-wing commentator who is black. “Surely editors have better sense & taste to refrain from disrespecting the 1st VP. Put in some effort.”
Some AKA sorority sisters were pleased by the nod, with one Instagram user stating that the recognition was welcome in response to a picture shared by influencer Christina Najjar. “She hasn’t acknowledged us as much as we feel she should have,” this person wrote.
