Vogue finally gets Kamala Harris right

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Kamala Harris is on the cover of Vogue again. The picture is beautiful, yes, but more importantly, it is a crisp, clear presentation of a candidate who has until recently, according to detractors and ambivalent voters, resisted being known. In her uniform of big-shouldered pantsuit and wrap-neck blouse, she looks formal, but also, finally, familiar.

The image follows an endorsement from the magazine in July, days after President Joe Biden announced his decision to step out of the race, plus a run of fundraising efforts by Vogue’s editor, Anna Wintour, and several Harris-themed events during Fashion Week, including a Vogue co-hosted “nonpartisan” march at which the first lady, Jill Biden, appeared to endorse Harris without ever saying her name. (Biden, Harris, Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton have all appeared on Vogue’s cover multiple times; Melania Trump famously never did during her husband’s presidency.)

Appearing on the front of a high fashion magazine, especially one often seen as a beacon of cultural elitism, has its risks for any political figure, especially one who is 24 days from an election. Jill Biden’s most recent Vogue cover was crafted as an image of hope for women voters, but due to its timing just days after her husband’s disastrous performance in the first presidential debate, also seemed to reference the question of whether he should stay in the race.

And Harris herself is no stranger to the potential sting of Vogue. In January 2021, shortly before the inauguration, Harris appeared on a cover shot by wunderkind photographer Tyler Mitchell. While a digital cover pictured Harris in a more traditional milieu – smiling in a pale blue pantsuit that elegantly contrasted with a cornsilk-colored background – the print cover showed Harris with a slightly awkward grin in jeans, Converse sneakers and a blazer, backed with drapes meant to allude to the colors of her sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha.

“The cover did not give Kamala D. Harris due respect. It was overly familiar,” The Washington Post’s senior critic-at-large Robin Givhan wrote at the time. “It was a cover image that, in effect, called Harris by her first name without invitation.”

This new cover is much more, well, presidential, although its timing is surprising. Perhaps it is a way for the magazine to make amends to Harris, or maybe Harris felt it was her duty to pose again after Wintour’s fundraising efforts. (Why not wait until after the election for a potentially historic portrait?) It is also curious that the cover is digital-only, although that does eliminate the risk of undecided voters rolling their eyes at a print version in the checkout line.

But the contrast between Harris’s two covers tells a compelling story about how she has evolved as a politician, from unsure and frequently besieged to poised and controlled. Pictures can tell stories more directly than words: This is what the best political portraiture does, whether it is John F. Kennedy pondering in Aaron Shikler’s sketchy brushstrokes, capturing the mix of modernity and turmoil that defined his presidency, or the photographs of Donald Trump defiantly raising his fist in the wake of this summer’s assassination attempt.

Harris wears a deep brown suit by the American designer Gabriela Hearst – “her own,” the credit line notes – and a chocolatey-burgundy silk top that wraps at the neck, a less fussy version of the pussy-bow blouses she has worn with nearly all her suits since she entered the race.

She is photographed by Annie Leibovitz, a Vogue veteran and legendary celebrity photographer. (While Leibovitz has caught a lot of flak online for her portraits of Black subjects, Harris seems to glow here.) This time Harris used her own stylist, Leslie Fremar, after Vogue’s own Gabriella Karefa-Johnson styled her for the 2021 cover. She posed at the vice president’s D.C. residence in a pale blue chair with deep red wallpaper behind it – decor that announces a conservative, almost fusty breed of patriotism. Rather than grinning, she offers a close-mouthed smile that’s a bit tight, but her eyes are bright and engaged.

The accompanying piece, a soft-focus portrayal by Vogue and New Yorker writer Nathan Heller, focuses on Harris as the moderate and relatable hard worker: ordering pizza while setting up a campaign in a matter of hours, including a retelling of the anecdote about her husband, Doug Emhoff, being unreachable at SoulCycle when news broke that Biden was dropping out. Friends and fellow politicians, like Nancy Pelosi, recount her care and chutzpah. She expresses frustration with the “binary” conversation around Gaza and Israel. There is even some noodling on her decision not to wear white, as female political figures often do to underscore their historic role.

The contrast between this image and the one three years ago captures Harris’s evolution. Just a few months ago, many Americans saw her as a background figure. But now, we know precisely what she looks like: her hair, her blouses, the cut of her suit. Whether you want her in office or not, the picture shows that she has developed an image as solid and static as any male candidate before her.

Why do politicians appear on the cover of Vogue? To speak to a demographic of women, yes, and to do so with a degree of control that few other outlets would grant. But most of all, they pose for Vogue to create an image that will ricochet around the world as few images will. At the second time of asking, Harris has succeeded in doing that.