As you know, I always long to understand that back room deals and general shenanigans that go with figuring out how which magazine nabs someone super high-profile for their cover. Conventional wisdom would dictate that Vogue will always get the First Lady, but according to a new book about the 2020 election, Vice President Harris and her team were (correctly, to my mind) displeased with their cover, and I wonder if that played a part in Dr. Biden giving the nod to Harper’s. (ALSO y’all just reminded me that Dr. Biden was on Vogue’s cover last August, which I totally forgot because they never sent us those covers so we didn’t write about it and it ergo fell right out of my head!)
The profile is very well done — interesting and quite logistics-y. And she’s wearing American labels in all the photos; the suit on the more formal cover is Ralph Lauren, but she’s wearing a slightly wacky Proenza in the editorial (among other things) that really entertained me. I also enjoyed this small detail:
The president does not get a pass. During the Obama years, they took to hashing out their occasional spats over text to avoid fighting in front of the Secret Service. (They christened it “fexting.”)
Not so long ago, she tapped out a message to him in a fit of pique. “Joe said, ‘You realize that’s going to go down in history. There will be a record of that.’” She grins. “I won’t tell you what I called him that time.”
The concept of the two of them sitting in the back of their car angrily tapping into their phones is funny to me.
I think this is the subscriber’s cover and it cracks me up:
(a) I appreciate Dr. Jill’s commitment to her baseball team, although my own team had some issues with the Phillies earlier this season. (I also appreciate the Phillies’ commitment to their very classic uniform.)
(b) It is very funny to me that this photo makes it look like she was running in for cheesesteaks — which I believe IS what is happening — and then realized that she looked insufficiently profresh and threw a blazer on over her look to, like, First Lady it up. We can still see your jersey, Jill! LEAN INTO IT!
(c) I appreciate the red, white, and blue BAZAAR. I mean, it IS the July issue. Talk about leaning into.
