Liz Truss, tipped to be the next leader of the Conservative Party, wants to get into Vogue. We know this because she asked Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon how to do it at the Cop26 climate conference last November. Sturgeon said Truss “looked a bit like she’d swallowed a wasp” when he told her she’d done his pages twice.
“This is going to sound very impressive, but I don’t want to … I’ve just been interviewed by Vogue, and so have you … that was the main thing she wanted to talk to me about – she wanted to know how you could get into Vogue,” said Sturgeon at an event in Edinburgh last week.
The discussion may have been relatively neutral at the time, but its public airing confirmed the strained relationship between the two – one already politically powerful and the other on the verge of becoming so. Earlier in the week, Truss branded the SNP leader an “attention seeker” and told a chase in Exeter that “the best thing you can do with Nicola Sturgeon is ignore her”.
But it begs the question: why does the acceptance or non-acceptance of a 130-year-old journal matter to politicians? And what is it about Vogue’s image enhancement that distinguishes political figures on both sides of the Atlantic?
In purely political terms, says James Schneider, former communications director for Jeremy Corbyn (who graced the pages of GQ), a magazine story and cover can reach people outside the realm of typical messaging. It remains in circulation for one month and lies longer.
“That’s the plus,” he says. “The dangerous risk is that it looks silly, crass, out of touch, or off-key in some particular way.” When Corbyn appears in GQ, his team insists on streetwear, according to Schneider. “Usually a magazine will try to make people look cool in a conventional way and aspirational in a consumer way. That’s not Jeremy’s mood and we didn’t want it to look like his day out wearing £900 Gucci shoes.’
But, he says, it’s not surprising that Truss might want a show in the pages of Vogue. “Liz Truss is very Instagrammable so I’m sure she’ll love it. And I’m sure if she wants to be in Vogue after September, she will be. She would try to recreate Mrs Thatcher’s greatest outfits in any magazine she liked.
Vogue’s spread can be controversial. Liz Tilberis, who ran both British Vogue and American Harper’s Bazaar, persuaded celebrities by pointing out that the lovely picture could sit on their piano.
Theresa May sat for US rather than British Vogue and toned down the fashion after previously being criticized for wearing £1,000 brown leather trousers.
In the US, Vice President Kamala Harris poses for a campaign photo in 2020. Pictured in a black blazer and capri pants with Converse sneakers, she was unhappy with the cover photo and asked her aides: “Is Vogue going to feature another world leader here?” A spokesperson for US Vogue said editors felt the image captured Harris’ “authentic, approachable nature”.
Some have refused – including Tony and Cherie Blair and David and Samantha Cameron – expressing concern that the prestige readership is not in line with the message they want to send. Some, like Hillary Clinton, initially accepted (when she was portrayed as a determined first lady after the Lewinsky affair) and later rejected the magazine when running for office.
Michelle Obama hosted in 2009, 2013 and 2016. Laura Bush, Barbara Bush, Nancy Reagan and Melania Trump were never on the cover as First Ladies. Trump is said to have found this difficult to swallow. She did in 2005, but not after her husband was elected.
After her successor, Jill Biden, was on the cover earlier this year, Melania said Vogue was “biased.” “They have their likes and dislikes and it’s so obvious,” she shot.
But the calculations on both sides of the deal are complicated. Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former US Vogue staffer tasked with editor Anna Wintour’s glitzy Met Ball, later became a White House adviser to Trump before offering a sweeping denial of the latest role in a book, Melania and Me. She said the magazine is no longer just after movie stars and first ladies: it wants global leaders.
“Just like the Met Ball, the invitation usually comes from the magazine, not the other way around,” she says. But, warns Winston Wolkoff, “the magazine knows who it wants to interview and why.”
Amy Odell, author of a recent biography of Wintour, points to a recent cover featuring Ukraine’s first lady Olena Zelenska, which drew criticism from conservative commentators. She says the reaction “speaks to the strength of the brand.”
“Vogue still has a lot of cultural importance and they still invest enough to create quality images,” she says. “Their reach is so good because they write positive pieces, take beautiful pictures and give them space so people want Anna and more, [British editor] Edward Enninful’s seal of approval.
And it turns out to be a two-way street. After rumors surfaced that Wintour was running for U.S. ambassador to Britain in 2013—a post that did not materialize—Michelle Obama opened the Wintour Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. “They [the Obamas] they felt that the story of her ambassadorship had taken off and they wanted to support her,” Odell says.
But there are nuances to the exchange. Political articles in the magazine no longer give fashion credit to every look, and Zelenska’s profile barely mentions her clothes, which would seem awkward under the circumstances. “They’ve evolved their approach and politicians are reevaluating the optics of being in a fashion magazine,” Odell says.
The first lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenska on the cover of Vogue. Photo: Annie Leibovitz for Vogue
Eve McSweeney, who was publications editor at British Vogue and director of publications at the US edition, said: “Nicola Sturgeon was right when she said she got into Vogue when she was asked – you wouldn’t normally lobby to get to its pages. “
Horse trading and consulting only goes so far, it seems. Sometimes a choice is made to immortalize an event in the public record—a new administration, a royal birth, or the retirement of a tennis star (Serena Williams broke the news of her retirement to Vogue).
There is a certain sense in these exchanges that the fashion magazine offers an aspect of continuity that the political sphere cannot muster on its own. “What’s interesting is the increased desire to be featured,” says McSweeney, who worked to get members of the Blair, Cameron and May administrations on Vogue.
“I found that British people are often very crafty and worry that being seen in this kind of elitist context might hurt them. I say go for it! If they’re interesting and influential, we want to read about them in Vogue, why not make a great portrait that will pop up forever in every Google search?”
But she added: “As far as seeing Liz Truss in the magazine pages, it’s not a PR tool for her. She has to wait and see if she ticks the right boxes for editors, which may never happen.
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