Jill Biden’s Vogue cover is making waves — but it shouldn’t
by Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, fashion historian, July 18, 2021, washingtonpost.com
Vogue’s first-lady profiles have a storied history that traces the evolution of the role without being partisan. Jill Biden’s August Vogue cover is aggressively inoffensive. It’s neither lushly romantic like the Christmas 1998 issue cover, which draped then first lady Hillary Clinton in red velvet Oscar de la Renta, nor awkward, like February’s Converse-clad Vice President Harris cover.
There are none of the divisive bangs or bared arms that got people talking about Michelle Obama’s three Vogue covers. Biden wears an office-appropriate blue Oscar de la Renta dress dotted with flowers, a patriotic look that’s more symbolic than chic.
Yet the cover has generated controversy, and some confusion, about the role of the fashion magazine in presidential politics. The right-leaning media seized on the fact that no Republican first lady has appeared on the magazine’s cover — and specifically not Melania Trump. In fact, Trump did appear on Vogue’s cover — on the occasion of her wedding in 2005.
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Last line mentions a cover Melania did in 2005 - a decade before her husband ran for President. The Trumps weren’t hated by the left until he ran for POTUS.