In today’s issue:
A number of media outlets have asked me to comment on the possibility of Vogue giving Melania Trump a second cover. I lay out nine reasons why it’s hard to rule it out.
Also behind the paywall: why Vogue has made it so challenging to put her on the cover at this moment while other outlets could pull it off.
“Loose Threads,” including Kim Kardashian’s painful Met Gala corset, Beyoncé’s fragrance launch hilarity, and more.
Anna Wintour could make one of the buzziest and most controversial cover decisions of her nearly 37-year run as Vogue’s editor-in-chief and give First Lady Melania Trump her second cover.
Vogue hasn’t commented on whether or not such a cover is coming, but the press is fervently speculating about it. Anna is a big Democratic fundraiser. One of Joe Biden’s last acts as President was awarding Anna a Presidential Medal of Freedom. She has featured Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, and Jill Biden on covers, while Republican first ladies like Nancy Reagan and Laura Bush have received features inside the magazine. Yet, fashion is leaning more toward dressing this administration than taking a stance against it, as some designers did after the 2016 election.
It’s impossible to know what Anna really thinks about any number of things since she is excellent at keeping her true feelings to herself and speaks to the public like a politician. Even in light of Anna’s personal politics, Vogue doing a second cover with Melania simply wouldn’t surprise me for the following nine reasons.
1 - Reports of a feud between Anna and Melania seem overblown. The British Telegraph recently ran a headline about a “secret war” between them. If you want to understand Melania, you’ll find the definitive account in Stephanie Winston Wolkoff’s juicy and engrossing book Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of my Friendship With the First Lady. Winston Wolkoff worked at Vogue, where she planned the Met Gala for Anna, before she became one of Melania’s advisors as First Lady. I interviewed her for my book ANNA: The Biography in 2021. In our chat, Winston Wolkoff emphasized that Anna was never close with any of the Trumps. Though she’d invite Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner to events, they weren’t Anna’s priority. (“There were certain people she really wants to make sure are taken care of,” Winston Wolkoff said, and Jared and Ivanka weren’t that.) So there was never a great friendship there with anyone in the family that dramatically fell to pieces, for reasons political or otherwise.
The New York Post and other conservative outlets made great hay over Vogue’s review of Melania’s new portrait as First Lady, which accused her of looking “like a freelance magician,” but who knows if Anna even saw that post before it went up? I’m guessing she sees very few of the online stories before they’re published, though Vogue hasn’t commented on it.
2 - People forget that Anna and Vogue hard-launched Melania. Winston Wolkoff wrote in her book that Anna was “instrumental in the creation of Melania Trump.”
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