Why politicians can't stop posing in Vogue

Liz Truss, strongly tipped to be the next leader of the conservative party, would like to enter Vogue. We know this because she asked Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon how to go about it at the Cop26 climate conference last November. Sturgeon said Truss "looked a bit like she swallowed a wasp" when she told him that she created her pages twice.

" This is going to sound really good myself, but I don't want to… I had just been interviewed by Vogue, like you do… that was the main thing she wanted to talk to me about – she wanted how she might get in Vogue", Sturgeon said at a fringe event in Edinburgh last week.

The discussion may have 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 called the leader of the Scottish National Party an 'attention seeker' and told a roundup in Exeter that 'the best thing to do with Nicola Sturgeon is to ignore her'. /p>

But that begs the question: why does acceptance or non-acceptance by a 130-year-old magazine matter to politicians? And what is it about Vogue's image enhancement that is getting political figures on both sides of the Atlantic soaring?

In purely political terms, says James Schneider, former communications director for Jeremy Corbyn (who graced the pages of GQ), a magazine article and its cover can reach people outside of the typical email domain. It stays in circulation for a month and hangs around longer.

"That's the advantage," he says. "The downside risk is sounding stupid, rude, out of touch, or being off key in a particular way." When Corbyn appeared on GQ, his team insisted on high street clothing, according to Schneider. "Normally the magazine would try to make people look cool in a conventional way and ambitious in a consumer way. That's not Jeremy's vibe and we didn't want it to look like his day in Gucci shoes. at 900 pounds."

But, he says, it's no surprise that Truss might want a show on the pages of Vogue. "Liz Truss is very Instagram so I'm sure she would love that. And I'm sure if she wants to be in Vogue after September, she will be. She will try to recreate the best outfits from Mrs Thatcher in any magazine she likes Liz Tilberis, who ran both Vogue in the UK and Harper's Bazaar in the US, had the used to coax celebrities into pointing out that the cute photo could sit on their piano.

< p class="dcr-xry7m2">Theresa May sat down for Vogue< /em> American, not British, and toned down fashion after she was previously criticized for wearing £1000 brown leather trousers.

In the US , Vice President Kamala Harris posed for a photoshoot during her 2020 campaign. Pictured in a black blazer and Capri pants with Converse sneakers, she was reportedly unhappy with the cover photo and reportedly asked his aides, "Would Vogue portray another world leader this way?" A US spokesperson for Vogue said the editors had felt the image captured Harris' "authentic and approachable nature". premium is not the message they want to send. Some, like Hillary Clinton, first agreed (when described as the strong-willed first lady after the Lewinsky affair) and then turned the magazine down when they ran for office.

Michelle Obama accepted in 2009, 2013 and 2016. Laura Bush, Barbara Bush, Nancy Reagan and Melania Trump have never made the cover as first ladies. Trump would have found that hard to swallow. She did in 2005, but not after her husband was elected.

After her successor, Jill Biden, made the cover earlier this year, Melania claimed Vogue was "biased". "They have likes and dislikes, and it's so obvious," she said.

But the calculations, on both sides of the deal, are complex. Stephanie Winston Wolcoff, a former U...