A forthcoming book says that Vice President Kamala Harris felt slighted andwounded by the cover photo of her that Vogue selected for its February 2021 issue and dispatched a top aide to complain to Anna Wintour.
This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future, by the New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, will be released in May.
The photo was taken by Tyler Mitchell and featured Harris casually dressed in a Donald Deal pantsuit and sneakers in front of a green and pink background.
The image was published online in January 2021, and it caught the Harris team off guard. The lighting and background portrayed the vice president-elect unflatteringly, and some of Harris' allies and critics charged that the choice to feature Harris dressed more casually failed to give her the respect and gravitas that she deserved.
Harris was wounded, according to Martin and Burns.
According to the book, Harris' top spokeswoman, now an MSNBC host, went directly to Wintour to relay her displeasure with the image.
The team at Vogue loved the images Tyler Mitchell shot and felt the more informal image captured Vice President-elect Harris's authentic, approachable nature, which we feel is one of the hallmarks of the shoot.
The cover photo for the magazine's digital issue and limited-edition print was a different picture of the vice president, with a simpler gold background and a powder-blue pantsuit.
The West Wing and the office of Harris have a major theme of the book.
According to the book, Tina Flournoy, the chief of staff for Harris, raised the issue of the cover image with a senior Biden campaign official. With the nation reeling from the insurrection and the COVID-19 epidemic still raging, the official told Flournoy that he wasn't going to war with Vogue over a trivial aesthetic issue.
Tina, the adviser said, these are first-world problems, according to the authors.
The representative for Vogue did not reply to the request for comment.
According to the authors of the book, Harris felt disrespected by the White House aides not standing when she walked into a room as they did for the president. Flournoy is said to have brought the issue to the attention of the White House advisor.
Harris was unhappy with the portfolio of issues she was assigned to handle, including voting rights, immigration, and the US's relations with the Northern Triangle countries.
They wrote that Harris was re-signed to the assignment of the Northern Triangle nations and did not hesitate to criticize Biden for portraying her as a border czar.
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