They said/We said: French Elle and German Glamour reuse a 2010 Vogue cover photo of Carey Mulligan. Scandal!
Love Carey Mulligan? Well, you can certainly see the rising star everywhere. In the exact same photograph. The cover shot, which first graced Vogue’s October 2010 issue, has now made its way onto the latest issues of Fresh Elle and German Glamour. Holy triple vision! While there a few slight (read: photoshopped) differences in the covers, its quite obviously the same image. And the same Chanel couture, mind you.
Photo sharing between magazines happens fairly often, when the image’s rights belong to the photographer rather than the magazine, or sometimes when shared between international issues of the same title. The image’s past though, should always be fully disclosed which leads us to wonder how this snafu happened in the first place? Did the magazines not realize where the image had originally been featured? Did they know, and choose to overlook it instead? We expect some damage control in the very near future.
THEY SAID…
Jezebel: “We’re not sure what’s going on here, but if magazines are starting a foreign exchange program for covers, American Cosmo may want to start looking through old issues of Vogue Italia for covers that might look good with the words “naughty” “vag” and “va-jay-jay” on them.” [Jezebel]
Huffington Post: “We noticed in passing last month, when Kate Moss graced the cover of Marie Claire Australia for the November 2011 issue in a Chanel Spring 2011 feathered dress. Gorgeous pic, but just one problem: the exact same photo appeared seven months earlier on the May 2011 cover of Vogue Nippon.” [Huffington Post]
Fashionista: “Overall, it seems odd that Vogue would allow something like this to happen—and even more odd that French Elle would want a hand-me-down cover, albeit a very charming one, from a competing magazine, that is over a year old. We’re confused. Are you?” [Fashionista]
WE SAID…
Nicole Stafford, photo editor: “We live in a celebrity driven world and the pressure for mags to put celebrities on their covers is apparently at an all-time high—even Elle is willing to run an old cover, let alone a cover that ran on Vogue! Being at a magazine and involved in cover shoots I’m surprised but not entirely shocked by this. But maybe the media calling this out will be more of an incentive for mags to not re-run covers so blatantly.”