On the eve of Election Day last fall,
Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Radhika Jones ’94 unveiled the magazine’s newest cover. A half-smiling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posed in a bright white suit against a wall of roses: a century-old symbol of socialism cast as
Vanity Fair glamour.
In the summer, Jones recalls, “We were having conversations about who we would want to see on the cover of the magazine literally in the days after the presidential election. Not knowing who will win, but knowing that everybody desperately in America wants to look forward.” The U.S. representative from New York’s 14th congressional district immediately came to mind, an icon of the continuing, seismic shifts in America’s political culture. “You want to be seeing around the corner and giving your readers a sense of what’s next,” Jones says. “That’s what they’re coming to