Sha'Carri, Aidan, Costner, and Madame Web, Together at Last

Madame Web might have been better if they'd all intersected sooner.

Like many magazines that still exist in tangible form, Vogue did both a physical and a digital cover for August 2024, and I wish they’d flipped them. While its Dr. Jill Biden newsstand effort is perfectly fine and elegant, it’s also undeniably a little stodgy for a magazine that really, really needs to convince younger consumers that it’s still important, instead of composing itself like the latest issue of Vow Renewal Monthly. What they should’ve put out in the world is its digital cover:

I’m sure part of the agreement to get on Dr. Jill’s schedule was landing the actual cover, but, no disrespect to Dr. Jill or to the monumental task of the next four months, this feels like filler. Having a First Lady on the cover a mere three years after her last is unusual — Michelle Obama’s Vogues bookended their eight years in the White House — and arguably a bit lazy, especially when Sha’Carri and/or any number of other Olympians were right there. I suspect Vogue needed this cover done before the…