Vogue (magazine) audience could conceivably afford. For example, the inaugural cover of the magazine under Wintour's editorship featured a three-quarter-length photograph of Michaela Bercu, an Israeli model, wearing a bejeweled Christian Lacroix jacket and a pair of jeans, a departure from her predecessors' tendency to portray a woman's face alone; according to "The New York Times", this gave "greater importance to both her clothing and her body". As fashion editor Grace Coddington wrote in her memoirs, the cover "endorsed a democratic new high/low attitude to dressing, added some youthful but sophisticated raciness, and garnished it with a dash of confident energy and
Vogue (magazine) the American issue (the other two men were actors George Clooney and Richard Gere), and the first in which the man was black. Some observers criticized the cover as a prejudicial depiction of James because his pose with Bündchen was reminiscent of a poster for the film "King Kong". Further criticism arose when the website "Watching the Watchers" analyzed the photo alongside the World War I recruitment poster titled "Destroy This Mad Brute". James reportedly however liked the cover shoot. In February 2011, just before the 2011 Syrian protests unfolded, "Vogue" published a controversial piece by Joan Juliet Buck on