First Lady of Fashion

Her husband has broken one barrier by becoming the first black president of America, but Michelle Obama has busted through an even stuffier establishment by appearing on the cover of the next issue of US Vogue. She is only the second First Lady to appear on the front of the most influential fashion magazine in the world, and the excitement around her appearance a week before it hits the newsstands disproves the theory in the fashion world that black women don't make for commercial covers.

There is more internet buzz about Annie Leibovitz's shoot with Obama, a fortysomething, black lawyer, than was ever sparked by the magazine's current cover girl, Blake Lively, a very slim, twentysomething, white actress.

In an interview inside, Obama talks more about her plans for the White House than her clothes. At times, the interviewer, Andre Leon Talley, seems embarrassed to ask her about fashion. He recalls the first time he met her: "Do I remember what Michelle was wearing? Not at all. What I do remember was how informed she was on so many topics."

Although politics might not come to mind when one thinks of US Vogue, its editor, Anna Wintour, has made her leanings well known. As well as co-hosting fundraisers for Barack Obama during the election, she berated Hillary Clinton in the February 2008 issue for backing out of appearing in the magazine, because, Wintour alleged, she had a "fear of looking too feminine".

Wintour signed off with the memorable line: "This is America, not Saudi Arabia." It was the start of a bad month for Clinton: she then lost the New Hampshire primary, although it is difficult to know whether voters were swayed more by Obama's rhetoric or by Wintour's quip. Ironically, Clinton was the first First Lady to appear on Vogue's cover, in 1998.