Why Is Carey Mulligan's Vogue Cover On The New Issue Of French Elle?

By Margaret Hartmann | December 8, 2011 | 4:00pm

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Fashionista has spotted a magazine mystery that will put those skills you developed while reading Highlights to good use. On the right we have Carey Mulligan’s October 2010 Vogue cover, and on the left is the November 2011 issue of Elle France. The two covers obviously used the same photo, though it seems like the images may have been tweaked slightly in Photoshop. Mulligan’s left arm, eye makeup, and smile look a bit different, but it’s possible it’s a scanner issue.

The bigger question is why a foreign edition of Elle is running an old Vogue cover. It would make sense if the magazines were owned by the same company, but they’re a part of Hachette Filipacchi and Condé Nast respectively. Fashionista speculates that photographer Peter Lindbergh owns the rights to the images and sold them to French Elle — though that doesn’t explain why French Elle would want a repeat cover. 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.