Opinion Photoshoot of Ukraine’s President and First Lady makes ‘content’ out of war

Imagine, for a moment, that you’re a journalist in a war zone. You manage, after pulling every string in sight, to get an interview with the president, and the president’s wife, at the head of the relatively small country that has been invaded by a larger, more powerful neighbour. There’s a reporter and a photographer. There’s also a stylist, a style assistant, hair and make-up artist in the team. Even war must be glamourised, it seems, to be sold as a Reel or Tik Tok.

In the information age, everything is “content”. Yet, even by the relaxed standards of the social media era, the glitz with which Ukraine’s first lady Olena Zelenska — along with her husband, Volodymyr Zelenskyy — has been portrayed by Vogue magazine, is drawing comment. In the tastefully decorated presidential office, the couple faces the camera in one picture. And in another, Zelenska is surrounded by rubble and heavily-armed women soldiers. She stares stoically into the distance, hair blowing in the wind, in a designer gown and jacket.

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Why does the high-street look, amid the rubble, bother so many people? After all,it’s hardly surprising for Vogue, arguably the world’s leading fashion magazine to focus on, well, fashion. The problem, if there is one, is from a bygone time when there was a notion that not everything needs to be made pretty, not all of it is fashioned for the consumer. War is tragic, its human cost high. Zelenska and Zelenskyy may need to pose to grab the West’s attention and assistance. But the episode seems suspiciously like a five-course charity dinner to raise money for a famine.