Michelle Obama gets the Vogue treatment

Michelle Obama has been given the cover of US Vogue magazine. The First Lady will feature in the March edition of the style bible - on sale next week - wearing a magenta dress designed by Jason Wu, the young New York designer who fashioned the white floor-length gown she wore to the Inauguration balls in January.
 
Her cover photo - shot by Annie Leibowitz, the photographer famed for her celebrity portraits and also for the infamous spat-that-never-was with the Queen, the subject of a BBC TV scandal in 2007 - will show her seated on a sofa in the Hay Adams Hotel in Washington DC. This is where the Obamas had to set up a temporary home in the weeks before the Inauguration because their daughters' school term started before theirs.

Other shots will feature designs by Narcisco Rodriguez and give a further boost to the preppy US mall favourite, J. Crew (the Obama girls wore outfits from Crew on Inauguration Day).  J. Crew's creative director Jenna Lyons styled the photos, which are said to feature outfits from the chain's as-yet-unseen autumn collection - the sort of publicity any fashion retailer would die for.

In an accompanying article, the President’s wife - a lawyer who was once her husband's boss, when he started out as an intern in Chicago - talks about motherhood and discusses her much-talked-about sense of style. "I love clothes," she says. "First and foremost, I wear what I love. That's what women have to focus on: what makes them happy and what makes them feel comfortable and beautiful. If I can have any impact, I want women to feel good about themselves and have fun with fashion."

She's not the only girl in the White House to have been given the honour: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got the US Vogue cover treatment in 1998, midway through her second term as First Lady.

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