Vanity Fair is facing yet another embarrassing cover crisis.
The cover of the magazine’s March issue is slated to feature a close-up of Jennifer Lawrence, gazing to the right of the camera with parted lips and a shaft of sunlight illuminating the right side of her face, according to a copy obtained by The Post.
That, insiders noted, looks painfully close to the December cover of The Hollywood Reporter, which also pictured a similarly sultry-looking Lawrence, gazing to the right with parted lips and a shaft of sunlight across her right cheek and forehead.
To make matters worse, an earlier, unpublished version of the upcoming Vanity Fair issue had used a cover line with big letters across the bottom — in almost exactly the same, boxy font as the Hollywood Reporter had used across the bottom of its own cover.
Vanity Fair’s new editor, Radhika Jones — the 44-year-old successor to legendary editor Graydon Carter as of Jan. 1 — was caught scrambling with the printers in recent days to at least switch out the fonts in a bid to minimize the embarrassment, according to insiders.
The Post has obtained copies of both versions of the cover, both of which are nevertheless stuck with the same close-up of Lawrence. Indeed, by the time the mistake was caught, it was too late and too expensive to reshoot the image, sources said.
Staffers at VF have been buzzing about the cover, which was shot in early December by fashion’s ubiquitous duo Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, sources said. The Post reached out to The Hollywood Reporter’s editorial director Matthew Belloni for his thoughts, but he declined to comment.
VF downplayed any talk of being unhappy with either version of its cover.
“We’re delighted with our gorgeous cover of Jennifer Lawrence shot by renowned photographers Inez and Vinoodh,” a VF spokesperson said. “Th e image captures the essence of the story, and we stand by it. As with any cover, different options and layouts were considered during the editorial process. There was never any discussion of reshoots, and to suggest there is any kind of crisis here is ridiculous.”
This is the second month in a row VF has botched its cover shoot. Last month, a photo shoot for its Hollywood issue by Annie Leibovitz included Photoshopped images of Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon that appeared to give them extra limbs — three legs in the case of Witherspoon and three hands in the case of Oprah.