American vs. British ELLE: Which Is the Best Taylor Swift Cover?

Taylor Swift has indeed signed a global deal with ELLE to appear on multiple covers of the magazine across the world. Earlier this week, we saw Taylor make her debut on British ELLE, where she sported a questionable Gucci getup, receiving a resounding thumbs down from our forum members. The wait for American ELLE‘s take on Taylor is over and unlike the Selena Gomez and Rihanna global covers previously, Taylor was photographed and styled by an entirely different team for the title’s April 2019 cover shoot. Shot by Ben Hassett and styled by Paul Cavaco, the newsstand cover (below) pictures the hit-maker in a mega close-up shot — letting that bold lip color do all the talking.

IMAGE: ELLE.COM

“What! A close-up cover with bad makeup??” asked ghostwriter10549 the moment the cover dropped.

“Yeah, it’s a real shame about the mouth makeup, it literally ruined the cover,” chimed in Morgane07.

Also majorly underwhelmed was dodencebt: “They made her look like her face is full of fillers and I doubt she really looks like that. The lighting is so unflattering!”

“This shouldn’t have gone wrong – they’ve opted to recreate the classic US ELLE cover style of a close-up portrait, using someone who’s good-looking enough to withstand such scrutiny. But the shadows make her face look unfortunate and the fringe takes away the impact of her eyes,” noted tigerrouge.

Crmsnsnwflks agreed, commenting, “Oh, this is not a flattering photo. It looks like someone punched her in the right eye. The airbrush is also evident. Ben Hassett and US ELLE can do better than this!”

Marc10 added, “Yikes, that’s one of the most unflattering pics I’ve ever seen of her!”

“All I see is a pinched little mouth and a lot of hair. Secondly, the top looks like it’s strangling her. Third, the retouching is absurd! The texture of her skin looks unrealistic and the shadow under the jaw makes it look like her head was placed in post. Fourth, who cares about Taylor Swift anymore?” GivenchyHomme said.