Malika Favre’s unseen “if Hillary had won” cover for The New Yorker

Next week’s issue of the New Yorker features an illustration by French artist Malika Favre that never saw the light of day. Why? Because President Donald Trump won. The cover, pictured above, is entitled The First and is the artwork The New Yorker would have published had Hillary Rodham Clinton defeated Donald Trump on 8 November 2016. It’s bold and minimal, making use of negative space resulting in a striking image altogether fitting for an issue that could have been reporting on the first female President of the United States.

Instead of Favre’s illustration, the New Yorker ran "Bob Staake’s The Wall, a visualisation of their feelings towards the result of the election (shown below). As the magazine’s art editor, Françoise Mouly, wrote at the time, “When we first received the results of the election, we felt as though we had hit a brick wall, full force.”

Alongside the cover, the new issue features a conversation between David Remnick and Clinton discussing her new memoir, the campaign and resulting loss. “Clinton’s memoir radiates with fury at the forces and the figures ranged against her,” Remnick writes, “but it is also salted with self-searching, grief, bitterness, and fitful attempts to channel and contain that fury.” Clinton also states, “Literally, at times when I was writing it, I had to go lie down . . . I just couldn’t bear to relive it.”

You can read the full article Hillary Clinton Looks Back in Anger here, or under the headline Still Here in the issue out 25 September 2017.