What do Nicole Kidman, a pair of “nepo babies” and a beagle called Sansa Martínez Berlingeri have in common? They all appear on the covers of the all-important September issues of Vogue and Dogue. But the winner of the unofficial battle of the covers? The one with the keenest sense of smell and a penchant for playing with socks.

The September covers of British Vogue and Vogue US have come under intense scrutiny after their recent release, while their canine counterpoint, Dogue, has been almost unanimously celebrated.

Dogue this year features Bad Bunny’s beagle, Lena Dunham’s Mexican hairless Ingrid and her Chinese crested Cornichon, and Millie Bobby Brown’s miniature poodle. The Bad Bunny cover, shot by Eric Rojas in the nostalgia-tinged style of Lady and the Tramp, features four-year-old Sansa. She stares winsomely at the camera, one paw held tenderly by her owner, her tongue wonky and a bowl of spaghetti in front of her.

This contrasts with the reception for British Vogue’s Kidman cover, shot by Venetia Scott, in which the appearance of the Australian-American actor led to discussions online over what some argued was excessive airbrushing. Others questioned whether it was an AI version of the Practical Magic star.

Marian Kwei, a celebrity stylist and Vogue contributor, says she “knew immediately that this was going to stir mixed reactions”. Many held it up as a win for the representation of older women in an industry and a world that is often unkind to older women: Kidman is 59. Others argued it wasn’t cause for celebration, given it presented her so agelessly.

Kwei ties the cover to the wider current phenomenon “where everyone is kind of looking like each other”. In 2019, the New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino wrote about what she saw as the emergence of “a single, cyborgian face”, otherwise known as “Instagram face”, and seven years later it’s only become more extreme. Smooth, poreless, youthful faces are now becoming so mainstream that in some quarters wrinkles are being rewritten as the new status symbols.

The September issue of Vogue US – the first from its new editor, Chloe Malle – features the actors Kaia Gerber (24) and Homer Gere (26), stars of the new Ryan Murphy series The Shards. Photographed by Steven Meisel, a huge name in fashion, and styled by Spencer Singer, the shots have been critiqued as being bland, with Jacob Gallagher in the New York Times saying that the cover “has about as much electricity as a JC Penney back-to-school catalog”.

The photographer Misan Harriman posted on Instagram his 2020 Black Lives Matter-inspired cover, which also featured a duo, the model Adwoa Aboah and footballer Marcus Rashford, and which made him the first Black male photographer to shoot a cover for British Vogue in its 104-year history, alongside this current one. He wrote underneath it: “An interesting observation about socio-cultural change could be made here.”

Kwei says: “I think the reason why that has sparked criticism is … those engaging with these covers are looking for deeper context … We are tired of the nepo babies.” The cover, she says, “feels a little soulless”.

The choice of cover star has also been criticised. Gerber, a model and an actor, is the daughter of the 90s supermodel Cindy Crawford, and Gere is the son of Richard Gere. The fact of their lineage – and their parents previously being married – gives them star power and intrigue, but they are stars yet to fully prove their chops. According to the fashion journalist Lauren Sherman: “It comes down to this: covers matter more than ever because they get passed around online, but it’s also harder than ever to get a celebrity popular enough across generations and subcultures to make an impact.”

The fact of who Gerber and Gere are brought the cover into comparison with the 1992 one, shot by Herb Ritts, featuring their then-married parents. Where Crawford and Gere were on a beach – Wintour was famous, from her first cover onwards, for taking models out of the bland studios that had dominated Vogue covers until then and on to the streets – their progeny are in a grey studio. For Kwei, the 1992 cover had “some context – it helps it build a story”, while “with the Kaia cover there isn’t enough context, there isn’t enough of storytelling”.

The September issues of fashion magazines are the most significant of the year – and what’s on the cover is supposed to say something. “People have come to expect something very special,” says Kwei. Perhaps improbably, this has come in the shape of Sansa the beagle. “I think it was brilliant. It’s very internet-first,” Kwei says, adding that it would be easy to “turn it into a meme”.

In the world of AI-face, the dogs become almost more real, certainly more characterful. Oli Port is the founder and editor of the canine fashion publication Dogue magazine. Launched in 2019, it was, says Port, “the world’s first dog fashion magazine”. She is in a legal dispute with Condé Nast, who launched their take on Dogue in 2024. Port thinks dogs make perfect cover stars because “they are just so authentic”and “it’s fun to see dogs as the stars instead of humans because humans have so much ego … Dogs don’t really care, they just want a good snack.”

Jen Golbeck, an expert in social media and co-author of The Purest Bond: Understanding the Human-Canine Connection, locates the cover “in this space of so much AI-generated content [and] images of people that are AI-generated or AI-modified in a way that a lot of us find horrifying; like we no longer know what’s real.” As she points out: “Now we’re seeing models that don’t actually exist. They’re entirely AI.” This dog, on the other hand, is definitely not.

She continues: “We’re [also] seeing this veer back towards early 2000s skinny culture and there’s a lot of politics with that aesthetic – it aligns with the Trump, Maga lady aesthetic and these patriarchal views on what women are supposed to look like.” Dogs, by contrast, don’t have those kinds of politics attached to them.

“Dogs are always one of those things that exist outside all of those factors that are making us stressed about life and our bodies and fashion and how we’re supposed to look; there’s something beautiful and comforting in that, that everybody wants some of right now.”

So what makes a good dog a good cover girl or boy? According to Amina, whose dog Sir Spud won this year’s second annual civilian Dogue cover contest: “Each one has a special, lovable personality, which is exactly what makes them man’s best friend and such adept cover stars.”

Sir Spud has his own take over email: “We dogs exude love, l’élégance, and class from our paws to our snouts. We are natural stars and belong on the front page; seriously, have you seen me?”