Marissa Mayer, Yahoo!'s chief executive, goes chic

Marissa Mayer, the chief of Yahoo!, shows her glamorous side in the new issue of Vogue.

Marissa Mayer, the chief executive of Yahoo!, has appeared on the cover of Bloomberg Businessweek, Fortune and other business magazines. But next month, she graces the pages of a decidedly more chic publication: Vogue.

Mayer, already a celebrity in Silicon Valley circles, was featured in a stylised photo shoot befitting a Hollywood star. Reclining backward on a shapely piece of lawn furniture, she gazes into Mikael Jansson's camera, as she tosses back a tablet device.

"She is an unusually stylish geek," the article, by Jacob Weisberg, says.

"Mogul, Mother, Lightning Rod," reads the teaser headline on the cover of Vogue's closely watched September issue, which weighs in at 902 pages.

This is not the first Vogue appearance for Mayer, who has long embraced her glamorous side. In 2009, while she worked at Google, the magazine photographed her holding a laptop computer. That year, she was also featured in Glamour magazine.

Other female executives have also been featured in glossy magazines in recent years.

In 2008, Erin Callan, then the chief financial officer of Lehman Brothers, appeared in the now-defunct Conde Nast Portfolio. Though Portfolio was a business title, the accompanying photo shoot highlighted Callan's elegance, depicting her emerging from an apparently chauffeured car.

A large photograph of Callan ran with a Wall Street Journal article that year, with a caption that said she was known for being "frank" and "fashionable."

In May this year, Marianne Lake, the chief financial officer of JPMorgan Chase, was photographed for Marie Claire magazine in a black sleeveless top.

But the latest Vogue feature on Mayer emphasises an angle that sometimes makes powerful women in business cringe: fashion choices.

An accompanying slideshow- headlined What Would Marissa Mayer Wear? - takes readers through a hypothetical week for the chief executive, narrated through dresses, shoes and accessories. On Monday, for example, an appropriate item might be a Balenciaga floral jacquard full-skirt dress, which sells for $4,903, according to the article. On Friday, a suitable choice might be Bulgari flower cat eye sunglasses, for which the price is "upon request." And yet, there is one sign that Mayer has not fully crossed over: she does not appear on the cover of the Vogue September issue, regarded as the most-coveted cover spot in the fashion industry. That honor went to the actress Jennifer Lawrence.

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