What's going on here?

Right: American Vogue's October 2010 cover.
Left: French Elle's November 2011 cover.

This is weird. The covers are almost identical, and it seems very unlikely that Vogue would let another magazine use one of their old covers... And why would Elle even want to?

The two magazines aren't even part of the same publishing house, so there really is no reason for them to share photos. The case might be that Vogue doesn't own the rights to the photo, but that the photographer Peter Lindbergh does... But then the question remains: Why would Elle want a hand-me-down cover?

Source: fashionista.com, fashionista