The Business of Magazines

[CTSunshine]

the print media massacre in South Africa continues with the latest update by publisher Media 24

'DRUM' set to stop printing, 'Sunday Sun' set to close as COVID-19 hits Media24


• Closing the Hearst portfolio (Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Bicycling, Runner’s World).
• Publishing DRUM in digital format only.
• Outsourcing the editorial production of the remaining monthly portfolio (Fairlady, SARIE, SA Hunter/Jagter, True Love, tuis | home, Weg! | go! and Weg! Ry & Sleep | go! Drive & Camp) as well as the fortnightly Kuier.
• Reducing the frequency of the monthly magazines to six issues per year

 

[MissMagAddict]

Stephen Gan Is the Latest Magazine Editor Under Fire
Former employees at V, the title he helped found, are criticizing his leadership there, as an industry reconsiders past norms of judgment and exclusion.

By Jacob Bernstein

In mid-June, Stephen Gan, the founder and editor in chief of V magazine and the creative director of Elle, was eviscerated on Diet Prada, the Instagram feed popular in the fashion industry. Many of his former staffers told the editors of the feed that he was racist, homophobic and sexist.

One recalled Mr. Gan — known for his close associations with big industry names like Karl Lagerfeld and Hedi Slimane — ordering an intern to be fired because Mr. Gan didn’t like the way he walked. It was too effeminate.

Another remembered Mr. Gan saying that Alicia Keys, on the cover of V with an Afro, “looked primal.” A third claimed that he paid a Black female employee a settlement after she began tape recording meetings with him in the office.

In a statement Mr. Gan gave to Diet Prada, he said it was “ludicrous” that he, a gay Asian man, would be singled out for homophobia.

He followed it up with a post on V’s Instagram account saying that he was committed to “acknowledging my shortcomings,” though he declined a request to be interviewed for this article, calling the claims “rumors.”

The fashion industry, which has long considered elitism and exclusion to be core values, is going through a painful transition. Bad behavior there tended to be not just forgiven, but also romanticized in the name of creative genius.

Anna Wintour, fashion’s most famous power broker, inspired “The Devil Wears Prada,” a best-selling book that depicts a queen bee fashion editor as the personification of evil. So she showed up to the premiere of the blockbuster movie version in Prada, the perception of nastiness only adding to her mystique.

Recently, after the publication of an unstinting memoir by Ms. Wintour’s longtime colleague André Leon Talley, who is Black, she apologized for “publishing images and stories that were hurtful and intolerant” in Vogue.

Over at Harper’s Bazaar, the perennial runner-up of American fashion magazines, where Mr. Gan had a second job as its creative director from 2001 until 2018, Glenda Bailey, the editor in chief, long positioned herself externally as the so-called nice editor, parlaying her Mancunian accent and bustling manner into a mumsy image.

But internally Ms. Bailey was known for burning through staff members, dozens of whom complained in recent years to the human resources department of Hearst (its parent company) about what they regarded to be verbally abusive behavior, according to six former employees at the magazine and two Hearst executives.

Efforts by management consultants who were brought in by Hearst to work with Ms. Bailey on her behavior never got more than temporary results, the executives said.

Late last year, Ms. Bailey’s employers came to the belief that the #MeToo movement was going to give way to a broader reckoning about bad boss behavior and reached the conclusion that after almost 19 years, Ms. Bailey’s role needed to change, according to two people with knowledge of the situation who were not authorized to speak publicly by Hearst. (Ms. Bailey did not respond to a request for comment for this article.)

Soon after, Hearst announced that Ms. Bailey was “stepping down” and being made a “global consultant” for Harper’s Bazaar’s 29 editions worldwide. Four months later, the U.S. edition of Harper’s Bazaar hired Samira Nasr, its first Black editor in chief in its history.

In part because V, unlike Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, is an independent fashion magazine known for its campy, risk-taking ethos, some were surprised Mr. Gan himself would come under fire.

In response to questions for this article, Mr. Gan, through a representative, sent a lengthy email to The New York Times. His statement did not respond directly to any of the claims made by his former staff members, but said that V’s mandate was to celebrate “uniqueness and champion individuality.”

That is largely true.

Musical artists of color like Mariah Carey, Alicia Keys and Missy Elliott, who sold millions of albums but never got American Vogue covers, got covers of V, which was also the first major fashion magazine to feature Beyoncé in that spot, in 2004.

Mr. Gan also said he could not have “published a scantily clad Ashley Graham or put Hunter Schafer or Lizzo on the covers of V and produce these shoots with an editorial team that thought I’d be judgmental on how they themselves looked.”

The magazine has had few Black employees in significant creative positions over the years. More than half a dozen people who worked at V over the last decade said that Mr. Gan seemed to favor his male employees and marginalize women, although nearly everyone was subjected to lacerating comments.

“He had little to no regard for the people who worked for him,” said Ricky Michiels, a former photo editor at V who started in June 2017 and quit four months later with no job lined up. “We were all disposable.”

Natasha Stagg, who worked at the magazine from 2012 to 2016, by which point she was its editor, said: “We connected over our love for tragic figures and pop culture and impossible personalities and fantasy fashion, but I always felt sort of analytical when I was talking about those things, and I think Stephen was totally just in it.”

“There was a kind of performative quality to his behavior,” she said, adding, “It was like a cartoon — in my mind it was even a little comical, except that it shouldn’t really be funny.”

Carolyne Loreé Teston came to the magazine as Mr. Gan’s assistant in 2015 after three years at Baron & Baron, one of the industry’s most well-known ad agencies. She cried last week as she talked about her concerns over discussing her former boss publicly. “I don’t want to hurt him, I don’t want to dance on his grave,” she said.

But having quit her job there in 2016 after just eight weeks, she believed a reckoning was nevertheless in order.

“It was like ‘The Devil Wears Prada,’” she said “Everyone was afraid of Stephen.”

Breaking Away

Mr. Gan’s career really began in 1991 with the start of Visionaire, a publication that was neither fashion magazine nor art object but something in between. It was founded by Mr. Gan, an art director; James Kaliardos, a top makeup artist who had been his classmate at the Parsons School of Design; and their friend Cecilia Dean, a former model and erstwhile connector and ideas person.

The 1998 “Light” issue was designed by Tom Ford and Gucci and took the form of a sleek light box for viewing 24 slides by artists like Andreas Gursky and Sam Taylor-Wood. The 3,300 copies, which sold for $425 apiece, quickly became collectibles.

In 1999, Mr. Gan and his partners started V, a consumer fashion magazine that looked like the love child of Interview and W and became a showcase for photographers such as Inez van Lamsweerde, Steven Klein and Mario Testino.

Two years later, Ms. Bailey, who’d achieved great success editing Marie Claire, took over Harper’s Bazaar and hired Mr. Gan as her creative director. It was a choice that “brought her immediate credibility on the runway,” as David Carr wrote in The Times.

As part of his deal with Hearst, Mr. Gan, who is now 54, was allowed to continue running V.

He became close friends with Hedi Slimane, art-directed ad campaigns for Chanel and hosted parties with Chanel’s designer, Karl Lagerfeld, and his young godson, Hudson Kroenig.

Over the years, Mr. Gan also became more and more interested in mainstream pop culture, while Ms. Dean and Mr. Kaliardos veered further into the art world.

In 2014, Mr. Kaliardos and Ms. Dean split from Mr. Gan. They took Visionaire; he kept V (along with the SoHo offices). “It was like parents getting divorced,” Ms. Stagg said.

Hannah Huffman, who worked as an office manager and photo director at the magazine from 2015 to 2018, believed the sole reason she was hired at the magazine was her appearance. “I literally walked into the office, Stephen came into the conference room, looked me up and down, said, ‘OK,’ and then walked out,” she said. “It didn’t matter what else was going on or if I was a qualified human.”

Assistants regularly worked 11-hour days and were called in for meetings on weekends.

Mr. Gan “wasn’t a screamer,” said Sara Zaïdane, a market editor at the magazine from 2016 to March 2020. But that didn’t stop him from engaging in what she regarded to be abusive behavior, dressing her down and humiliating her in front of their colleagues. “He liked to have an audience.”

“I was in charge of the credit lists,” Ms. Zaïdane said. “And in the spring of 2019, I put Saint Laurent on a list when we had another shoot entirely of Saint Laurent. In my mind, it made sense to have another look. We gave highest priority to brands that spent the most money on ad pages, and they were one of our biggest vendors, but he decided to take 15 minutes in a staff meeting to tell me I was disorganized and that Karl Lagerfeld’s godson could do my job better than me. So that was what he felt: I was less qualified to do my job than an 11-year-old.”

Another time, Mr. Gan walked into the fashion closet and noticed that the clock wasn’t working. “He just went off, saying I had no attention to detail, that my apartment is probably a mess because I can’t even see things when they’re right in front of my face,” Ms. Zaïdane said. “He said my time at the magazine — that the clock was ticking. And he said this with a whole group of people standing around.” (Both anecdotes were confirmed by another staff member who worked contemporaneously with her.)

Mr. Michiels was one of several former employees who came to believe that Mr. Gan favored male staff members. “It was so ironic,” Mr. Michiels said. “Here’s a guy who idolizes women’s beauty and bodies, but the women in his office he couldn’t even bother saying good morning or thank you to. With me and Hannah, If we ever had a problem — maybe I sent a call sheet too late — she would take the brunt of it, even though I was the senior person and was at fault. No matter what, it was Hannah’s fault.”

Booty Shorts and a Dinosaur

In the summer of 2016, Mr. Michiels and Ms. Huffman hired an intern who wasn’t thin. “Steven said, ‘Who hired her?’” Mr. Michiels recalled. “He said she didn’t fit V. He was appalled that we would hire someone who was not stick thin. It had nothing to do with her work ethic or anything, it was strictly based on looks. He never even talked to her.”

Mr. Gan suggested firing her, they said. Ms. Huffman and Mr. Michiels refused — “She wasn’t even being paid!” Mr. Michiels said — and soon left their positions.

In 2017, Bianca Collado finished her sophomore year at Hunter College and took an internship at V. Five weeks in, she wore what she described as a “halter top with high-waisted jeans and a little jacket over it” and no bra underneath.

That day, a catered lunch was being served in the office, she said, and Mr. Gan walked up to her.

“He’d never even spoken to me before and the first words out of his mouth were: ‘What makes you think you can wear that here?’” Ms. Collado said. “He was looking at my chest as he said this, and I didn’t even know what to say. I think I replied, ‘I didn’t realize it was a problem,’ and he said, ‘I don’t ever want to see you wearing anything like this ever again.’”

Ms. Collado thought it was ridiculous. “The boys wore booty shorts and cut-up crop tops to the office,” she said. She quit that afternoon.

By then, the industry was facing pressure to diversify after several years in which designers like Dolce & Gabbana and Celine had staged fashion shows all but devoid of Black models.

Mr. Gan’s own record on race was mixed.

In 2009, he placed Lady Gaga on the cover of V wearing makeup that many thought to be blackface. In 2010, he was photographed at a Halloween party in redface, in a costume that appropriated stereotypical (and imagined) Native American design elements.

There are conflicting reports about Mr. Gan’s future at Elle. On June 15, WWD reported that his contract, expiring soon, would not be renewed. Two days later, Mr. Gan said he was still employed. And the allegations against him don’t pertain to his behavior at Hearst.

Some of Mr. Gan’s colleagues, particularly those who are a little older, say informal and cutting humor on the basis of appearance, race and sexual orientation is endemic to the fashion business, and that if Mr. Gan is being held to account for his comments, then few working in fashion are safe.

But Mr. Gan’s younger employees argue that it is possible to be openly gay and homophobic; to be both a champion of women and Black celebrities, and an abuser of women and Black people whose demeanor and appearance does not comport to rigid standards.

As one of the industry’s most prominent people of color, Mr. Gan has himself been the brunt of racist jokes over the years.

A few years ago, a staff member sat next to him at a dinner with Mr. Lagerfeld. The designer regaled guests with wisdom about the benefits of having Mexican housekeepers. Later, Mr. Lagerfeld sent Mr. Gan a gift, a sculpture of a dinosaur with a message written down the center: “Made in China.”

Funnily enough, Mr. Gan, who was born in the Philippines to Chinese parents, didn’t like it. He gave it to another editor on staff.
source | nytimes

 

[Phuel]

...people whose demeanor and appearance does not comport to rigid standards.

LOL it’s call the high standards of high fashion and what made it so successful/inspirational/aspirational in previous eras. HF is not everyday consumer-end where everybody can relate and it's why treating it as such is killing/killed the industry.

Off course people need to be kinder and more considerate-- and just stop acting like silly, petty high school mean girls. But insisting on affirmative action and lowering the standards so that everybody will feel inclusive and accessible, while blatantly lacking the creative talent and hard-earned skills will not rejuvenate the industry.

 

[caioherrero]

So Samira Will not change bazaar masthead?

 

[caioherrero]

Olivier Lalanne has been appointed editor-in-chief of GQ France and will lead the newly created men's division for Condé Nast France.

"GQ is a reference in terms of elegance and style with a lively and incandescent spirit. I am very excited to join the editorial team," he said.

 

[Benn98]

A far better choice than the current EIC!
Now, tell Ylias Nacer to shape up or ship out.

 

[MissMagAddict]

A Lighthouse for Magazines

By Nathan Taylor Pemberton

The Casa Magazines employee Ali Wasimsays he wants to sell magazines until the day he dies. Photograph by Sabreen Jafry​

The most recognizable newsstand in Manhattan’s West Village, Casa Magazines, had been open every day for the past twenty-six years, without exception. During Hurricane Sandy, in 2012, when power went out, Casa’s owner, Mohammed Ahmed, and his employee, Ali Wasim, used flashlights to sell magazines and newspapers. Their streak ended this May, when two plainclothes N.Y.P.D. officers entered the shop and told Ahmed that he was in violation of the mayor’s executive order closing all nonessential businesses owing to COVID-19. After being assured by a 311 representative that Casa qualified as an essential business back in March, when the city restricted nonessential retailers, Ahmed had kept his doors open. Now the officers warned him that a violation of the order would result in a ten-thousand-dollar fine.

That same afternoon, Wasim closed the store, leaving behind a handwritten note taped to the storefront: “Taking it day by day. Thinking & missing all of you. Please stay in touch.” While the shop itself feels like a mere compartment, spilling out of a wedge-shaped space on West Twelfth Street, to the West Village it is an institution. For “Westies,” Casa is a clubhouse and a weekend confessional. For destination tourists—that is, people who are not locals—it’s the only living shrine to print culture in New York City.

The shop’s closure came during a chaotic stretch for the media as a whole. The downturn set off by the economic ruptures of COVID-19 disrupted magazine advertising and distribution. For an industry already built on a fault line, the pandemic has exposed its precariousness, triggering a slew of layoffs and furloughs in the face of budget reductions. Independent publications like the California Sunday Magazine, which is sold by Casa, announced the end of their print editions, planning to move to digital only. The turmoil has carried into July, as the national conversation on racial justice, following nationwide protests against the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, cast a critical light on magazines led by predominantly white, and financially privileged, mastheads.

Few outside the industry experience these tremors. But, for the past two decades, Ahmed has felt each vibration acutely, like a needle swinging a seismograph, recording as the magazine industry has shuddered and spiked toward a gradual decline. While the shop stood lifeless in blustery May, I reached Ahmed on the phone. Sixty-nine years old, he was at high risk for the virus and had left the city to stay with family in Delaware. An immigrant, originally from Hyderabad, India, Ahmed did not waste his words as he explained, over the sounds of his granddaughter playing in the background, that the shop’s future was directly contingent on the industry’s own fortunes. He is searching for a large investor (“a big guy”) to come in as a benefactor. “Since 2010,” he said, “business has been going down every year. We were surviving, but now it’s very bad. I don’t know how long until it goes back to normal.”

In just the past decade, Ahmed said that the number of magazines he carries in the shop has shrunk by a third. A thousand publications or more have disappeared in this time because, as he puts it, the world now prefers to “look with its fingers.” Ahmed recognized, without a trace of pity or gloom, that the industry was falling apart and shared no optimism that a recovery could take place. It was, simply put, a fact of the situation. At the end of the call, Ahmed asked if this story would be in print; he let out a conciliatory sigh when I informed him that it would appear only on The New Yorker’s Web site. “I don’t like digital. I like print,” he noted again. “But send me a link.”

In the face of large-scale tragedy, magazines can be dismissed as trivial pursuits for a privileged sect of readers, which isn’t exactly off base. But Casa’s steady existence is a kind of rebuttal both to this kind of thinking and to the logic of all-controlling editors. Ahmed’s shop inverts the hierarchical values of a magazine—that importance, taste, the promise of connection, and the creation of fantasy, and whatever else, flow from the top down to the rest of us—and suggests the opposite: it is people who confer value back to magazines. A shop like Casa doesn’t sell fantasy, or truth, in print form. Instead, it’s selling intricately designed and artfully produced excuses for people to step out of their lives and into a real community. In many ways, Casa is a living exercise in building the culture packaged in its magazines.

When the neighborhood first heard that the shop had closed, a GoFundMe page was quickly set up and small donations began to roll in. Many were accompanied with messages describing the store as if it were a cherished friend. “Casa Magazines is the heart and soul of the West Village,” one read. “Yes, it’s the wonderful newspapers and magazines they sell, some of which you will never get anywhere else in NYC, but it’s the humor and warmth and wisdom of Mohammed and Ali that make it indispensable. We can’t let them go. We need them in our lives.” There was a message from Luis, an M.T.A. bus driver whose daily Midtown West route stops in front of the store: “We love you all and stay safe!!!”

The page soon raised more than twenty-four thousand dollars toward Casa’s rent and utilities and supplier costs, with the rest covering Ahmed’s and Wasim’s wages. While the shop was still closed, its Instagram account was busy with announcements and stories that urged followers to support not just the shop but its neighboring diner, Le Bonbonnière, with equal vigor. “Casa became a touchstone for people in the neighborhood,” said Happy David, who runs the store’s Instagram account on her own time, between work as a jewelry designer and digital-marketing strategist. Customers frequently take pictures with Ahmed and Wasim, as do the Village’s more famous denizens, like the actresses Julianne Moore, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Liv Tyler. “People tell Mohammed all kinds of things—if they’ve met somebody or if someone’s moved away or if they’re getting divorced,” David said. “You see kids lining up outside just to talk to Ali.”

David, an immigrant who lives in Astoria, first started coming to Casa Magazines at the behest of her sister Tammy, who wanted magazines she couldn’t find in Manila, their home town. “Everyone back in the Philippines always asks for T Magazine,” David explained. Three years ago, she convinced Ahmed that he needed to be on social media to increase the store’s chances of survival. I asked David if she thought print magazines were special in any particular way. She answered that, when she was a girl in Manila, her mother would take her and her sister to a nearby newsstand to get international magazines. “My sister and my mom got me into magazines growing up. I remember when my mom brought home a copy of George. Being in Asia, magazines were our portal to the U.S. We could experience the same culture.”

Days after I spoke with David, she texted to say that the shop had been approved to reopen by the mayor’s office. The sudden go-ahead from the city was the result of some frantic maneuvering by two West Village residents, James Reginato, a writer-at-large for Vanity Fair, and George Capsis, the C.E.O. of the neighborhood’s monthly paper, WestView News, who lobbied Corey Johnson, the speaker of the New York City Council, and Freddi Goldstein, the mayor’s press secretary, for help. “Mohammed was distraught after the cops barged in, and I was outraged for them,” Reginato told me.

On Casa’s first weekend back, I stopped by the shop, which sits across from the West Village’s busy Abingdon Square Park. A small folding table was set up in front of the entrance. On top of it lay copies of the Daily News, the New York Post, and the Wall Street Journal in piles pinned down by cans of Coca-Cola. Inside, Ali Wasim stood behind the counter, wearing a KN95 mask, as he took a FaceTime call. He turned the phone to face me, explaining that he was being interviewed by an Italian journalist. “This is a journalist, too,” Wasim said back to the pixelated woman on the screen. “You should ask him some questions!”

Wasim is a large presence in the store’s crowded space. His voice is a musical counterpoint to Ahmed’s controlled explanations, a contrast magnified by the store’s magazine-dampened acoustics. Wasim first came to the U.S. from Pakistan nearly twenty-five years ago and has worked only at newsstands in the time since. Each day, he drives into Manhattan from Bayside, Queens, where he lives with his three children and elderly mother. The disorder set in motion by the virus is a direct antagonist to Wasim’s life at the store. The crisis, to him, is worse than Sandy or even 9/11, not because of flagging sales but for how it has handicapped his ability to be close to other people—the reason he sells magazines. “You cannot shake hands or hug people. During 9/11, you saw people crying and you could clean their tears. This is making the world more different.” Without prompting, he handed me a bottle of water and went to help a younger-looking man, who asked for a recent issue of GQ with Kanye West on the cover. “I didn’t recognize you because of the mask,” Wasim told him, happily, after making the connection.

Outside, at the table, an elderly white woman waved a copy of the Wall Street Journal toward Wasim as she handed over several dollar bills. “I’m so glad you carry this!” she said before scuttling off. “Most of the older people in the Village have been cranky because we don’t have the Financial Times this weekend. Oh my God!” Wasim joked through his mask. At the end of my visit, I made my way to the register with a small handful of magazines. “Ah, you want to support Casa, too,” he said approvingly. I asked him if he had ever considered a life beyond the store should things take a turn for the worse. Wasim considered it only for a moment. Casa would survive, he said, adding that he’d like to sell magazines until the day he died. Then he handed me my change.
source | thenewyorker

 

[Benn98]

Oh this is heartwarming, thanks for posting MMA!

 

[axiomatic]

Not sure if this has been posted elsewhere..

Valentina Sampaio Makes History as Sports Illustrated’s First Trans Model

By Janelle Okwodu

July 10, 2020
swimsuit issue is a modeling institution. In the 56 years since its inception, the special edition has elevated stars like Heidi Klum, Tyra Banks, and Ashley Graham to household-name status, and each year it ushers in a new set of rookies from around the globe. The parameters for success have historically been narrow, but the concept has evolved to reflect the times. The year 2020 brings the first trans woman to grace SI’s pages, the Brazilian-born model Valentina Sampaio. She’s used to breaking boundaries—Sampaio was already the first trans model to make the cover of a Vogue edition—but discovering she had made the cut was special. “The team at SI has created yet another groundbreaking issue by bringing together a diverse set of multitalented, beautiful women in a creative and dignified way,” she shared with Vogue. “I am excited and honored to be part [of this].”

The Vogue writer used to be a tfs mod, right?

 

[Phuel]

A Lighthouse for Magazines

By Nathan Taylor Pemberton

The Casa Magazines employee Ali Wasimsays he wants to sell magazines until the day he dies. Photograph by Sabreen Jafry​

The most recognizable newsstand in Manhattan’s West Village, Casa Magazines, had been open every day for the past twenty-six years, without exception. During Hurricane Sandy, in 2012, when power went out, Casa’s owner, Mohammed Ahmed, and his employee, Ali Wasim, used flashlights to sell magazines and newspapers. Their streak ended this May, when two plainclothes N.Y.P.D. officers entered the shop and told Ahmed that he was in violation of the mayor’s executive order closing all nonessential businesses owing to COVID-19. After being assured by a 311 representative that Casa qualified as an essential business back in March, when the city restricted nonessential retailers, Ahmed had kept his doors open. Now the officers warned him that a violation of the order would result in a ten-thousand-dollar fine.

That same afternoon, Wasim closed the store, leaving behind a handwritten note taped to the storefront: “Taking it day by day. Thinking & missing all of you. Please stay in touch.” While the shop itself feels like a mere compartment, spilling out of a wedge-shaped space on West Twelfth Street, to the West Village it is an institution. For “Westies,” Casa is a clubhouse and a weekend confessional. For destination tourists—that is, people who are not locals—it’s the only living shrine to print culture in New York City.

The shop’s closure came during a chaotic stretch for the media as a whole. The downturn set off by the economic ruptures of COVID-19 disrupted magazine advertising and distribution. For an industry already built on a fault line, the pandemic has exposed its precariousness, triggering a slew of layoffs and furloughs in the face of budget reductions. Independent publications like the California Sunday Magazine, which is sold by Casa, announced the end of their print editions, planning to move to digital only. The turmoil has carried into July, as the national conversation on racial justice, following nationwide protests against the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, cast a critical light on magazines led by predominantly white, and financially privileged, mastheads.

Few outside the industry experience these tremors. But, for the past two decades, Ahmed has felt each vibration acutely, like a needle swinging a seismograph, recording as the magazine industry has shuddered and spiked toward a gradual decline. While the shop stood lifeless in blustery May, I reached Ahmed on the phone. Sixty-nine years old, he was at high risk for the virus and had left the city to stay with family in Delaware. An immigrant, originally from Hyderabad, India, Ahmed did not waste his words as he explained, over the sounds of his granddaughter playing in the background, that the shop’s future was directly contingent on the industry’s own fortunes. He is searching for a large investor (“a big guy”) to come in as a benefactor. “Since 2010,” he said, “business has been going down every year. We were surviving, but now it’s very bad. I don’t know how long until it goes back to normal.”

In just the past decade, Ahmed said that the number of magazines he carries in the shop has shrunk by a third. A thousand publications or more have disappeared in this time because, as he puts it, the world now prefers to “look with its fingers.” Ahmed recognized, without a trace of pity or gloom, that the industry was falling apart and shared no optimism that a recovery could take place. It was, simply put, a fact of the situation. At the end of the call, Ahmed asked if this story would be in print; he let out a conciliatory sigh when I informed him that it would appear only on The New Yorker’s Web site. “I don’t like digital. I like print,” he noted again. “But send me a link.”

In the face of large-scale tragedy, magazines can be dismissed as trivial pursuits for a privileged sect of readers, which isn’t exactly off base. But Casa’s steady existence is a kind of rebuttal both to this kind of thinking and to the logic of all-controlling editors. Ahmed’s shop inverts the hierarchical values of a magazine—that importance, taste, the promise of connection, and the creation of fantasy, and whatever else, flow from the top down to the rest of us—and suggests the opposite: it is people who confer value back to magazines. A shop like Casa doesn’t sell fantasy, or truth, in print form. Instead, it’s selling intricately designed and artfully produced excuses for people to step out of their lives and into a real community. In many ways, Casa is a living exercise in building the culture packaged in its magazines.

When the neighborhood first heard that the shop had closed, a GoFundMe page was quickly set up and small donations began to roll in. Many were accompanied with messages describing the store as if it were a cherished friend. “Casa Magazines is the heart and soul of the West Village,” one read. “Yes, it’s the wonderful newspapers and magazines they sell, some of which you will never get anywhere else in NYC, but it’s the humor and warmth and wisdom of Mohammed and Ali that make it indispensable. We can’t let them go. We need them in our lives.” There was a message from Luis, an M.T.A. bus driver whose daily Midtown West route stops in front of the store: “We love you all and stay safe!!!”

The page soon raised more than twenty-four thousand dollars toward Casa’s rent and utilities and supplier costs, with the rest covering Ahmed’s and Wasim’s wages. While the shop was still closed, its Instagram account was busy with announcements and stories that urged followers to support not just the shop but its neighboring diner, Le Bonbonnière, with equal vigor. “Casa became a touchstone for people in the neighborhood,” said Happy David, who runs the store’s Instagram account on her own time, between work as a jewelry designer and digital-marketing strategist. Customers frequently take pictures with Ahmed and Wasim, as do the Village’s more famous denizens, like the actresses Julianne Moore, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Liv Tyler. “People tell Mohammed all kinds of things—if they’ve met somebody or if someone’s moved away or if they’re getting divorced,” David said. “You see kids lining up outside just to talk to Ali.”

David, an immigrant who lives in Astoria, first started coming to Casa Magazines at the behest of her sister Tammy, who wanted magazines she couldn’t find in Manila, their home town. “Everyone back in the Philippines always asks for T Magazine,” David explained. Three years ago, she convinced Ahmed that he needed to be on social media to increase the store’s chances of survival. I asked David if she thought print magazines were special in any particular way. She answered that, when she was a girl in Manila, her mother would take her and her sister to a nearby newsstand to get international magazines. “My sister and my mom got me into magazines growing up. I remember when my mom brought home a copy of George. Being in Asia, magazines were our portal to the U.S. We could experience the same culture.”

Days after I spoke with David, she texted to say that the shop had been approved to reopen by the mayor’s office. The sudden go-ahead from the city was the result of some frantic maneuvering by two West Village residents, James Reginato, a writer-at-large for Vanity Fair, and George Capsis, the C.E.O. of the neighborhood’s monthly paper, WestView News, who lobbied Corey Johnson, the speaker of the New York City Council, and Freddi Goldstein, the mayor’s press secretary, for help. “Mohammed was distraught after the cops barged in, and I was outraged for them,” Reginato told me.

On Casa’s first weekend back, I stopped by the shop, which sits across from the West Village’s busy Abingdon Square Park. A small folding table was set up in front of the entrance. On top of it lay copies of the Daily News, the New York Post, and the Wall Street Journal in piles pinned down by cans of Coca-Cola. Inside, Ali Wasim stood behind the counter, wearing a KN95 mask, as he took a FaceTime call. He turned the phone to face me, explaining that he was being interviewed by an Italian journalist. “This is a journalist, too,” Wasim said back to the pixelated woman on the screen. “You should ask him some questions!”

Wasim is a large presence in the store’s crowded space. His voice is a musical counterpoint to Ahmed’s controlled explanations, a contrast magnified by the store’s magazine-dampened acoustics. Wasim first came to the U.S. from Pakistan nearly twenty-five years ago and has worked only at newsstands in the time since. Each day, he drives into Manhattan from Bayside, Queens, where he lives with his three children and elderly mother. The disorder set in motion by the virus is a direct antagonist to Wasim’s life at the store. The crisis, to him, is worse than Sandy or even 9/11, not because of flagging sales but for how it has handicapped his ability to be close to other people—the reason he sells magazines. “You cannot shake hands or hug people. During 9/11, you saw people crying and you could clean their tears. This is making the world more different.” Without prompting, he handed me a bottle of water and went to help a younger-looking man, who asked for a recent issue of GQ with Kanye West on the cover. “I didn’t recognize you because of the mask,” Wasim told him, happily, after making the connection.

Outside, at the table, an elderly white woman waved a copy of the Wall Street Journal toward Wasim as she handed over several dollar bills. “I’m so glad you carry this!” she said before scuttling off. “Most of the older people in the Village have been cranky because we don’t have the Financial Times this weekend. Oh my God!” Wasim joked through his mask. At the end of my visit, I made my way to the register with a small handful of magazines. “Ah, you want to support Casa, too,” he said approvingly. I asked him if he had ever considered a life beyond the store should things take a turn for the worse. Wasim considered it only for a moment. Casa would survive, he said, adding that he’d like to sell magazines until the day he died. Then he handed me my change.
source | thenewyorker

He clearly loves what he does and not about greed. Hope he stays in business for as long as he wishes to work. He’s a landmark and haven that’s becoming rarer and fewer as time goes by. Kidz don’t care to pay for magazines cuz their editorial consumption is digital and SM and disposable, and most people won’t know what they’ve got ’til it’s gone… Time will claim and render obsolete the majority of publications— and rightfully so. But there will always be ones that will survive, evolve and even begin again as long as they’re the ones leading with a point of view, and not following the herd/mob/mass. There will be people that will love the labor of craft of the presentation of high design and high fashion-- like Stephen, Cecelia and James did once. And not about corporate greed and hoarding from top management while treating everyone else like disposable sweatshop workers.

(My memories of certain bookstores that carried all the most coveted rags, from Vogue Paris to L’UOMO my friends and I would get our fashion fix when we were in HS, then another one that I went to when I was in University which had all the rags; with a corner where back issues of Vogue Italia can be had for a discount [along with where I’d save up and buy Herb Ritts' and Bruce Weber’s books], are both long gone now. There was a certain thrill to rushing to the store and spotting the newest arrivals of Arena Homme Plus/Vogue Homme/L’OUMO and grabbing them, flipping through quickly just enough to tease with the eye candy within— cuz I had to savour that moment when I can fully get lost and escape into its 300+ pages when I'm alone… And the feel of premium paper stock on the fingers :sigh

 

[MissMagAddict]

No pics this time. Sunday, lazy day.

Living Her Best Lockdown
As Angelica Cheung, the editor of Vogue China, heads back to the office, she reflects on an isolated life well lived

By Julia Llewellyn Smith

In late January, Angelica Cheung, the veteran editor of Vogue China, returned to her home city of Beijing after a week at the Paris fashion shows and an international Vogue conference in London, excited to be reunited with her family.

Cheung had been so busy on her travels that at first she’d paid little attention to news coming out of the city of Wuhan, 700 miles from Beijing, about the emergence of a mysterious new coronavirus that had been identified by the Chinese government on December 31.

“Just in the last two days in London, I started to feel it might be serious,” says Cheung, who, as the arbiter of taste to an audience of 1.4 billion people, is arguably the most powerful woman in fashion in the world. “London colleagues even offered to send some masks to Beijing for us.”

On landing in the capital, she immediately caught the bullet train to Thaiwoo ski resort, 160 miles north of Beijing, where her Yorkshireman husband, Mark Graham, and daughter, Hayley, then 12, were staying to celebrate the Chinese new year. “I thought it would be safe there away from the city and the crowds,” she says.

But the following morning, the family were informed that in just a few hours the resort was shutting down. Cheung’s family were some of the last guests to leave, dragging their cases along empty corridors. “Hayley commented that it felt rather eerie, a bit like in the horror movie The Shining,” Cheung says, chuckling.

“While we waited for the railway station shuttle bus to arrive in driving snow, we were full of apprehension, wondering what would await us,” says Cheung. Back in Beijing, they learnt they were to be confined to their apartment in a city-centre compound for two weeks, the coronavirus incubation period.

Finding Her Rhythm

Two weeks, of course, have dragged into two months – and with Britain now playing catch-up with China, I’m fascinated to learn if Cheung, 53, has experienced the same fear and stresses as we have.

“Obviously people were very worried – what would this lockdown be like? No one knew what you could and couldn’t do,” she says. “Everybody was trying to read everything about the virus and, seeing the figures, you began to feel a bit apprehensive – and for a while, everything seemed to be getting worse. But amazingly, after a while you do settle into a different rhythm and you do get used to it.”

Cheung’s talking to me from her Beijing apartment where, throughout the lockdown, she has been working with a team of remote colleagues, keeping afloat Chinese Vogue.

This is the biggest-selling of all the magazine’s international editions, with a print readership of 2 million and a social media following of 12 million, informing the style of a population that currently consumes 33 per cent of the world’s luxury market, a figure predicted to rise – notwithstanding the virus’s economic effects – to 41 per cent by 2025.

I’d imagined she would be a forbidding Vogue-editor stereotype (the handful I’ve met in person haven’t disappointed on that score). But either this was never Cheung’s style, or the pandemic is a great leveller – either way, she couldn’t be more friendly, laughing readily, inquiring after my wellbeing, even if she’s mildly flustered when she answers her phone – with no PA to hand, she’d completely forgotten I’d be calling.

We can’t see each other. She’s shattered after another day of nonstop video-conferencing (“You have to talk so much more loudly. It’s exhausting”) and prefers just to talk, but she tells me that right now her trademark asymmetrical bob is in slight disarray.

“My hair needs a trim every two weeks, so it’s got really long. I tried to wear it with Hayley’s hairpins, and she said, ‘Mummy, you look so much prettier and softer,’ but I thought it wasn’t really me: it looked feminine and girlie.” When restrictions slightly relaxed, Cheung had a haircut. “But that was about three weeks ago and now it’s starting to get long again.”

Has she abandoned her make-up routine? “Well, we all wear masks when we go out, so you can’t really put on make-up because it pollutes the mask. Online there are all these tips about how to wear eye make-up when you’re wearing a mask.”

What about the designer outfits that, to an extent, it is part of a Vogue editor’s job to wear? “Hayley’s been clearing out my wardrobe, so she takes out my dresses and demands that I wear one, but I say, ‘No, I can’t be bothered.’ But it was her 13th birthday a couple of weeks ago, so that night I agreed to wear a dress – and it did feel nice to dress up again.

That’s a ceremonial thing to say I’m in work mode,” Cheung continues. “But I tend to wear a lot of jumpers or hoodies or shirts with cardigans over jeans or chinos – on a video call, they don’t see your bottom half and it needs to be a comfortable outfit to make it easy to dash out and pick up a delivery.”

Dash and Dine

Ah, deliveries. Cheung and I are speaking during the early days of UK lockdown when the most pressing quotidian concern, for the healthy, is how to obtain our groceries.

“The first week, gloves and masks ran out everywhere. Everyone was exchanging information about where you could go to get these things. Then there was the question of food. Luckily, in Beijing the delivery service is quite advanced, so we quickly figured out where to get meat, where to get fresh vegetables. So then the issue was just running out of the gate of your apartment block when they arrived, grabbing them and running back in again and then spraying disinfectant on everything and washing your hands again and again. After a few days you got everything you needed and things calmed down.”

Unlike in the UK, restaurants and non-essential shops have stayed open. “But nobody wanted to go out: everyone wanted to stay home and stay safe.”

There was still a question of housework. Most of Beijing’s domestic workers were in their home provinces for the new year when lockdown happened. Even after they returned, it was safer for them to stay at home. “In Asia, generally most households have a full-time helper to do everything, so for lots of us it was an experience to clean the toilet and the bathroom every day, to cook dinner every night. At first, we thought, ‘Oh, all this work!’ But then gradually we started to enjoy it. We had friends who had never cooked a meal before who suddenly have all become gourmets, posting what they’ve made for dinner every night. It’s very funny – they’ve spent all these years studying and working hard and now suddenly they’re finding joy in conquering a new recipe. They’re really enjoying the little pleasures in life.”

There were other concerns, such as how Hayley, who attends Dulwich College – the Chinese co-ed branch of the London public school – would cope with virtual lessons. Cheung fretted about the amount of time she’d fritter online. “But compared with the worry about safety and health, it’s not as immediate.”

In fact, Hayley and her father used much of their new spare time to organise her mother’s vast wardrobe – with Graham, as he described in an article for the South China Morning Post, working as an “unpaid labourer transporting dresses, coats and bags to an area designated for appraisal”.

For years previously, Hayley had reacted indifferently to encounters with designers such as Victoria Beckham and private visits to, say, Valentino’s couture studio, preferring to wear jeans and T-shirts from high street brands including Brandy Melville and River Island. But now Cheung explained to her daughter what made each piece unique, “whether it is the fabric, the cut or the colour”, as well as, in many cases, the thought process behind the garment. It gave her a new appreciation of high fashion, even if that came with the upsetting realisation that her mother’s hundreds of shoes fitted her perfectly, meaning next year they’ll be too small. “I thought, ‘At last you’re showing some interest in what Mummy does!’ ” Cheung says.

Cheung also has an elderly mother to worry about, who was recuperating in hospital after a leg operation when lockdown began. “Her hospital was probably the first to decide to lock down very early on, so no visitors were allowed. At the time I was fairly angry about it, thinking surely there must be some flexibility, but in retrospect they were very wise. So she’s bored. She doesn’t really realise how bad it is outside and keeps asking to go home and I have to say, ‘No.’ But she has a helper, luckily, and all the electronics, so we video-call and she’s recuperating.”

Maintaining Connections

Naturally, all social engagements are out the window. Cheung says in normal times, she tends to hang out with non-fashion people – “Just because I like to catch up with people you don’t usually see in the working day.”

“But what I’m finding is, you end up speaking more to your friends than normal. You’re usually so busy with work but now you reconnect with them. You’ve always cared about these people, but now you want to show it. You feel a lot of compassion for people. At the same I’ve realised, do we really need all this socialising? We were out all the time before. Maybe it’s good to take things at a slower pace?”

It wasn’t as if Cheung had nothing to do except phone friends. She and her team were having to work out how to produce at least the next two issues of the magazine from home. “Obviously, no one could go out to physically conduct interviews in person, or carry out photoshoots, so we had to work around that. In the beginning we were doing shoots overseas but now, ironically, overseas people are asking if they can organise shoots in China because they can’t travel anywhere. So it all comes around.”

There was also the question of the appropriate tone for the magazines and social media. “The mood was so sombre. People were all-consumed by worry – the virus was all they were talking about. And when people were looking for masks and gloves and disinfectant, handbags and jewellery were probably a little bit beyond their immediate need,” Cheung says.

Instead of trying aggressively to flog such products, the team devoted a large part of its lockdown to preparing new, future initiatives – even if Zoom calls were sometimes interrupted by the sound of screaming children.

“It means we’ve ended up busier than ever, because we’re dealing with what we deal with every day and we’re making these internal adjustments. And because you’re at home, the shift never ends. When the market bounces back to normal – which I’m sure it will, because it’s human nature to want a better quality of life – then we’ll be prepared for it.”

Cheung has used this time to reflect on her industry, not least the devastation it has wreaked on the planet. Previously, she’s been cautious discussing this, saying sustainability would only become an issue for Chinese consumers “when society has become generally affluent – when people want to live longer, and for their children to live longer”.

Yet now, it seems, the second of those conditions has been fulfilled. “Caring about nature is about caring about ourselves. And I hope, through all this, more and more people will realise that.”

This isn’t just about the behaviour of Chinese consumers but more about the fashion industry with, until now, its nonstop roster of international travel.

“I’m not perfect but, like everybody, this unfortunate experience has really made me think about what’s important. I miss all the fashion people. It’s the first time in 20 years that I haven’t seen them for several months – usually I see them all the time. But all this has made me realise we do not need to travel as much as we used to. It’s too much. We basically spend half the year going round the world – Milan, Paris, London, catching these shows – and it’s not good for the environment. Now they’ve shown the air quality in China is better because no one is flying. So maybe we should adjust our lifestyles and the way we do business. Of course we need to connect with people face to face, but we also don’t need to fly around the world just to see a 20-minute show – it’s a waste of resources and time. Nobody wins.”

Background Check

Cheung has always had a wider perspective than your average fashionista. She was born in Beijing, where her father was a diplomat who – having been branded an intellectual – was sent to the countryside for “re-education”. He died when Cheung was nine. Three years later, her brother, who was born with a heart defect, also died. Cheung became the sole focus of her teacher mother’s efforts to give her the best possible prospects.

Her grandmother was a tailor, so she grew up with a passion for clothes. Yet she rarely dared express this, after her schoolmates whispered “bourgeoisie” when she turned up at school in a pair of homemade checked trousers. “That was a very bad label, and that was it, I never dared wear them again.”

At university, she studied law and English, then, with an MBA under her belt, moved to Hong Kong where she used her flawless English to become a journalist (meeting her husband, who was editing a weekend newspaper supplement). She rose via several publications, including Marie Claire Hong Kong, to become director of Chinese Elle, before Condé Nast called. She launched Vogue in 2005 in Shanghai, moving to Beijing a year later.

Many were sceptical about the timing, unsure the Chinese were ready for this paean to capitalism. But Vogue’s debut issue sold 300,000 copies and was reprinted twice. In those early days Cheung had constantly to correct western designers’ and creatives’ outdated impressions about her country.

“The world didn’t know China much and vice versa, so the only understanding really came from a few movies about traditional China. Western photographers coming here would always have the same reaction: ‘Oh, it’s a lot more modern than I thought.’ Some people made mistakes promoting their brands. A lot of the time, they probably meant well, but their messages didn’t speak to the Chinese or were even received negatively.”

Fifteen years have brought vast changes: today there are three Vogue titles: the main title, Vogue Me for millennials and Vogue Film, which combines entertainment with fashion. This means that Cheung oversees 20 issues a year, as well as plenty of accompanying digital content.

“China is no longer a myth. Everywhere on social media you see modern Chinese young men and women, how they dress, how they live. But it still takes a lot of effort and time to understand the subtleties of differences, to appreciate Chinese culture on a more sophisticated level.”

If anyone’s equipped to bridge gaps between cultures it’s Cheung who, thanks to her husband’s roots, is a huge fan of Yorkshire. This she has sold wholeheartedly to her six million-plus followers on Weibo, China’s Twitter, with snaps of her holding a pint of Theakston’s outside a pub, leading to her being named a patron of the tourism body Welcome To Yorkshire.

“I love the Dales especially,” she says. “I find it very soothing to be there, even though it rains constantly, to have a cottage with friends and family in the hills.”

Hayley, she says, “is very proud of her Yorkshire roots”, and is a huge fan of the Meadowhall shopping centre in Sheffield. “She can do a spot-on South Yorkshire accent, with all the right inflections and slang. ‘Y’all right, luv?’ is her favourite.”

One day, you hope, Cheung will return to Yorkshire. For now, as with everyone, the outcome of the next day, let alone the next few months, is uncertain. I’m hoping her story will give me some sense of a timetable as to how long the chaos will last. After all, Beijing is supposed gradually to be lifting restrictions. Cheung’s plan is to return to the office within days (“but in a mask and gloves”).

Yet travel outside China is effectively impossible – since on return, you face a compulsory 14 days’ quarantine in a hotel. There are no announcements about schools re-opening. “Parents have mixed feelings about that. You really want children to be back at school – it’s a complication when you have to go to work yourself – but on the other hand you do feel you’d like to wait until it’s really safe.”

Sad to report, no one has the faintest idea when that will be. “We’re really worried about possible repeat cases and imported cases, including some from Britain,” Cheung says.

Every day, on waking, she checks infection figures across the world. “I’m still replying to emails and texts from friends and contacts all over the world – they were asking how I was, which meant a lot. Of course, now I am asking how they are. I was talking to Emanuele Farneti, the Italian Vogue editor. He was very, very worried.

“You’d think it would be, ‘Oh great, we’re over this. It’s under control,’ but just as we let those thoughts in, you started to see panic everywhere else. It shows that the planet is a really small place. We’re all so connected that really we’ve become one community. And then you think, ‘Oh God, this is going to last much longer than we thought.’ Until the world is safe, nobody can be safe alone.”
source | airmail.news

 

[MON]

How she managed to produce all Vogue China issues without missing a normal issue amazes me. Angelica is in her own league (with Alt)

 

[caioherrero]

How she managed to produce all Vogue China issues without missing a normal issue amazes me. Angelica is in her own league (with Alt)

I think it’s because she has contributors in others countrys

 

[Bertrando3]

I think it’s because she has contributors in others countrys

Shouldn't have it been the case for the remaining Vogue editions worldwide instead of producing this freakin' nonsense with blank covers, covers with kids or stupid images and landscapes for the fashion world's bible ???

I mean I am super amazed that NONE of the Vogue editions work with lots of editorials made in advance and teams placed worldwide to create many many stories, just in case a shoot does not work. I can't fathom with soooooo many talents available, so much money from advertising that Vogue editions across the globe did not and still do not produce shoots in advance.

 

[axiomatic]

wwd.com
Radhika Jones on Making Vanity Fair More Diverse
Kathryn Hopkins
4-5 minutes
Vanity Fair editor in chief Radhika Jones is calling out the glossy magazine’s long lack of diversity on its covers — something she sought to change when she took the reins in 2017.

In her latest editor’s letter for the forthcoming July/August issue, Jones quotes cover face Viola Davis as saying in her interview that the magazine “has had a problem in the past with putting Black women on the covers.” And Jones agrees, not just about Black women, but also men and other people of color as well as LGBTQ persons.

“For most of the magazine’s history, a Black artist, athlete or politician appearing on a regular monthly issue of Vanity Fair was a rare occurrence,” she said.

Excluding groups and special issues, she counted just 17 Black people on the cover of Vanity Fair in the 35 years between 1983 and 2017. Graydon Carter was editor in chief between 1992 and 2017, while Tina Brown was in charge between 1984 and 1992.

In contrast, she said in her two-and-a-half-year tenure, with the same exceptions for groups and special issues, Vanity Fair has featured 10 Black cover subjects — including Lena Waithe, Janelle Monáe and, now, Davis.

“And we know that Vanity Fair’s evolution has resonated, because in the past two and a half years our audience on every platform has grown, including those of you who subscribe,” Jones claimed.

She further explained that the lack of diversity on the magazine’s cover was something she noticed from the outside and was determined to change when she took over the Condé Nast-owned publication.

“Not just as a corrective measure but because it is my job, and the magazine’s job, to center people who are visionaries, who are moving the culture forward,” she said. “We are not bound to continue the cultural hierarchies we inherit.”

To the best of her knowledge, the July/August issue is also the first time the magazine tapped a Black photographer for the cover.

The photographer, Dario Calmese, describes his cover concept as “a re-creation of the Louis Agassiz slave portraits taken in the 1800s — the back, the welts.”

“This image reclaims that narrative, transmuting the white gaze on Black suffering into the Black gaze of grace, elegance and beauty,” he said. It’s his first major magazine cover.

Condé has come under fire over the past few months for its lack of diversity and reports of a discriminatory workplace for people of color.

As well as the emergence of a photograph of Bon Appétit’s former editor in chief Adam Rapoport in brown face that led to his resignation, there have been a number of allegations of a discriminatory workplace environment for people of color at the food title. This includes claims that only white employees were paid for their appearance on its popular video channel.

Vogue editor in chief and Condé artistic director Anna Wintour has also been put under the spotlight, sparking streams of critical press coverage and rampant rumors of an impending departure, which were quickly quashed by global chief executive officer Roger Lynch.

And The New York Times reported in June that Susan Plagemann, Condé’s chief business officer, who is white, criticized Jones’ cover subjects, stating that they need “more people who look like us.” Plageman denied saying this at the time to the paper through a spokesman.

At its recent NewFronts pitch to advertisers, Lynch pledged to improve the magazine publisher’s record on diversity and inclusion. Those efforts include hiring a new global chief diversity and inclusion officer later this year, “helping to ensure equitable representation within our content across print, digital and video.” He also plans to hire more people of color — POC staffers make up just 30 percent of its U.S. workforce — and to assemble an external diversity council focused on ending racism to work alongside content teams.

 

[MissMagAddict]

A tale of two covers at Condé Nast

Recently, Dario Calmese, a Black artist, photographed the actress Viola Davis for the cover of Vanity Fair. The cover was released yesterday. The photo that adorns it is based on “The Scourged Back,” an image, from 1863, of Gordon, a man who escaped slavery and whose back had been lacerated by whipping. Davis re-created Gordon’s pose; she wore a dark-blue MaxMara dress backwards, so as to make her back visible. “This image reclaims that narrative, transmuting the white gaze on Black suffering into the Black gaze of grace, elegance, and beauty,” Calmese said, of the Davis cover. He added, in an interview about the photo shoot with Jessica Testa, of the New York Times, “I knew this was a moment to be, like, extra Black.”

Online, Calmese’s image of Davis got better reviews than another recent cover of a Condé Nast magazine: that of the August issue of Vogue, which features a portrait of Simone Biles—the Olympic gymnast and survivor of sexual abuse within the USA Gymnastics setup—in a Bottega Veneta bodysuit, also with her back to the camera. The image was shot in February, by Annie Leibovitz. After it came out, critics said that Leibovitz’s dim lighting had done Biles a disservice. “I adore Simone Biles and am thrilled she’s on this cover,” Morrigan McCarthy, national picture editor at the Times, tweeted. “But I hate these photos. I hate the toning, I hate how predictable they are.” Britni Danielle, a journalist and editor, added, “Simone Biles deserved better than Annie Leibovitz bad lighting.” Defenders of Leibovitz argued that her editing style is typically dark, but many observers agreed that a Black photographer would have done a better job. “I super hate that Vogue couldn’t be bothered to hire a Black photographer,” McCarthy said.

In commissioning Calmese for its Davis shoot, Vanity Fair hired a Black photographer for its cover for the first time in its history. According to Testa, of the Times, Calmese suspected that that might be the case when he took the assignment, and asked editors to double-check; they confirmed his hunch “to the best of our knowledge.” Yesterday, Astead W. Herndon, a politics reporter at the Times, called that fact “embarrassing” and suggested that Vanity Fair apologize. “Progress is cool,” Evette Dionne, the editor in chief of b*tch Media, tweeted, but “it’s also shameful that it has taken more than 100 years to achieve a simple feat, which is then touted as progress.” When it comes to representation behind the camera, Vanity Fair is hardly an outlier. As Testa notes in her story, the first Black photographers to shoot the covers of Vogue and Rolling Stone—Tyler Mitchell and Dana Scruggs, respectively—only did so within the past two years.

In an interview with Sonia Saraiya that accompanies her cover, Davis called out Vanity Fair for a lack of diversity in front of the camera, too. “They’ve had a problem in the past with putting Black women on the covers,” she said. “When you couple that with what’s going on in our culture, and how they treat Black women, you have a double whammy. You are putting us in a complete cloak of invisibility.” For her introductory note to the latest issue, Radhika Jones—Vanity Fair’s editor in chief, who is herself a woman of color—calculated that between 1983, when the modern iteration of the magazine was born, and 2017, when she took over as editor, Vanity Fair only put seventeen Black people (excluding group shots) on the cover of a regular issue. Since then, ten Black subjects have been featured. Jones says that she has prioritized improvement during her tenure. “We are not bound to continue the cultural hierarchies we inherit,” she writes in her note.

In this regard, too, Vanity Fair is not an outlier. In 2018, the editorial arm of Ceros, a Web content company, reviewed the covers of ten glossy magazines between 2012 and 2018 and found greater diversity across 2017 and 2018 than in the five previous years; the percentage of Allure covers featuring a nonwhite subject, for instance, increased from 27 to 58 percent, while the equivalent percentage for InStyle jumped from 32 to 50 percent. In 2018, the important September covers of at least eleven major fashion and lifestyle magazines featured Black women: Glamour featured Tiffany Haddish; Marie Claire featured Zendaya; Vogue featured Beyoncé. Writing for Teen Vogue at the time, however, Jessica Andrews pointed out that while the covers were cause for celebration, “Black women didn’t suddenly become fashionable or marketable this September.” Andrews highlighted what she called “the next frontier” at which to aim: “more black photographers, editors, stylists, bookers, and creative directors.”

It’s not just fashion journalism that’s been reckoning with that frontier. In recent times, and particularly since the protests that followed the killing of George Floyd, the wider media industry has been confronted with its poor track record on representation and the inclusion of Black perspectives. The recent reckoning has been especially intense at Condé Nast, where, as the Times’ Edmund Lee reported in June, top staffers including Adam Rapoport, the editor in chief of Bon Appétit, resigned (or faced calls for their resignation) following claims of personal and institutionalized racism. According to Lee, Susan Plagemann, a white Condé executive, once complained to Jones that more of Vanity Fair’s covers should feature photos of well-to-do white women. (Plagemann denies saying this.) As Calmese’s powerful work shows, the opposite, of course, is necessary, on both sides of the lens.
source | CJR

 

[vogue28]

Lorraine Candy has announced she’s leaving The Sunday Times Style:

 

[Benn98]

I doubt whether she made the decision on her own. Lorraine's salary must've been quite big when you look at the type of content The Times published weekly. Also, she left Elle in a really good position so that was factored in as well.
The supplement's page count is getting dangerously thinner with each issue. Won't be surprised if they end it altogether.

 

[MissMagAddict]

Condé Nast Fires Guard Who Told Edward Enninful to
‘Use Loading Bay’

Enninful was walking into work at Vogue House in London when a security guard profiled him, and told him to enter through the rear of the building.

Samantha Conti

LONDON — Condé Nast immediately dismissed a security guard who profiled Edward Enninful, the editor in chief of British Vogue, on his way into work at Vogue House in London.

The guard, who was at the front desk, told Enninful to “use the loading bay” which is located at the back of the building, a block away.

The guard, who worked for a third-party contractor, was dismissed from the site immediately and placed under investigation by the contractor, according to a Condé Nast spokesperson. The publisher had contracted the third-party security firm during lockdown.

Enninful, who is Black and has made diversity a priority at British Vogue since he arrived in 2017, recounted the incident late Wednesday on his Instagram account.

“Today I was racially profiled by a security guard whilst entering my work place. As I entered, I was instructed to use the loading bay,” Enninful wrote. He said that while Condé Nast moved quickly to dismiss the guard, “it just goes to show that sometimes it doesn’t matter what you’ve achieved in the course of your life: The first thing that some people will judge you on is the color of your skin.”

He added that just because work schedules and weekends are returning to normal following the easing of lockdown, we cannot let the world return to how it was: “Change needs to happen now.”

Britain has seen multiple Black Lives Matter and anti-racism protests in the past month since the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in May.

Enninful, winner of many industry accolades, received an OBE, or Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, for his services to diversify the fashion industry in 2016, shortly before being named the first male, and first Black, editor of Vogue.

Born in Ghana, Enninful moved to London as a child, growing up with his five siblings in Ladbroke Grove. He began in the industry as a model, and later took up the fashion director role at i-D magazine, where he worked for decades. He worked for Italian and American Vogue before becoming creative and fashion director of W Magazine.

In his three years at British Vogue, he has championed diversity, most recently spotlighting Britain’s National Health Service workers on the front lines of COVID-19, shooting them in their scrubs with hospital ID tags slung around their necks.

His first cover for British Vogue featured the model and activist Adwoa Aboah, shot by Steven Meisel, and last summer he invited Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, to guest edit the magazine’s September issue last year, which focused on women change makers.

While working at W Magazine in New York, Enninful directed the video, “I Am an Immigrant,” which featured fashion industry figures talking about their personal experiences in the wake of President Trump’s travel ban on Muslim countries.

In 2017, he told WWD that British Vogue had to represent “real women, and to be reflective of the society we live in. Diversity is very important for me. I want Vogue to feel like a shop that you’re not scared to walk into, one that’s quite welcoming.”

In that same interview, he talked about growing up an as immigrant in Britain. “London welcomed my family, I grew up in Notting Hill in a multicultural society. I lived in two worlds. One was the world of school, Britain, and then I’d go home to another one with different colors and smells. My view of the world has always been very open.”
source | wwd

 

[Benn98]

Yikes, that's despicable and totally inexcusable. Hopefully the security agency also got a wakeup call.
Surely it's a security guard's job to at least know who the EIC of Vogue is? I mean, he's indirectly paying your salary!