The Business of Magazines

[aracic]

I think this is who will represent the Vogue Paris team:

https://instagram.com/eugenietrochu?utm_medium=copy_link

Well, she does seem to have a certain appreciation for denim...

 

[ivano]

Any news about L'Uomo Vogue and Vogue Hommes???

 

[LoveFashion25]

Conde Nast seems like they have no idea how to move forward.

 

[MissMagAddict]

InStyle fashion director Julia von Boehm is leaving her full-time role at the magazine, although she will continue to work with the Meredith owned brand on a freelance basis.

She’s leaving to focus on her lifestyle site JuliavonBoehm.com, which she launched in 2018, the same year she became InStyle’s fashion director. Prior to InStyle, she worked with at French Vogue under Carine Roitfeld, who is godmother to her children. She has also worked with brands such as Saint Laurent, Bulgari, Swarovski, Vera Wang, Tom Ford, David Yurman, Lancôme and Estée Lauder.

According to a representative for InStyle, it has no plans to hire a fashion director at this time.

“It’s been an absolute joy to have Julia on the masthead the past few years, but now she is back in the wild. We haven’t let her go too far though, she is styling a cover for us next week,” said Laura Brown, editor in chief of InStyle.

Von Boehm added: “My time at InStyle has been an incredible journey with an irreplaceable experience and knowledge that I was able to acquire. Working with Laura has been a heart-filled and honest collaboration, and I am thankful for every moment of it. It is time for me now to move on and focus on my website, and my long-term celebrity clients.”
source | wwd

 

[8eight]

UK Elle current issue is OCTOBER/NOVEMBER ISSUE. Interesting.

 

[vogue28]

Farrah Storr has announced her departure from British Elle:

 

[tigerrouge]

If you've grown up loving - and working in - print magazines, being the editor of UK Elle probably feels like a tremendous personal achievement, but at the same time, the reality of the job in 2021 is that you're a person with experience and ambition stuck in a backwater, where things can only get worse.

 

[axiomatic]

From NYT

At Top Magazines, Black Representation Remains a Work in Progress

 

[caioherrero]

Farrah Storr has announced her departure from British Elle:

maybe the magazine is closing

 

[vogue28]

Megha Kapoor taking charge at Vogue India:

 

[tigerrouge]

maybe the magazine is closing

That wouldn't surprise me - these days, I don't know who the print magazine is supposed to appeal to.

I know people on here seem to like the cover stories, but the pages of the magazine feel empty to me, like the original spirit has long since left the building and wind is blowing through it like a ghost town. It doesn't have the energy that comes from appealing to the young, and it's not sophisticated enough for someone older - although it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of the print readership is older people who still buy/subscribe due to fond memories of the magazine.

A magazine can exist with a low circulation IF your readership is niche and devoted and you're speaking directly to them. And it never hurts if that audience also has a lot of money. But UK Elle doesn't really have any of those advantages - not in comparison to Tatler or UK Bazaar.

The one thing mitigating against the closure of the print magazine is that it might affect Hearst UK's ability to market the Elle logo (website, products, events), if there's no longer any print version to support the concept of being a long-established women's lifestyle brand.

 

[honeycombchild]

I’d be surprised if we ever saw ELLE UK close, it’s too much of a flagship. Unlike Vogue, who discount their cover price to £2 almost every month, ELLE don’t seem to ever really play with their cover price. They don’t seem to ‘chase’ readership in the way other titles too.

There really was a glory period where ELLE UK shone again, under Lorraine, outpacing Vogue every single month. It really went off the boil; but I have always felt it’s more to do with the cultural shift we’ve seen. Magazines aimed at younger audiences have struggled; they just don’t read magazines anymore. Not sure it’s entirely specific to ELLE really. It’s just lost it’s relevance in the market. It was always the cool one, the edgy one that did things a little fresher. Not sure there’s the space for that now; online editorial took its place.

 

[Gary89]

She spent the whole year trying to push the envelope with her cover choices like the kissing cover, changing gender norms and the plus size cover. It seems she became very focused on recreating the media attention she got with the Tess Holliday cover over at Cosmopolitan.

And while you can't fault her for trying something new with UK magazines and trying to represent everyone, the fashion and celebrity element got left behind completely. Elle UK were able to land big international names in the past. There hasn't been an international A list star with an original cover since Alicia Vikander last October.

If she was getting relevant stars and producing great shoots like the current cover with Michaela Cole, the magazine would be in a lot better of a standing.

 

[MissMagAddict]

It’s Anna Wintour’s world now
Condé Nast has scythed staff numbers and brought dozens of its magazines under the irrepressible Vogue editor’s direct control. But at what cost?

September 3, 2021 By Jo Ellison

People were already lamenting the golden age of magazines when I arrived at Vogue in February 2008. Budgets faced more scrutiny and there was a popular rumour that “town car” use and floristry expenditure were being carefully surveyed.

But, despite the tumult on the financial markets, the publishers remained bullishly optimistic about Condé Nast’s future: just as readers reached for Vogue through two world wars and previous recessions, they were assured, so it would transpire the title would prove impregnable again. Advertising was buoyant.

There was a vague discussion that perhaps Condé should think about digital subscriptions but, went the counterargument, Vogue was primarily a visual medium and no reader would pay to look at pictures on a screen. Meanwhile, the online arm of the magazine was treated like a bastard child, expected to deliver clickbait content that would resonate with readers of the Daily Mail.

Meanwhile, the mythology of Vogue continued, abetted by a blockbuster documentary, The September Issue, and, ironically, the internet, which with its obsession with new influencers found each title nurturing cult personalities of their own — the rangy Emmanuelle Alt of Vogue Paris, Vogue China’s Angelica Cheung, with her sharp bob and gigantic social media profile, Germany’s soigné minimalist, the radiant Christiane Arp.

There were then some two dozen Vogue titles, with new editions appearing every year. They were fiercely competitive, displaying a tribal rivalry whereby each magazine cultivated an editorial identity so as to distinguish it from the mother ship — Anna Wintour’s US Vogue.

Not that the casual reader really seemed to notice. In the seven years I worked at British Vogue, under Alexandra Shulman, most people only ever asked what it was like to have Anna as a boss.

Everyone works for Wintour now. Well, at least, anybody at Condé Nast, where the 71-year-old has been worldwide chief content officer since the end of 2020, and where, following a long period of consultancy and the need for the US division to recoup some $100m in annual losses, the regional titles have been consolidated into groups. In a massive “hubbing” of titles, staff numbers have been scythed and the regional editions recalibrated so that, with the exception of a little “local content”, the magazines now largely look the same.

GQ is now run out of America. House & Garden and Traveller have undergone a similar homogeny. Vogue now boasts three senior editorial directors, among them Britain’s Edward Enninful, who now looks after Europe, and Leslie Sun, who is overseeing Asia, while most others have been retired. Anna Wintour is the top dog: with final say over publications in more than 30 markets around the world and control of all the Vogue editions. The New Yorker, which has surpassed Vogue as Condé Nast’s biggest contributor to US profits, is one of the few titles that have been shielded from her all-powerful eye.

To see Condé Nast forced to make swingeing cuts might give its competitors cause for celebration — I do, after all, edit How to Spend It, a luxury magazine — were it not for the fact that most monthly publications, at most publishing houses, are largely going through the same. Condé Nast’s cuts are especially high profile, but while the media has delighted in all the gossip, it’s a tragedy for the industry at large.

For decades, Condé Nast has nurtured generations of creatives whose work has fed our cultural lives: narrowing the talent pool content neuters opportunity. There will be less experimentation, magazines will be even more susceptible to advertiser brands. Designers will see their clothes shot in one story rather than a dozen.

The hub sheds Condé of a system that is costly and old-fashioned, and allows the company to shift its focus to sexier, more lucrative partnerships in television, live events and film. In the meantime, stylists, photographers, hair stylists, editors, publicists and art directors will compete for fewer jobs. Mass storytelling will lead to fewer shoots, fewer stories and fewer ideas in circulation. Young creatives will have to find new outlets to make their voices heard.

As Condé’s ultimate commander, Wintour has now assumed a demigod status as the arbiter of style. But her power is exercised on a stage that grows ever smaller. And notwithstanding her mighty influence, I can’t imagine many people under 40 still seeking out her point of view. The biggest influencers today are on Instagram or TikTok, a platform on which Vogue still has comparatively few followers and has yet to grab a decent share.

The first hubbed issue of Vogue since the announcement is called “New Beginnings”. It’s a blueprint of editorial efficiency; powerfully inoffensive, collaborative (I counted no less than four fashion stylists attributed to one story), optimised for digital (you can see the picture moving) and strangely anodyne.

This week, for the first time since the pandemic, sees the resumption of the fashion shows in earnest. Fashion’s front row thrones will once again be occupied, but it will be more conspicuous for the chairs that are not filled. The Condé world has always been colourful, flamboyant, ridiculous and, sometimes, caustic. The new Vogue may be global, but it lacks some magic without its local tribes.
source | ft

 

[LoveFashion25]

It’s Anna Wintour’s world now
Condé Nast has scythed staff numbers and brought dozens of its magazines under the irrepressible Vogue editor’s direct control. But at what cost?

September 3, 2021 By Jo Ellison

People were already lamenting the golden age of magazines when I arrived at Vogue in February 2008. Budgets faced more scrutiny and there was a popular rumour that “town car” use and floristry expenditure were being carefully surveyed.

But, despite the tumult on the financial markets, the publishers remained bullishly optimistic about Condé Nast’s future: just as readers reached for Vogue through two world wars and previous recessions, they were assured, so it would transpire the title would prove impregnable again. Advertising was buoyant.

There was a vague discussion that perhaps Condé should think about digital subscriptions but, went the counterargument, Vogue was primarily a visual medium and no reader would pay to look at pictures on a screen. Meanwhile, the online arm of the magazine was treated like a bastard child, expected to deliver clickbait content that would resonate with readers of the Daily Mail.

Meanwhile, the mythology of Vogue continued, abetted by a blockbuster documentary, The September Issue, and, ironically, the internet, which with its obsession with new influencers found each title nurturing cult personalities of their own — the rangy Emmanuelle Alt of Vogue Paris, Vogue China’s Angelica Cheung, with her sharp bob and gigantic social media profile, Germany’s soigné minimalist, the radiant Christiane Arp.

There were then some two dozen Vogue titles, with new editions appearing every year. They were fiercely competitive, displaying a tribal rivalry whereby each magazine cultivated an editorial identity so as to distinguish it from the mother ship — Anna Wintour’s US Vogue.

Not that the casual reader really seemed to notice. In the seven years I worked at British Vogue, under Alexandra Shulman, most people only ever asked what it was like to have Anna as a boss.

Everyone works for Wintour now. Well, at least, anybody at Condé Nast, where the 71-year-old has been worldwide chief content officer since the end of 2020, and where, following a long period of consultancy and the need for the US division to recoup some $100m in annual losses, the regional titles have been consolidated into groups. In a massive “hubbing” of titles, staff numbers have been scythed and the regional editions recalibrated so that, with the exception of a little “local content”, the magazines now largely look the same.

GQ is now run out of America. House & Garden and Traveller have undergone a similar homogeny. Vogue now boasts three senior editorial directors, among them Britain’s Edward Enninful, who now looks after Europe, and Leslie Sun, who is overseeing Asia, while most others have been retired. Anna Wintour is the top dog: with final say over publications in more than 30 markets around the world and control of all the Vogue editions. The New Yorker, which has surpassed Vogue as Condé Nast’s biggest contributor to US profits, is one of the few titles that have been shielded from her all-powerful eye.

To see Condé Nast forced to make swingeing cuts might give its competitors cause for celebration — I do, after all, edit How to Spend It, a luxury magazine — were it not for the fact that most monthly publications, at most publishing houses, are largely going through the same. Condé Nast’s cuts are especially high profile, but while the media has delighted in all the gossip, it’s a tragedy for the industry at large.

For decades, Condé Nast has nurtured generations of creatives whose work has fed our cultural lives: narrowing the talent pool content neuters opportunity. There will be less experimentation, magazines will be even more susceptible to advertiser brands. Designers will see their clothes shot in one story rather than a dozen.

The hub sheds Condé of a system that is costly and old-fashioned, and allows the company to shift its focus to sexier, more lucrative partnerships in television, live events and film. In the meantime, stylists, photographers, hair stylists, editors, publicists and art directors will compete for fewer jobs. Mass storytelling will lead to fewer shoots, fewer stories and fewer ideas in circulation. Young creatives will have to find new outlets to make their voices heard.

As Condé’s ultimate commander, Wintour has now assumed a demigod status as the arbiter of style. But her power is exercised on a stage that grows ever smaller. And notwithstanding her mighty influence, I can’t imagine many people under 40 still seeking out her point of view. The biggest influencers today are on Instagram or TikTok, a platform on which Vogue still has comparatively few followers and has yet to grab a decent share.

The first hubbed issue of Vogue since the announcement is called “New Beginnings”. It’s a blueprint of editorial efficiency; powerfully inoffensive, collaborative (I counted no less than four fashion stylists attributed to one story), optimised for digital (you can see the picture moving) and strangely anodyne.

This week, for the first time since the pandemic, sees the resumption of the fashion shows in earnest. Fashion’s front row thrones will once again be occupied, but it will be more conspicuous for the chairs that are not filled. The Condé world has always been colourful, flamboyant, ridiculous and, sometimes, caustic. The new Vogue may be global, but it lacks some magic without its local tribes.
source | ft

Vogue will continue to go downwards.

 

[8eight]

It just seems Conde are doing the opposite to what they should be doing:
Making every issue unique and different.

Which you CAN do with a smaller budget. Not every Vogue fashion shoot in every issue has to be a 5 day shoot in eg the desert with Tim Walker.

 

[axiomatic]

Is this "new" news??

 

[vogue28]

Tom Meredith departed British Elle as creative director back in July and just announced he’s now the creative director of French Elle:

 

[WinstonH20]

For decades, Condé Nast has nurtured generations of creatives whose work has fed our cultural lives: narrowing the talent pool content neuters opportunity. There will be less experimentation, magazines will be even more susceptible to advertiser brands. Designers will see their clothes shot in one story rather than a dozen.
source | ft

This is the saddest part of it for me. Less fashion imagery to consume. Bland, inoffensive and commercial pictures will be the order of the day for all of these editions. Worse, everything will look the same. If the September issues were the inaugural issues for this strategy then I'd be seriously worried if I worked at Vogue.

Sorry to say, but without skilled writers or visionary image-makers and images in their pages, there is not much that Vogue offers that can't be found on Instagram or TikTok. Fashion and Vogue (and most commercial imagery) is primarily visual and disposable, if the visual component is as weak as what Vogue currently offers, consumers will simply move elsewhere. While others may argue that fashion photography as we once knew it is no longer relevant, I would say that a Newton or Penn, or Meisel image for Vogue still resonates strongly today and allows viewers to dream of a rarefied world of fashion (which many associate with the Vogue brand), even on a platform like Instagram. Graydon Carter (mostly) understood the power that provocative imagery and well-timed covers had.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, image-makers from the newer guard like EJG, Tyler Mitchell, Hugo Comte, Daniel Jackson and Rafael Pavarotti are not strong enough to carry a publication like Vogue on their own and the magazine will continue to decline as a result of mediocre and bland imagery, and that's not to mention the written component which seems to shrink in quantity and substance with each new issue.

 

[vogue28]

According to WWD, Eugenie Trochu is now the head of editorial content at Vogue Paris.