part 2
Perhaps the single most revealing part of the documentary is where she admits, looking directly at the camera, that her two brothers and sisters, all of whom are engaged in rather more politically-correct professions, find what she does amusing. "They're brilliant. My two brothers and sister are very amused by what I do. They're amused." she says, revealing a professional self-doubt entirely at odds with her public persona. This is only increased by her daughter Bee Shaffer's decision to go to law school rather than follow in her mother's footsteps. "It's a weird world," Shaffer says. "I would never want to take it too seriously."
Wintour tells the camera that her gift is "determination", while her weakness is "her children". By the close of The September Issue, one thing is clear: what makes some people nervous around Wintour is power. And yet, for all her froideur, there are times when the most powerful woman in fashion does in fact appear to care what other people think.
And what people think about fashion, fuelled at least by the media's tendency to reduce it to gross caricature, is that it is at best frivolous, at worst plain immoral. The September Issue goes some way towards exploding that myth, providing a more realistic and nuanced view of a hitherto impenetrable world, which turns out to be predominantly inhabited by intelligent working women at the height of their profession who are as complex as they are inspiring.
Condé Nast: A publishing empire in crisis?
The two tallest gleaming skyscrapers near the southern end of Times Square in Manhattan are home to despondent publishers. One is The New York Times; the other, Condé Nast. Last week, the glamorous magazine publisher released figures that revealed an accelerating decline in advertising: important September issues had lost between 15 and 50 per cent of ad pages compared to a year earlier; Vogue and Vanity Fair, once believed to be recession-resistant, had lost more than a third. The company, which went through a spate of magazine closures and cuts earlier in the year, announced it had hired McKinsey & Company, the much-feared bottom line-focused management consultants.
McKinsey's arrival spells out one thing: the party is over. Its mandate will be to identify cost savings and under-developed areas of revenue stream. In other words, hiring freezes, department cuts, magazine closures. For months, senior Condé Nast editors have been asked to share – yes, share – Lincoln Town Cars and make other small-scale sacrifices.
But the arrival of McKinsey signals that Condé Nast's legendary culture of pampered editors and GDP-sized expense accounts is under comprehensive review. The chief executive, Chuck Townsend, sent out a company-wide memo saying that the firm was "rethinking" how it does business. He said "a realignment" was in order – an instruction more chilling than being the accessories editor sent away for pitching a "pink" story to the US Vogue editor Anna Wintour in the forthcoming documentary.
"It's terrifying! It freaked me out!" says a Condé Nast staffer of Townsend's memo.
Condé Nast Publications in New York is a larger and perceptibly different business to its London and international counterparts. The American operation relies on selling cheap subscriptions and then selling on the enviable information about readership demographics to advertisers. It has been a successful business, one finely polished by Condé Nast to a high gloss. But, in this advertising climate, the model looks more vulnerable than that employed in the UK, or at the company's London-run, expanding portfolio of international titles, where predominant news-stand sales business comes with the readership's value to advertisers ensured.
The US arm is under further stress as advertisers who have not already cut back on spending now question whether, say, $90,000 (£55,000) spent on a page advertisement in US Vogue could be better spent targeting potential buyers directly. And without advertising, the mystique of Condé Nast, and its reputation for presenting a superior fashionable life for those with superior lifestyle aspirations, could quickly tarnish.
Further, any magazine that flourished during the booming consumer markets of the past quarter century must now negotiate the conflict of appealing to consumers who are at least paying lip-service to the idea of desiring less. So far, gut-reaction at Condé Nast titles is to adhere more closely to the advertisers' script: if your magazine depends on watch advertising, publish more editorial stories about men and watches. If it's shoes that pay, more stories about shoes and, presumably, ankles.
But this may not be enough. Magazines with a base-rate circulation below 850,000 are considered unsustainable and Condé Nast, like many US publishers, is highly-staffed and run by a large, well-paid roster of top management. With a profit margin said to be no more than 3 per cent, the company's secretive economics are in need of examination. Financial problems that were fissures are now chasms.
Venerable magazines including House & Garden and newer ones, Domino (an interiors title) and Portfolio (a business title launched in 2007), have been shut down; the numbers at dependably profitable Glamour and Allure are significantly down; web operations are being curtailed as online advertising disappears into the recessionary dissolve; a second wave of closures threatens Details and Wired.
Over the years when the company threw off money – or at least counted on a financial cushion from the Newhouse's family's cable TV and newspaper interests – the chairman, Samuel Irving (Si) Newhouse, could run Condé Nast as generously as a gleaming city-state of fastidiously-produced titles edited by independent, competitive and often indulgent editors – "divas and egomaniacs", with their expensive retinues of faithful servants.
The high-times of the money-no-object business are legend: costly re-shoots; expense accounts that ran to long stays in suites at the Ritz; low-interest mortgages and loans for editors' country-houses, clothing and redecorating. Newhouse, now aged 82, is said to enjoy the drama of his court – the princes and princesses engaging in their set-piece battles and extravaganzas – Vanity Fair's Oscar party vs the Vogue Metropolitan ball – as well as their industry power-broking and outright muscle-flexing (fashion designers are required to offer the Vogue editor a preview of their presentations).
"For years, Si was able to tell the suits to get lost when they wanted to rein in his editorial spending on the magazines, because advertisers were willing to pay premium, non-discounted rates to be in those magazines," says one former editor. "That has changed, and it may never come back. So the role of McKinsey is to convince him to dismantle the old Condé Nast culture and replace it with something efficient, stripped-down and cost-driven." No wonder employees are anxious.
And what of Wintour? Will The September Issue be seen as a testament to a passing era, an effort to deflect criticism (Wintour is said to be deeply wounded at claims that the magazine is out of touch, and the rumours circulating about her retirement), or an elegant attempt to win Vogue multi-media attention and new readership?
Even in this most imperious of institutions, there are signs of change: staff have been redirected online to chart the fashion life – Hamish Bowles' blog Hamishsphere comes to mind – sometimes with great success; fashion people have come to depend on Vogue's Style.com site, which displays every outfit from every catwalk show, for reference. It was no small feat to get Michelle Obama on the cover of Vogue earlier this year, and the US pop sensation Taylor Swift on the cover of Teen Vogue in the same month. The magazine looks more accessible and livelier, and, in a concession to recession, now features some less steeply-priced fashion.
Whatever else McKinsey is contemplating, they won't be recommending Condé Nast shut Vogue or Vanity Fair down anytime soon. Even with a 37 per cent decline in advertising pages, the latest September issue of Vogue still boasts 425 pages – that's tens of millions of dollars in the coffers. Enough, one might suppose, to keep a few of Condé Nast's grande dames of fashion coiffured, nicely-shod and fully-accessorised.
