US Men's Vogue
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JHB said:
if you read thru this post, you ll notice that u have contradicted urself
what am trying to say is that chances are that you ll find gemma in vogue than cosmo or heidi in cosmo that in vogue.
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liberty33r1b
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The Rise of US Men's Vogue
from fashionweekdaily.com
Wintour's Duchy: Her Men's Vogue Is Jostling GQ
[font=Times, Times Roman][size=+1]by Gabriel Sherman[/size][/font]
[font=Times, Times Roman][size=+1]
To conjure the archetype of the Vogue man, Men’s Vogue editor Jay Fielden turned to literature. His new magazine, he had been saying, will be guided by the concept of "things that are real, things that are authentic, things that endure."
"It’s about breadth," the 35-year-old Mr. Fielden said, "rather than narrowing a magazine based on the expectations on what fashion or style make you have to conform to."
There are two separate sets of expectations for Mr. Fielden’s project. Financially, Men’s Vogue is shaping up as a straightforward big-ticket Condé Nast launch: 300,000 copies are planned for its Sept. 6 debut, with an ad-page count somewhere over 100. Vogue publisher Tom Florio said he suspects Men’s Vogue will outpace April’s company-record 106-ad-page launch of Domino.
Conceptually, however, Men’s Vogue is a more mysterious proposition. Vogue has already produced one successful American spin-off, Teen Vogue, in 2003. It’s one thing, though, to create a version of an iconic women’s magazine pitched to girls. It’s another to make one pitched to men.
"Clearly, this is a brand extension," Mr. Fielden said. But as macho brand names go, doesn’t Men’s Vogue sound more or less like Men’s Ladies’ Home Journal?
"I understand the skepticism some may have about whether a brand that means women’s fashion to so many people can be made into something men feel comfortable reading," Mr. Fielden said.
Mr. Fielden said that the magazine is not aiming for the service-oriented, you-can-do-this tone that most men’s magazines use to woo fashion-phobic consumers. It will assume that the Men’s Vogue reader already possesses a confident, educated eye—an eye not unlike that of Anna Wintour.
The Vogue editor is "around the corner whenever I need to consult with her," Mr. Fielden said. "She’s ready to give advice whenever she feels like she needs to give it, and whenever she feels she can improve upon what it is we’ve already done to make it better."
At 4 Times Square, Mr. Fielden—Ms. Wintour’s arts editor for six years—is currently shuttling between Vogue’s 12th-floor offices and his own space on the sixth floor. That lower level holds a 12-member staff (nine of them men, if anyone’s counting). Many of the magazine’s contributors, however, are Vogue staff. And Ms. W. is a short elevator ride away.
"She’s the guiding hand in the way that you would expect someone with the title of editorial—whatever her title is—of a magazine, in the Condé Nast tradition of [Alexander] Liberman."
Ms. Wintour’s title at the new magazine is "editorial director." That was the rank the legendary Liberman held at Condé Nast as a whole—outranking, among others, the editor of Vogue. But Mr. Liberman’s lineal descendant, Condé Nast editorial director Thomas Wallace, does not directly oversee Vogue. With the men’s and teen titles, then, Ms. Wintour is in the process of building her own corporate fiefdom.
Ms. Wintour’s newest property would appear to encroach on the turf of existing Condé Nast men’s magazines GQ and Cargo—as well as Details and Vitals, two titles published by Fairchild (like Condé Nast, a subsidiary of Advance Publications). Mr. Florio declined to name the advertisers that had signed on for Men’s Vogue’s debut (they will include companies offering yachts, planes and financial services, among others, he said), but he dismissed the notion that the magazine will be competing with the other titles.
"The majority [of Men’s Vogue advertisers] are niche luxury brands that don’t advertise at Condé Nast at all," Mr. Florio said. "It’s a whole new mix of businesses we’ve brought in."
Mr. Fielden said that the idea for Men’s Vogue originated with S.I. Newhouse, who approached Ms. Wintour with the notion back in September. Men’s editions of Vogue have been published in Italy since 1968 and in France since 1975.
In March, Mr. Fielden shared a prototype with what he described as "lawyer/banker types" in focus-group sessions in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The research convinced Condé Nast to greenlight a one-issue launch, with 100,000 copies on newsstands and 200,000 more being mailed to select consumers in Condé Nast’s database: men over 35, with incomes north of $100,000. If sales go as anticipated, Mr. Florio said, Men’s Vogue will follow up with four more issues in 2006.
"The overwhelming connotation that Vogue had as a brand among these guys was of taste, worldliness, intelligence and authority," Mr. Fielden said. "And that’s an incredible thing to capitalize on and to go out there with."
"The idea for Men’s Vogue," Mr. Florio said, "when we looked out there, we felt the high end of the luxury market, as magazines [for men] were concerned, had been abandoned. That men’s magazines all went younger over the last five years or so. Everything was about youth, youth, youth. Yet, clearly there’s a guy out there on the arm of the women at the Met Ball. You know, who is he?"
A: Saul Bellow!
"This is not a reader who is interested to know about the latest purple sandals to come down the runway," Mr. Fielden said. "This is a guy who is much more tuned into what a good suit can convey. And a good coat. And solid shoes. And you know, there’s a recognition on our part as editors that being well-dressed can get you through the door, but to go beyond that requires polish of a more lasting kind."
That means no fitness tips and no diagrams of how to tie a Windsor knot. Both Mr. Florio and Mr. Fielden made efforts to distance their magazines from GQ and the stable of men’s magazines currently on the market.
"There will be no abs, no beer," Mr. Fielden said. "There will be women, but they won’t be young starlets. They’ll be treated in a completely different way."
David Zinczenko, editorial director of Best Life and editor in chief of Men’s Health, defended the value of how-to journalism for the over-35 demographic. "At Best Life, we’re in the business of making better men, not just clothing them," he said. " … They can make the guy in the suit look better; we can make them be better."
Mr. Fielden also said that celebrities will be handled judiciously and "one at a time" under his stewardship.
That philosophy hasn’t stopped the Men’s Vogue marketing materials for advertisers from showcasing a cavalcade of celebs: Jake Gyllenhaal with a polo pony, Gael Garcia Bernal baring his chest, Bono modeling a leather coat and Lance Armstrong, splashed with water, pedaling a bike—naked.
"I’m 35. I’m married," Mr. Fielden continued. "I worked at The New Yorker for eight years. I was the arts editor at Vogue for six years and I didn’t feel like there was a men’s magazine I could relate to."
To that end, the debut issue of Men’s Vogue will draw on Vogue and New Yorker writers, editors and photographers. The issue will include pieces by Vogue food critic Jeffrey Steingarten, New Yorker staff writers John Seabrook and Michael Specter, Times of London food critic A.A. Gill, New Yorker Talk of the Town deputy editor Nick Paumgarten and Vogue and New Yorker contributor Tom Shone. Mr. Fielden said his photographer roster includes Mario Testino, Annie Leibovitz, Raymond Meier and Norman Jean Roy.
"The real goal here is to find a way to marry the great writing with the great photography," Mr. Fielden said, "and find a way to gather together, if you will—and give us time—a kind of generation that hasn’t been gathered together within the pages of one magazine. That would be my goal as an editor, ultimately, not go big-game hunting for the global literary names—though I wouldn’t shun any—and to find the ones who are really coming up."
Readers who think Vogue means women modeling clothes miss the point, Mr. Fielden said. "When they start to look at it, they see there is great food writing, there’s great travel writing, there’s great cultural stuff. There’s great architecture. I would expect we would take the subjects that seem appropriate from Vogue and build on them as well," he said. "Anna realizes this is something that can become—that has to become—its own thing."
And Ms. Wintour isn’t done building. Mr. Florio said that the Vogue editor has already created another prototype for a magazine to be called Vogue Living, dealing with "travel, home, architecture, and apparel."
"She’s had it for some time now," Mr. Florio said. " … Assuming the market is positive, and we’re in a good business climate next year, 2006, we’ll certainly endeavor to get an issue out by at least the end of next year."
[/size][/font]
from fashionweekdaily.com
Wintour's Duchy: Her Men's Vogue Is Jostling GQ
[font=Times, Times Roman][size=+1]by Gabriel Sherman[/size][/font]
[font=Times, Times Roman][size=+1]
To conjure the archetype of the Vogue man, Men’s Vogue editor Jay Fielden turned to literature. His new magazine, he had been saying, will be guided by the concept of "things that are real, things that are authentic, things that endure."
"It’s about breadth," the 35-year-old Mr. Fielden said, "rather than narrowing a magazine based on the expectations on what fashion or style make you have to conform to."
There are two separate sets of expectations for Mr. Fielden’s project. Financially, Men’s Vogue is shaping up as a straightforward big-ticket Condé Nast launch: 300,000 copies are planned for its Sept. 6 debut, with an ad-page count somewhere over 100. Vogue publisher Tom Florio said he suspects Men’s Vogue will outpace April’s company-record 106-ad-page launch of Domino.
Conceptually, however, Men’s Vogue is a more mysterious proposition. Vogue has already produced one successful American spin-off, Teen Vogue, in 2003. It’s one thing, though, to create a version of an iconic women’s magazine pitched to girls. It’s another to make one pitched to men.
"Clearly, this is a brand extension," Mr. Fielden said. But as macho brand names go, doesn’t Men’s Vogue sound more or less like Men’s Ladies’ Home Journal?
"I understand the skepticism some may have about whether a brand that means women’s fashion to so many people can be made into something men feel comfortable reading," Mr. Fielden said.
Mr. Fielden said that the magazine is not aiming for the service-oriented, you-can-do-this tone that most men’s magazines use to woo fashion-phobic consumers. It will assume that the Men’s Vogue reader already possesses a confident, educated eye—an eye not unlike that of Anna Wintour.
The Vogue editor is "around the corner whenever I need to consult with her," Mr. Fielden said. "She’s ready to give advice whenever she feels like she needs to give it, and whenever she feels she can improve upon what it is we’ve already done to make it better."
At 4 Times Square, Mr. Fielden—Ms. Wintour’s arts editor for six years—is currently shuttling between Vogue’s 12th-floor offices and his own space on the sixth floor. That lower level holds a 12-member staff (nine of them men, if anyone’s counting). Many of the magazine’s contributors, however, are Vogue staff. And Ms. W. is a short elevator ride away.
"She’s the guiding hand in the way that you would expect someone with the title of editorial—whatever her title is—of a magazine, in the Condé Nast tradition of [Alexander] Liberman."
Ms. Wintour’s title at the new magazine is "editorial director." That was the rank the legendary Liberman held at Condé Nast as a whole—outranking, among others, the editor of Vogue. But Mr. Liberman’s lineal descendant, Condé Nast editorial director Thomas Wallace, does not directly oversee Vogue. With the men’s and teen titles, then, Ms. Wintour is in the process of building her own corporate fiefdom.
Ms. Wintour’s newest property would appear to encroach on the turf of existing Condé Nast men’s magazines GQ and Cargo—as well as Details and Vitals, two titles published by Fairchild (like Condé Nast, a subsidiary of Advance Publications). Mr. Florio declined to name the advertisers that had signed on for Men’s Vogue’s debut (they will include companies offering yachts, planes and financial services, among others, he said), but he dismissed the notion that the magazine will be competing with the other titles.
"The majority [of Men’s Vogue advertisers] are niche luxury brands that don’t advertise at Condé Nast at all," Mr. Florio said. "It’s a whole new mix of businesses we’ve brought in."
Mr. Fielden said that the idea for Men’s Vogue originated with S.I. Newhouse, who approached Ms. Wintour with the notion back in September. Men’s editions of Vogue have been published in Italy since 1968 and in France since 1975.
In March, Mr. Fielden shared a prototype with what he described as "lawyer/banker types" in focus-group sessions in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The research convinced Condé Nast to greenlight a one-issue launch, with 100,000 copies on newsstands and 200,000 more being mailed to select consumers in Condé Nast’s database: men over 35, with incomes north of $100,000. If sales go as anticipated, Mr. Florio said, Men’s Vogue will follow up with four more issues in 2006.
"The overwhelming connotation that Vogue had as a brand among these guys was of taste, worldliness, intelligence and authority," Mr. Fielden said. "And that’s an incredible thing to capitalize on and to go out there with."
"The idea for Men’s Vogue," Mr. Florio said, "when we looked out there, we felt the high end of the luxury market, as magazines [for men] were concerned, had been abandoned. That men’s magazines all went younger over the last five years or so. Everything was about youth, youth, youth. Yet, clearly there’s a guy out there on the arm of the women at the Met Ball. You know, who is he?"
A: Saul Bellow!
"This is not a reader who is interested to know about the latest purple sandals to come down the runway," Mr. Fielden said. "This is a guy who is much more tuned into what a good suit can convey. And a good coat. And solid shoes. And you know, there’s a recognition on our part as editors that being well-dressed can get you through the door, but to go beyond that requires polish of a more lasting kind."
That means no fitness tips and no diagrams of how to tie a Windsor knot. Both Mr. Florio and Mr. Fielden made efforts to distance their magazines from GQ and the stable of men’s magazines currently on the market.
"There will be no abs, no beer," Mr. Fielden said. "There will be women, but they won’t be young starlets. They’ll be treated in a completely different way."
David Zinczenko, editorial director of Best Life and editor in chief of Men’s Health, defended the value of how-to journalism for the over-35 demographic. "At Best Life, we’re in the business of making better men, not just clothing them," he said. " … They can make the guy in the suit look better; we can make them be better."
Mr. Fielden also said that celebrities will be handled judiciously and "one at a time" under his stewardship.
That philosophy hasn’t stopped the Men’s Vogue marketing materials for advertisers from showcasing a cavalcade of celebs: Jake Gyllenhaal with a polo pony, Gael Garcia Bernal baring his chest, Bono modeling a leather coat and Lance Armstrong, splashed with water, pedaling a bike—naked.
"I’m 35. I’m married," Mr. Fielden continued. "I worked at The New Yorker for eight years. I was the arts editor at Vogue for six years and I didn’t feel like there was a men’s magazine I could relate to."
To that end, the debut issue of Men’s Vogue will draw on Vogue and New Yorker writers, editors and photographers. The issue will include pieces by Vogue food critic Jeffrey Steingarten, New Yorker staff writers John Seabrook and Michael Specter, Times of London food critic A.A. Gill, New Yorker Talk of the Town deputy editor Nick Paumgarten and Vogue and New Yorker contributor Tom Shone. Mr. Fielden said his photographer roster includes Mario Testino, Annie Leibovitz, Raymond Meier and Norman Jean Roy.
"The real goal here is to find a way to marry the great writing with the great photography," Mr. Fielden said, "and find a way to gather together, if you will—and give us time—a kind of generation that hasn’t been gathered together within the pages of one magazine. That would be my goal as an editor, ultimately, not go big-game hunting for the global literary names—though I wouldn’t shun any—and to find the ones who are really coming up."
Readers who think Vogue means women modeling clothes miss the point, Mr. Fielden said. "When they start to look at it, they see there is great food writing, there’s great travel writing, there’s great cultural stuff. There’s great architecture. I would expect we would take the subjects that seem appropriate from Vogue and build on them as well," he said. "Anna realizes this is something that can become—that has to become—its own thing."
And Ms. Wintour isn’t done building. Mr. Florio said that the Vogue editor has already created another prototype for a magazine to be called Vogue Living, dealing with "travel, home, architecture, and apparel."
"She’s had it for some time now," Mr. Florio said. " … Assuming the market is positive, and we’re in a good business climate next year, 2006, we’ll certainly endeavor to get an issue out by at least the end of next year."
[/size][/font]
[font=Times, Times Roman][size=+1] "There will be no abs, no beer," Mr. Fielden said. "There will be women, but they won’t be young starlets. They’ll be treated in a completely different way."
Well that's good. The last thing we need is another Maxim...
[/size][/font]
Well that's good. The last thing we need is another Maxim...
[/size][/font]
liberty33r1b
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^thanks kimair!
testinofan
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the style of the cover no liked me much ,Who are the photographer???
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boring... and george's face looks warped
wow...george clooney manages to look even less appealing than usual..
and like...omg...this is men's vogue? cause i soooo would not have guessed that...like ever...if it hadn't been those helpful white captions telling me that...oh and don't you guys thinks its like totally butch? the bold white font?....cause like i would soooo not want to be mistaken for some queen flipping through some girly mag...really puts the message across...don't y'all think?
but seriously...WHATEVER...who's going to buy this? gay republicans with a taste for men in butch drag?
and like...omg...this is men's vogue? cause i soooo would not have guessed that...like ever...if it hadn't been those helpful white captions telling me that...oh and don't you guys thinks its like totally butch? the bold white font?....cause like i would soooo not want to be mistaken for some queen flipping through some girly mag...really puts the message across...don't y'all think?
but seriously...WHATEVER...who's going to buy this? gay republicans with a taste for men in butch drag?
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^haha... actually, that IS their target audience
Homme_again005
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It looks really wierd with the MENS over the Vogue. The "women's" version is at least elegant and set back. This one is very....beige.
Plus, George Clooney on the first issue?? Ok, that's boring. And he looks like Dr. Evil from Austin Powers with the single figure at his lips. They could at least have put a male model on the cover, or someone a little more intriguing than a former Batman.
Plus, George Clooney on the first issue?? Ok, that's boring. And he looks like Dr. Evil from Austin Powers with the single figure at his lips. They could at least have put a male model on the cover, or someone a little more intriguing than a former Batman.
From nytimes.com
Sounds horrible, like an older version of GQ
August 18, 2005
Vogue Answers: What Do Men Want?
By CATHY HORYN
MEN have never exactly been alien to Vogue. Winston Churchill posed in the uniform he wore to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, Ernest Hemingway lounged bare-chested in Cuba, and the clowns of "Monty Python's Flying Circus" did the full monty. We saw Hitchcock's pear-shaped profile and Mick Jagger's lips - or, as Tom Wolfe put it around the time that he himself was photographed in Vogue, by Irving Penn: "This boy has exceptional lips. He has two peculiarly gross and extraordinary red lips. They hang off his face like giblets."
You can't say that Vogue has ever neglected distinguished men. Still, the news that Big Mama has spawned an offspring called Men's Vogue may come as a surprise to even the more liberal-minded sons (and daughters; let's be fair) of the feminist generation. Men's Vogue, which arrives on newsstands Sept. 6, joins Teen Vogue as the latest spinoff of this Condé Nast title under its editor, Anna Wintour, who is already brooding on Vogue Living.
Jay Fielden is the editor of Men's Vogue. A soft-spoken, likable Texan, Mr. Fielden, 35, began his career in 1992 in the typing pool at The New Yorker, which was sort of the literary equivalent of the mailroom at William Morris. "All I had to do was learn how to type," he said in a yonder-lies-the-cottonwood drawl.
He eventually became an editor, and in 2000 Ms. Wintour hired him to be the arts editor of Vogue. She said that Mr. Fielden was her first choice to run Men's Vogue after S. I. Newhouse Jr., the chairman of Advance Publishing, the parent company of Condé Nast, suggested to her last fall that there was an audience for such a magazine.
"I mean, he's sort of the target reader, Jay," Ms. Wintour said in her flower-laden office on the 12th floor of the Condé Nast building in Times Square. The target reader is a man over 35 who earns more than $100,000 a year, is already living the life he wants rather than merely chasing it, and presumably isn't too embarrassed to be seen reading a magazine that for more than a century has been associated with women.
"When people ask me, 'Who is this magazine for?' I say, 'Well, did you ever wonder who are the guys on the arms of the women who read Vogue?' " Thomas A. Florio, the publisher, said. Although the first issue is considered a trial until Mr. Newhouse gives the go-ahead for a second one (probably next April), Mr. Florio said it had the highest number of advertising pages (164) for a Condé Nast introduction, more than double what he expected.
The advertisers also reflect the editorial content, which is about lifestyle and accomplishment rather than trendy fashion and how to get a date. They include Hinckley yachts, Kiton suits and distillers of rare Scotch. Bergdorf Goodman and Barneys New York bought multipage spreads that emphasize their specialized brands, and, Mr. Florio said, Gucci agreed to shoot an advertisement that looked less "slick" than its usual campaigns.
Just who is on the arm of the Vogue reader represents, if nothing else, an interesting anthropological study of men and masculinity at the beginning of the 21st century.
The articles Mr. Fielden commissioned - a number of them from New Yorker writers like John Seabrook, Nick Paumgarten and Michael Specter - suggest a robust appetite for a literate, adventuresome life. There is a profile of the painter Walton Ford, who each summer takes a 250-mile walk from his New England front porch to his printer's; a feature called "Life Studies" that opens with a photographic portrait of John Currin in his TriBeCa studio; an article and fashion spreads about the English obsession with weekend shooting parties; a look at Roger Federer and the contents of his tennis bag; and a feature on the New York town house that the architect David Chipperfield designed for Nathaniel Rothschild. There are front-of-the-book pieces on wine, cellphones equipped with G.P.S. tracking systems and a quirky piece by Jeffrey Steingarten about his favorite meat slicer.
George Clooney is on the cover, photographed on the set of the Edward R. Murrow biopic he directed. And though there is plenty of fashion in the magazine, it takes a moment before you realize that it is all shown on so-called real men, not models.
It's hard to think of a contemporary magazine that is analogous to Men's Vogue. In a way, it's a paean to the urbanity of The New Yorker, the glamour of Vogue and the cosmopolitan sparkle of Esquire of the late 60's and early 70's before, it seems, the world was divided into gay and straight.
"I'm a guy who loves magazines," said Mr. Fielden, who was raised in San Antonio, where his father is a retired dentist and his mother teaches ballet. "I grew up reading them and would carry The New Yorker around like an acolyte, with my dictionary, when I was 15. Magazines were a connection to something a long way away. They were meaningful. It's eerie, half my life later, to be doing a magazine like this. You feel the momentum of where you came from and what you've been thinking for years and how it all starts to make some strange, interesting sense."
There has been a pronounced shift among men's magazines in recent years toward a younger, fashion-conscious consumer or, in the manner of titles like Maxim and FHM, toward the unabashed booze-and-broads genre. By 2003 FHM, Maxim and Stuff had acquired five million new readers, a gain that encouraged other magazines to tart up their content. "They were, in my opinion, being blinded by the success of Maxim," Mr. Florio said. "It was completely counterintuitive."
According to his analysis of the leading men's magazines, there has been a steady drop-off of readers over 35 in the last several years. But it's difficult to know if these readers left because of editorial content or if they were part of an overall retreat from print media.
Mr. Florio said he and Mr. Fielden found little resistance in focus groups to a men's magazine connected with Vogue. (Fifty-one percent of the participants said they would buy the magazine on the newsstand.) Despite the title Mr. Fielden and Ms. Wintour have not positioned Men's Vogue as a fashion magazine, or even as one with a conspicuous shopping angle.
Lee Eisenberg, the former editor of Esquire, sees shrewdness in their approach. He has not seen Men's Vogue, but based on a description of the contents, he said, of Mr. Fielden and Ms. Wintour: "They've obviously identified a demographic and a potential reader who's not being served by men's magazines. They also seem to realize they're not going to reach that guy through style." Mr. Eisenberg, who led Esquire at different times in the 70's and 80's and has just completed a book, added that he doubts that men in the targeted audience will have hang-ups about reading a woman's title. "I think we've passed that day and age," he said.
Still, Mr. Fielden is sensitive that some men might be self-conscious about reading Men's Vogue in the company, say, of their fellow commuters. "Well, men care," said Mr. Fielden, who is married and expecting his second child. "I'm no psychoanalyst, but I know that much. I felt, though, that I was in this unique position, being a guy with my background - raised in Texas, came to New York - to understand this feeling that men have about their masculinity and what they associate with a magazine like Vogue."
He seems eager that the magazine reflect a broad-gauged reader, whatever his sexual orientation. "I think this magazine is open to all readers, and that it doesn't try to stereotype or imagine what it is a person does in his private life."
Mr. Fielden, as many know, has an affinity for Saul Bellow, and he keeps on his desk a clipping of an obituary noting that that Nobel Prize-winner had flair and curiosity. "He's by no means the inspiration for this magazine," Mr. Fielden said, "but he's an iconic figure that lived a certain way, which is inspirational. And I think we all need a figure like that in our lives. And if a magazine can somehow reduce that into its pages, then that's something that can be compelling."
<IMG height=1 alt="" width=1 border=0 name=s_i_nytimesglobal>
Sounds horrible, like an older version of GQ
August 18, 2005
Vogue Answers: What Do Men Want?
By CATHY HORYN
MEN have never exactly been alien to Vogue. Winston Churchill posed in the uniform he wore to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, Ernest Hemingway lounged bare-chested in Cuba, and the clowns of "Monty Python's Flying Circus" did the full monty. We saw Hitchcock's pear-shaped profile and Mick Jagger's lips - or, as Tom Wolfe put it around the time that he himself was photographed in Vogue, by Irving Penn: "This boy has exceptional lips. He has two peculiarly gross and extraordinary red lips. They hang off his face like giblets."
You can't say that Vogue has ever neglected distinguished men. Still, the news that Big Mama has spawned an offspring called Men's Vogue may come as a surprise to even the more liberal-minded sons (and daughters; let's be fair) of the feminist generation. Men's Vogue, which arrives on newsstands Sept. 6, joins Teen Vogue as the latest spinoff of this Condé Nast title under its editor, Anna Wintour, who is already brooding on Vogue Living.
Jay Fielden is the editor of Men's Vogue. A soft-spoken, likable Texan, Mr. Fielden, 35, began his career in 1992 in the typing pool at The New Yorker, which was sort of the literary equivalent of the mailroom at William Morris. "All I had to do was learn how to type," he said in a yonder-lies-the-cottonwood drawl.
He eventually became an editor, and in 2000 Ms. Wintour hired him to be the arts editor of Vogue. She said that Mr. Fielden was her first choice to run Men's Vogue after S. I. Newhouse Jr., the chairman of Advance Publishing, the parent company of Condé Nast, suggested to her last fall that there was an audience for such a magazine.
"I mean, he's sort of the target reader, Jay," Ms. Wintour said in her flower-laden office on the 12th floor of the Condé Nast building in Times Square. The target reader is a man over 35 who earns more than $100,000 a year, is already living the life he wants rather than merely chasing it, and presumably isn't too embarrassed to be seen reading a magazine that for more than a century has been associated with women.
"When people ask me, 'Who is this magazine for?' I say, 'Well, did you ever wonder who are the guys on the arms of the women who read Vogue?' " Thomas A. Florio, the publisher, said. Although the first issue is considered a trial until Mr. Newhouse gives the go-ahead for a second one (probably next April), Mr. Florio said it had the highest number of advertising pages (164) for a Condé Nast introduction, more than double what he expected.
The advertisers also reflect the editorial content, which is about lifestyle and accomplishment rather than trendy fashion and how to get a date. They include Hinckley yachts, Kiton suits and distillers of rare Scotch. Bergdorf Goodman and Barneys New York bought multipage spreads that emphasize their specialized brands, and, Mr. Florio said, Gucci agreed to shoot an advertisement that looked less "slick" than its usual campaigns.
Just who is on the arm of the Vogue reader represents, if nothing else, an interesting anthropological study of men and masculinity at the beginning of the 21st century.
The articles Mr. Fielden commissioned - a number of them from New Yorker writers like John Seabrook, Nick Paumgarten and Michael Specter - suggest a robust appetite for a literate, adventuresome life. There is a profile of the painter Walton Ford, who each summer takes a 250-mile walk from his New England front porch to his printer's; a feature called "Life Studies" that opens with a photographic portrait of John Currin in his TriBeCa studio; an article and fashion spreads about the English obsession with weekend shooting parties; a look at Roger Federer and the contents of his tennis bag; and a feature on the New York town house that the architect David Chipperfield designed for Nathaniel Rothschild. There are front-of-the-book pieces on wine, cellphones equipped with G.P.S. tracking systems and a quirky piece by Jeffrey Steingarten about his favorite meat slicer.
George Clooney is on the cover, photographed on the set of the Edward R. Murrow biopic he directed. And though there is plenty of fashion in the magazine, it takes a moment before you realize that it is all shown on so-called real men, not models.
It's hard to think of a contemporary magazine that is analogous to Men's Vogue. In a way, it's a paean to the urbanity of The New Yorker, the glamour of Vogue and the cosmopolitan sparkle of Esquire of the late 60's and early 70's before, it seems, the world was divided into gay and straight.
"I'm a guy who loves magazines," said Mr. Fielden, who was raised in San Antonio, where his father is a retired dentist and his mother teaches ballet. "I grew up reading them and would carry The New Yorker around like an acolyte, with my dictionary, when I was 15. Magazines were a connection to something a long way away. They were meaningful. It's eerie, half my life later, to be doing a magazine like this. You feel the momentum of where you came from and what you've been thinking for years and how it all starts to make some strange, interesting sense."
There has been a pronounced shift among men's magazines in recent years toward a younger, fashion-conscious consumer or, in the manner of titles like Maxim and FHM, toward the unabashed booze-and-broads genre. By 2003 FHM, Maxim and Stuff had acquired five million new readers, a gain that encouraged other magazines to tart up their content. "They were, in my opinion, being blinded by the success of Maxim," Mr. Florio said. "It was completely counterintuitive."
According to his analysis of the leading men's magazines, there has been a steady drop-off of readers over 35 in the last several years. But it's difficult to know if these readers left because of editorial content or if they were part of an overall retreat from print media.
Mr. Florio said he and Mr. Fielden found little resistance in focus groups to a men's magazine connected with Vogue. (Fifty-one percent of the participants said they would buy the magazine on the newsstand.) Despite the title Mr. Fielden and Ms. Wintour have not positioned Men's Vogue as a fashion magazine, or even as one with a conspicuous shopping angle.
Lee Eisenberg, the former editor of Esquire, sees shrewdness in their approach. He has not seen Men's Vogue, but based on a description of the contents, he said, of Mr. Fielden and Ms. Wintour: "They've obviously identified a demographic and a potential reader who's not being served by men's magazines. They also seem to realize they're not going to reach that guy through style." Mr. Eisenberg, who led Esquire at different times in the 70's and 80's and has just completed a book, added that he doubts that men in the targeted audience will have hang-ups about reading a woman's title. "I think we've passed that day and age," he said.
Still, Mr. Fielden is sensitive that some men might be self-conscious about reading Men's Vogue in the company, say, of their fellow commuters. "Well, men care," said Mr. Fielden, who is married and expecting his second child. "I'm no psychoanalyst, but I know that much. I felt, though, that I was in this unique position, being a guy with my background - raised in Texas, came to New York - to understand this feeling that men have about their masculinity and what they associate with a magazine like Vogue."
He seems eager that the magazine reflect a broad-gauged reader, whatever his sexual orientation. "I think this magazine is open to all readers, and that it doesn't try to stereotype or imagine what it is a person does in his private life."
Mr. Fielden, as many know, has an affinity for Saul Bellow, and he keeps on his desk a clipping of an obituary noting that that Nobel Prize-winner had flair and curiosity. "He's by no means the inspiration for this magazine," Mr. Fielden said, "but he's an iconic figure that lived a certain way, which is inspirational. And I think we all need a figure like that in our lives. And if a magazine can somehow reduce that into its pages, then that's something that can be compelling."
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Honestly, I don't like how they slapped Men's across the front, either. But hey, I think George Clooney is the appropriate choice for their first issue. I like the cover. I actually want to pick it up and check it out.
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