American Vogue always looks like such an afterthought these days… And Blake Lively getting the September cover just confirms this sad vibe permeating from this Vogue. She’s a pretty woman, but is she a premium brand??? As much as someone like Kylie Jenner may be understandably easy to dismiss, she is relevant to pop culture; Blake… Was she ever a premium name…??? There’s been this succession of beautiful, icy WASP blue blood American fantasy: Grace Kelly, Cybil Sheppard, Mariel Hemingway, Gwyneth Paltrow, even Chloe Sevigny if she's placed under strategic lighting and good makeup— and going by appearance, one could argue that Blake would fit in with this elite gang. But unlike them, she’s far from a style and cinema icon, and the aura is just not there. I only remember her from that shark movie LMFAO And admittedly, it’s a decent cover— although more Town & Country than Vogue, but what a tacky story.
Nigel’s shoot is the only solid effort— despite it looking so low effort. No doubt his style of photography resembles an IKEA catalogue visual circa 1984— complete with the overly messy faux lived-in set design, the flat lighting, the pastel color-palette, and commoners' aesthetic. But it’s possessed of a dry humour that verges on trolling high fashion, and high fashion in 2024 deserves to be trolled.
Meisel is recycling/remixing/revising past glories at this point: With some shoots he does a decent job, while with others, he’s just going through the motion. This one is somewhere in between decent and going through the motions. If this is what he’s bringing to Vogue these days, I wouldn’t bat a lash if he never shoots again.
In American Vogue’s better days, this sort of low effort would be relegated to a January/February issue, where the filler stories are dumped— like the rejected discounted leftovers no one wants from the winter sales (…with mostly larger sizes that will never sell: Precious’ story is that hugely discounted pile that no one wants…).
