In the space of a year, 2001/2002, or two issues, when Richard Buckley was editor-in-chief, the circulation figures rose by 38% from an already respectable c.40k and the advertising revenue increased by 46%, according to the ad department. So the readership figures have actually fallen in real terms and ad revenue growth is almost flatlining.
The biggest problem French Condé Nast CEO Didier Suberbielle (who 'inherited' the title when he took over as CEO following a rocky time when the company had no CEO for months because nobody wanted the job) had with VHI when Buckley was there was that there were no French people on the creative side. He kept telling us it wasn't French enough. In fact, there were hardly any French employees involved with the title period. Suberbielle wanted the magazine to speak to what he calls "the general public". What he means is that he wanted, in effect, a French-language sub-GQ-style magazine and Buckley refused to give it to him.
On another level, a cynic might think that VHI, as increasingly successful as it was before its gelding, was an embarrassment to the corporate status quo and that it was esssentially, within that framework, a victim of its growing success. The magazine was produced almost entirely by a non-French staff on a shoestring budget and yet was French Condé Nast's most profitable title in real terms. Much of VHI's profit was apparently skimmed off and put into French Vogue's budgets. Here it were making all this money, according to well-placed in-house sources, yet the editorial staff seemed to be spending more and more of their time dealing with unpaid contributors and service providers. In the end, half the editorial staff had to sue the company to get paid.
VHI was an embarrassment because it outshone French Vogue in many ways and people were starting to ask awkward questions about this. So VHI had to reined in. They did this by creating untenable situations for the team producing it. It's simply an example of corporate realpolitik but I hope there is a lesson somewhere in this for those of you aspiring to a fashion media career.
VHI has now been well and truly reined in. The boat is no longer rocking. No more visits from the spooks over articles about terrorism, no more TV and radio denunciations for "revisionist" articles about Leni Riefenstahl, no more complaints about obscenity from Walmart and their Bible-thumping, child-abusing customers over cover stories by Terry Richardson. All nice and middle-of-the-boulevard now! I say all this without any bitterness at all. I had a ball when I was there and, like all things, it came to an end. But it was a salutory lesson, even for this time-served cynic!
PKB)
