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Last weekend, the New York Times published an essay by fashion critic Cathy Horyn titled "What's Wrong with Vogue?" Horyn's short answer to her own rhetorical question was this: "Vogue has become stale and predictable, and it has happened in spite of some of the best editors, writers and photographers in the business."
Horyn is right, but there is more to it than that.
What has really happened to Vogue -- and what will happen to other fashion magazines, I predict, in the next year -- is the recession. It's hard to care about couture when you're wondering how to pay the bills, and even those who can afford high end shopping are cutting back, because conspicuous consumption is out. Horyn sees this, too:
It’s embarrassing to see how Vogue deals with the recession. For the December issue, it sent a writer off to discover the “charms” of Wal-Mart and Target. A similar obtuseness permeates a fashion spread in the January issue, where a model and a child are portrayed on a weekend outing with a Superman figure. Is a ’50s suburban frock emblematic of the mortgage meltdown?
The answer, of course, is no. We are past the point where longing for a simpler time makes us feel better about today; we've reached the moment where we need to dig in and dig out, and it takes more than a pretty frock to do that.
Tiffany Neal at StyleList has another complaint about the magazine:
It's no secret that we have a major crush on editor-in-chief Anna Wintour and her fashion bible known to all as American Vogue.
That said, we've been left scratching our head pretty much each and
every time we take home a issue of the magazine from the grocery store
each month. And the January '09 issue was no exception.Each year, Vogue touts the people whom it felt were the most fashionable and stylish throughout the year by placing them in their coveted annual Best Dressed list. Sure, we get that one has to have pretty deep pockets in order to afford the fashion that would land one on the list, but who cares about socialites? Not us! And they make up seventy percent of the chosen few. Le sigh.
Neal gets at the heart of what is wrong with Vogue: while we know that fashion requires resources we don't have, we're not interested in the styles of women who DO have the money; we prefer the fantasy of celebrities, for whom fashion isn't about buying but about wearing.
Vogue's emphasis on the fashion lives of socialites is particularly out of place in a recession, and particularly uninteresting to women who don't shop at WalMart because it is charming but because it is convenient and affordable. We are willing to accept that celebrities -- Gwyneth Paltrow, for example -- do not live the lives of mere mortals; in fact, we look to them for fashion and beauty inspiration because that's their job. But socialites (does such a category even really exist any more?) are just girls who don't have anything better to do, at least not in comparison to the busy life of the average American woman.
But I don't mean to pick on Vogue; fashion magazines in general are struggling to find a neutral ground on which to pitch the value of couture. The January issue of Harper's Bazaar has a piece on Shopping Your Closet; imagine my disappointment when the suggestions turned out to be things like "Pull out that vintage Channel bag!" Clearly, this isn't my closet.
Not all fashion magazines are out of touch with recession shoppers, though. Glamour recently ran a shop-your-closet feature that walked readers through 100 new looks using basics that many readers were entirely likely to actually have in the closet (skinny jeans, graphic tee, sheath dress). The dilemma, of course, is that while articles about not buying are good for reader's financies, they are bad for the magazine's financial health. Advertisers don't want to place products in the midst of a whole series of use-what-you-have pieces -- they want readers to be seduced by the need for new things and to run out and shop.
Essentially, I think there is nothing wrong with Vogue -- the photography is breathtaking and the writing is stellar. Vogue's project is not to provide fashion advice for Everywoman; it is the classic fashion magazine. Read it as such and you will be pleased; read it with an eye to spiffing up your own
