Everyone wants to know what exactly goes on around the 12th floor of 4 Times Square. As the trailer states, one in ten U.S. women will get Vogue's September issue — which is a fantastically broad reach for a fashion title. How the sausage is made is a question that R. J. Cutler's documentary will, one hopes, answer in full. What we can tell from the trailer is this:

Wintour's legendary editorial nit-picking is not an exaggeration. In addition to replacing stylists, trashing finished shoots (including one with Hilary Rhoda and Chanel Iman, which never saw the light of ink), pre-approving all styling choices, and demanding a full, un-edited selection of shots from the photographers Vogue works with, she nay-says fonts. "This type seems so large, and pretentious," she mutters. "It looks like it's for blind people."

The trailer also makes clear that Wintour's interventions do not always redound to her title's benefit. The camera lingers over an image from stylist Grace Coddington and photographer Steven Meisel's 1920s-themed shoot, which Coddington reports her boss killed and re-shot at least three times.

Even in grainy online video, this double-page picture — a witty take on "Déjeuner dur L'herbe", with picnicking models in pageboys and flapper dresses — looks better than what actually made it into the magazine nearly two years ago.

As for the actual September, 2007, issue, it mostly sticks out in my mind as the point at which Vogue basically ate itself. In addition to relying on model Caroline Trentini, a perennial Wintour favorite, to do three editorials, there were numerous other embarrassing juxtapositions that proved the paucity of Vogue's ideas. For instance, accidentally publishing a shot-by-shot re-make of a David Sims editorial which had been perfect-bound by the magazine only seven months before.

That's Patrick Demarchelier's September, 2007, story with Trentini, "Brights! Camera! Action!" on the left, and Sims' February, 2007, story with Gemma Ward, "Park Avenue" on the right. In case you couldn't tell them apart.

And Raquel Zimmerman appeared for a Craig McDean edit in a head-to-toe Balenciaga runway look, which was also identical to the David Sims-shot Balenciaga campaign of that season, starring Anabela Belikova.

Advertising and editorial images which are not just indistinguishable, but actually mirrors of one another — just a few pages apart.

I suppose that kind of overlap is the risk you run when all your styling decisions are taken straight off the catwalks of six months prior, and your inch-thick magazine is 87% ads, anyway. To date, the September, 2007, issue remains the biggest Vogue ever printed — a monument to pre-recession thinking, advertiser largesse, and hamstrung creativity that we may never see surpassed.

The September Issue [Yahoo! Movies]

Earlier: The September Issue Less Than Flattering?

Anna Wintour has this dress which she just loves to talk about. At every public appearance, she relays the story of how Steven Meisel wanted to photograph it, but when she found out the masterpiece retailed for a lot of money — sometimes she says $50,000, sometimes she says $25,000 — she, the fashion magazine editor with a conscience, and a firm grasp of what regular people are prepared to pay for their few, hard-won items of luxury during These Economic Times, took her protégé kingmaker fashion photographer in hand, and told him (sternly, we imagine, and also very arch and British-ly) No!

And also the dress was very little. She publicly compared it to the size of Graydon Carter's shirt. And a Wall Street Journal reporter who also was treated to the Saga Of The Sequined Dress came away with the impression that it might have been just "a bedazzled shrug," so attenuated was Wintour's gestural representation of its size.

So knowing what we do about this dress, we A) Really want to figure out what it might be, and which designer experienced the snub and B) Wish Wintour would just let Steven Meisel shoot it, so everyone at Vogue could quit mourning the lost opportunity and find something new to talk about. (Like weight loss by the "bulk-heating" method, which we hear is totally now.)

Only one of those things being within our particular bailiwick, we set our minds (and our mice) to tracking down The Dress. Let's peruse the possibilities!

Balenciaga featured this dress in its spring campaign, and it costs $65,000. (But it's on sale for $35,000.)

And this one runs to $52,000. (It's currently reduced to $27,000.) Both would, naturally, be well above the $50,000 figure Wintour originally gave for her dream dress; and we know the editor loves to feature Nicolas Ghesquière's work. (Frequent Vogue cover girl Keira Knightley wore an all-Balenciaga look on the front of the all-important September issue last year, to give just one example.) These are strong contenders.

Plenty of readers pointed to Balmain as a leader in both the provision of embellishment-encrusted dresses and outrageous prices. ("$2500 for a pair of bleached jeans"!) While basically all of the label's Fall/Winter 2009 collection would qualify in the size and the sequin measures, none of it would have been available for Steven Meisel to photograph in December, 2008 — because, of course, the collection didn't exist yet. Limiting the search to the Spring/Summer 2009 samples, which would have been out for editorial consideration in the Fall of '08, two obvious choices emerge. Both are shinier than just about anything else we've seen. But this one is tinier.

And this one is getting a lot of attention — Jennifer Connolly wore it to the premiere of He's Just Not That Into You, and Vogue-owned Style.com has it currently up as one of its banner ads.

Is a Style.com banner ad a likely consolation prize for being cut from an editorial in the magazine itself?

Brian Réyes, thanks for playing. But nothing you make costs $25,000. (And thank God for that!)

This is certainly the one of the briefest of the entrants our little search attracted. We couldn't find pricing information for Hussein Chalayan's clothes anywhere online — but a lack of U.S. stockists is a sure sign of outrageous prices. We'd consider this little number a distinct possibility. Nobody at Jezebel can recall ever seeing a Hussein Chalayan campaign in a magazine — it would be easiest of all for Wintour to cut a non-advertising designer from an editorial.

Frankly, to get into $25,000-$50,000 dress territory, you have to strongly consider couture. Chanel's spring couture runway, a tipster notes, was full of sequins and sparkling embellishment. Although couture is made-to-measure and therefore POA, this little handmade baby could easily cost 25 large. Or a lot more.

Ditto this one.

Colette Dinnigan, an Australian designer who traditionally shows in Paris, used an inordinate amount of sequins in her Spring/Summer 2009 collection.

These are just four of her many tiny, shiny, and pricey dresses.

But would Dinnigan really have the name recognition necessary for consideration in a Meisel shoot for Vogue?

We find that proposition doubtful.

Marchesa specializes in extremely expensive, beautifully crafted, red-carpet-ready gowns, most of which are so expensive and limited in production that, like couture, they don't even make it into department stores. An embroidered silk organza dress by the label costs $6,600 at Neiman Marcus; rest assured that was probably the very cheapest item from the whole collection. This piece, with its extensive beading and sequins, could well enter $25,000+ territory.

Peter Som's dresses mostly retail in the $1200-$2000 range, so it seems unlikely that even one with such heavy embellishment as this would tilt the scales at $25,000+.

Phillip Lim, your dress is beautiful, and it has the costly double-whammy of sequins, and a fabric-use-intensive bias cut. But could it possibly run to $25,000? A quick phone call to the 3.1 Phillip Lim boutique in Manhattan reveals that this baby retails for $1,500 — but it's currently 40% off. In this lineup, that's a steal.

Sequined or otherwise embellished garments are inevitably some of the most expensive pieces from any given collection, and therefore among the most unlikely to be selected by major retailers, especially during this season of financial discontent. The memory of last Fall's nightmare of inventory-clogged racks and 85% discounts stays many a buyer's ordering impulse. Sequined items from this Proenza Schouler collection that were picked up by retailers are extraordinarily expensive — $1,050 for a t-shirt, $1,350 for a skirt — and the label's regular dresses can top $3,000. But while this beaded tunic, without the pants, certainly looks as though it's not much bigger than Graydon Carter's shirt, we doubt it could actually cost more than $25,000.

Ralph Lauren Collection is pricey stuff. Regular, non-embellished day dresses retail for over $3,000; tailored pieces like jackets fetch nearly as much. We wouldn't be blown away if this offering, with its heavy beading and all around sequin-encrusted lacy good looks were retailing for $10,000-$15,000. But $25,000 might be pushing it.

The tipster who sent in this worthy contender from Versace's Spring/Summer 2009 collection called attention to its briefness and the enviable shininess of its sequins. Dresses from the Italian fashion house generally hit the $3,000-$5,000 price point, with a few "bargain" options at $1,500 thrown in for good measure; we couldn't get anyone at Versace to answer our pricing questions, but given this one has sequins, we'd expect it to go for a lot more than the usual. Versace has steadfastly refused to even consider lowering its prices even as the recession has bitten hard into sales. A contender.

An Yves Saint Laurent silk/polyester blend sleeveless dress costs $5,250 at Neiman Marcus. So how comparatively unusual would it be for this sequined baby to top $25,000? But we just don't think it's short enough.

Which contender do you think edges out the others? Balenciaga 1 or 2, Versace's little number, Chanel Couture Silver Superhero or Chanel Couture LBD, Balmain Space Cadet Y or Z? Marchesa's beaded slip? Hussein Chalayan's stiff-looking frock?

We are simply dying to know.

Earlier: What Piece Of Apparel Is Anna Wintour's Fashion "Rosebud"?
Being Anna: "Sometimes You Don't Love The Press"

A&E IndieFilms, in addition to bringing us documentaries like Jesus Camp and co-producing The September Issue, is owned by Hearst Entertainment and Syndication. Hearst Entertainment and Syndication, as the name might suggest, is owned by Hearst. What else is owned by Hearst? Vogue competitor Harper's Bazaar, Glamour doppelganger Marie Claire, and a raft of other direct pendants to Condé Nast media properties. It's not clear that A&E IndieFilms' ownership status meant that anyone at Hearst enjoyed editorial control or creative influence over The September Issue, it is surprising that Condé Nast would accidentally put itself in its rival's hands.

And it does fit with reports that the documentary is notably harsher on Anna Wintour than previously thought.

Fashion Week Daily acquired a copy of the documentary, which isn't to be released in the U.S. and U.K. until September 11, and posted a detailed recap of its contents on the Friday before the long U.S. Memorial Day weekend. Cutler opens with a long discourse from Wintour, defending fashion on intellectual grounds, and calling people who criticize the fashion industry frightened:

"What I often see is that people are scared of fashion — because they're frightened or insecure, so they put it down. On the whole, people who say demeaning things about our world, I think it's because they feel in some way excluded or not part of the "cool group." Just because you like to put on a beautiful Carolina Herrera dress of a pair of J Brand blue jeans instead of something basic from K-Mart doesn't mean you're a dumb person. There is something about fashion that can make people very nervous."

It's often those who themselves are most desperate to be taken seriously who are quickest to project "insecurity" onto others. Perhaps it isn't a coincidence that Cutler, when he succeeds in getting Wintour to talk about her family, admits that her fellow high-achieving siblings — Patrick Wintour, political editor of the Guardian, Nora Wintour, deputy-general secretary of the Public Services International union, and James Wintour, an official with the Gravesham Borough Council who works in low-income housing — all regard her work with, she believes, "amusement."

What seems to emerge as a theme of the film, however, is Anna Wintour's relationship with Vogue stylist and former model Grace Coddington. Coddington, unhappy about the documentary team, threatened to quit the magazine and resisted Cutler's attempts to film her for months, the director recalled. (Coddington eventually relented, and Cutler's team's presence at one of her shoots led to a charming picture of Caroline Trentini and a cameraman, jumping together for an editorial.)

Wintour says that the cameraman's stomach needs retouching. "You need to go to the gym!" she says, not remotely in jest. (This is the woman who ordered Oprah to drop 20 lbs before shooting her for the cover, and who bullied André Leon Talley into taking up tennis, a sport he is filmed pursuing while decked out in Damon Dash pants, a Polo Ralph Lauren shirt, a vintage diamond Piaget watch, a Louis Vuitton towel, a Louis Vuitton racquet cover, and a Louis Vuitton gym bag.) Coddington rejects Wintour's criticism of the cameraman's body — "Everybody isn't perfect in this world. It's enough that the models are perfect. You don't need to go to the gym" — but she waits for her boss to leave the room before airing her disagreement.

The film also apparently gives an unprecedentedly detailed look at Wintour's managerial style and her level of involvement with the magazine. Wintour retains absolute creative control over every editorial shot. She does not shy from killing spreads by talented and proven long-time collaborators, such as Edward Enninful (Coddington's story with Trentini is a re-shoot of an Enninful effort) and Coddington herself. "I'm in a really foul mood right now because they've just killed another spread of my '20s story, and they're about to kill another one," says Coddington, at one point. "And they're all lying to me about it. It's just incredibly boring."

She also kills a spread with models Hilary Rhoda and Chanel Iman, jumping. (This was during Vogue's long, just-ended drought of faces of color on its editorial pages — it's interesting to note that Iman, who is black, was even in the running for inclusion in American Vogue in September 2007.)

It's no wonder, really, that her publication's creativity so often ends up channeled into the inevitable jumping editorial, the inevitable lavish-but-boring set piece. Wintour's nit-picking leaves even the talented eyes and minds around her too hamstrung to function.

If the full film is as critical as FWD maintains, then that means Anna Wintour has made one move worthy of respect: allowing Cutler to film her, no-holds-barred. But will Condé Nast be pleased at the results?

The September Issue, Revealed! [FWD]
More Details from The September Issue Vogue Documentary Featuring Anna Wintour and Grace Coddington [Fashionologie]
Hearst Takes On Condé [FWD]
Film reveals soft side to Vogue's icy style queen Anna Wintour [Guardian]

Earlier:
Vogue Documentary Is Delicious & Devil-ish

That low barrier to entry might just be what left the septuagenarian Canadian Vietnam war correspondent feeling entitled to come to some very definite opinions about other sartorial matters during the course of his reporting on Anna Wintour for last night's 60 Minutes. I edited the juiciest examples of Safer's judgments on his newfound area of expertise into the clip at left.

Exposure to the month-long rigmarole of the international ready-to-wear season made Safer so cranky he seems to have forgotten the London shows even existed, as he blithely elides them from his list of fashion weeks. But seated there in the front row, with Wintour as his guide, Safer at least learned enough to confidently diss Karl Lagerfeld's "Dracula" look, and accuse Italian Vogue's legendary Anna Piaggi of being "campy." He calls models "as angry as they are emaciated" while footage of Alyona Osmanova in the fall/winter Prada show rolls. Then his camera zooms in on the straining sleevecap of John Galliano's suit as Safer, in perfect underminey ladymagspeak, intones that "some might say" the designer would benefit from "a better tailor." Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy chief executive Bernard Arnault, whom Safer later interviewed, definitely had that tailor, so the journalist gives him props. But wait! As we find out in this clip, when Safer gets a tour of the Vogue accessories closet, there's a whole lot more to style than just picking the right suit.

"I guess all of this constitutes accessories," says Safer warily, peering at rows of hats and bags. "Right!" explains a Vogue worker bee, helpfully. "Everything that is not a piece of clothing is an accessory." So much to learn, and so little time. Keep working on it, Morley!

Anna Wintour, Behind The Shades [CBS News]
More Anna Wintour Clips And Outtakes [CBS News]

This 45-second clip, complete with the typical plodding Morley Safer voiceover, hints at the main newspeg of the whole segment: that four-syllable word that starts with "E" and rhymes with "nobody has any money anymore." At an editorial meeting with André Leon Talley and Grace Coddington, among others, Wintour states that the September issue has to be about "value." Yawn.

Looking over proofs for what would become the May issue, Wintour criticizes the subhead for a Stephen Meisel portrait of some of the photographer's current favorites models, Isabeli Fontana, Natasha Poly, Raquel Zimmerman, Liya Kebede, Karen Elson, Sasha Pivovarova, Natalia Vodianova, Lara Stone, Coco Rocha, and Caroline Trentini. An editor wanted to headline the photo "The Faces of the Moment," because that's the issue's cover tagline — even though these models are a slightly different group than the cover gang — but a nonplussed Wintour replies, "Keep thinking." (I just checked Vogue. The picture ends up getting called "Divine Inspiration.") Snooze.

Ever the hard-hitter, Safer also apparently gets Wintour to explain why she wears sunglasses indoors. Snore.

Watch CBS Videos Online

There was that documentary she allowed to be made, and even did publicity for; that "conversation" with fellow Condé Nast editors-in-chief David Remnick and Graydon Carter; the Wall Street Journal interview; the 60 Minutes special, dedicated to her, that will finally air this weekend. An awfully full dance card for a woman who otherwise seems to regard the press as an impertinent gnat.

In her interview last night with Jonathan Tisch, Wintour, much like her magazine, addressed a limited number of exquisitely soft issues in predictable ways. Shockingly, she thinks Michelle Obama is fantastic. Wintour also denied advertisers exert any sway whatsoever over Vogue's editorial content (explain, then, why the ladymag feels the need to present head-to-toe runway looks that exactly duplicate designers' own ad campaigns, month after month and year after year?) Wintour of course denied she had any plans to retire: "Mostly I'm thinking about the next day. I think that I have the best job in the entire world." She weathered a vocal attack from PETA protesters who threw a banner from a balcony — "As I was saying, fashion means different things to different people," she said mirthfully, before continuing — and hinted that more models may be seen on Vogue covers in the near future. (That's probably no red herring: not only has scuttlebutt of that exact nature hit fashion blogs and forums as of late, but at one of her last public appearances, in December, Wintour said she hoped to have Michelle Obama on the cover — and that came true this March. The lady does not mess around with cover talk.)

But what seems to be on her mind more than anything else is a certain dress with sequins. At the Y, she said that before the economy cratered last fall:

I probably didn't delve as deeply as I should have into what things cost. Now I ask the price of every single outfit that comes into the office, and I think a lot of my editors have been quite surprised about what a little sequin dress from an unnamed designer might be, and if it's $25,000, we'll say, ‘Okay, well, not this time.'

You might remember that in February, she told the Wall Street Journal:

Without naming names, we had a little sequined thing that wouldn't come down to here on you [points to chest.] And I said, 'How much is it?' $25,000. I said, 'No. We're not going to photograph that right now.'

And, at the December editors' conversation, she related that when a $50,000 dress "not much bigger than your shirt, Graydon" came through the Vogue offices, she said:

I'm sorry, but we're not putting that in the magazine, no matter how magical Steven Meisel thinks it is.

This dress — and I'm confident it is a dress, even though the Wall Street Journal reporter, Rachel Dodes, came away with the impression that it might have been nothing more than "a bedazzled shrug" — is Anna Wintour's rosebud. It's the MacGuffin of the recession! This slinky sequined mini-thing, which costs either $25,000 or $50,000 or some other similarly absurd sum, which may or may not have been requested for a Meisel shoot, which may be by "an unnamed designer" or alternatively a designer Wintour wishes not to name (odds-on it's an advertiser, then) — this dress is the key to understanding the new fashion economy. Surely Anna wouldn't just be wasting our time with tired talking points and six-month-old stories about nothing.

Now all we have to do is identify the sucker. You know where to send the candidates.

Earlier: Being Anna: "Sometimes You Don't Love The Press"

Related: Anna Wintour Getting Ready For Her 60 Minutes Close Up [Gawker]
Anna Wintour Gets Chatty At Sundance [The Cut]
Anna Wintour Adresses Rumors About Leaving Vogue, Michelle Obama, The Recession, And More [The Cut]
In Which We Offend Anna Wintour And She Shoos Us Away [The Cut]
Just Asking: Anna Wintour [WSJ]

Sischy and Brant, who spent 18 and 23 years with Interview, respectively, struck out for other pastures at Condé Nast last year, becoming international editors at Italian Vanity Fair and Spanish Vanity Fair. Now, according to a press release for Condé Nast, they are taking on the same positions at German Vogue and Russian Vogue.

Fabien Baron, who replaced Sischy as co-editorial director of Interview (along with Glenn O'Brien), was pushed out of his position after less than a year at the magazine. Baron, an accomplished fashion photographer in his own right, and creative director Karl Templer had revamped Interview and focused on better photography and more fashion content. The April issue is the first Interview produced under the leadership of the creative team M/M Paris, who put teen star Zac Efron on the cover.

Related:
Breaking News: Ingrid Sischy and Sandra Brant Resign [FWD]
The Interview Backstory [WWD]

Earlier:
Interview Magazine Cover Sparks Existential Crisis
Calvin Klein, TSE & Originality In Fashion : Not So Black & White

• 80s supermodel-turned-businesswoman Elle MacPherson will star in the CW's Beautiful as an 80s supermodel-turned-businesswoman. The show revolves around models living in agency housing. It'll be MacPherson's first television gig since her stint on Friends. [THR]

• Barack Obama started wearing a Jorg Gray wristwatch instead of his Tag Heuer — and the private label, which had only been marketed on the corporate gifts market, promptly launched Barackswatch.com to make the best of the endorsement. Stay classy, Jorg Gray! [WWD]
• Robin Givhan, longtime Washington Post fashion critic, is departing New York City for Washington in order to cover the First Family beat. She'll still write a weekly column on fashion, but in her new surroundings, the scope will widen to include "politician[s] looking especially appalling." [WWD]
• Anna Wintour, who has always been a strong supporter of designer Olivier Theyskens, lashes out at Puig fashion group in her April editor's letter. Puig fired Theyskens before his contract with the house of Nina Ricci was even up. Of course, Wintour's support doesn't mean Theyskens will automatically ascend to a similarly good position: Phoebe Philo, who left Chloé in 2005, has always enjoyed Wintour's good graces, and she's only just about to settle into a design role at Celine now. [FWD]
• Jessica Joffe is going to be in Katy Rodriguez's fall campaign. [Vogue UK]
• Agyness Deyn and Albert Hammond, Jr., they of the Vogue Valentine's Day photo spread, are no longer an item. [Daily Intel]
• Is it still news to anyone that editorial work is not remotely remunerative? Here is yet another industry person, Betty Sze of Models.com, to give the good word about the bad pay. Condé Nast, says Sze, pays new models about $150 a day, and more experienced girls can expect to net about $250. Those rates actually set the curve for editorial pay in the rest of the industry: three of the last half-dozen eds I've done didn't pay at all. I will say this of Condé Nast: if one of their titles is shooting you in an out-of-the-way location, unlike other media conglomerates, they send a car to take you to the airport. Which is rad, because LIRR and MTA are two acronyms you do not want on your mind when you're trying to make a 7 a.m. departure at Kennedy airport, and dropping $100 on cabs to take you to and from a job that's gonna pay $200 (after your agency's cut, when you get paid in three months, if other expenses your agency assesses in the meantime don't eat it up entirely) makes no sense. The idea is to do editorials to work with good photographers and generate enough buzz to book campaigns (or, at least, catalogs) but that second, crucial step to financial solvency is a lot tougher than anyone makes it sound. [Fashionologie]
• Collabs between designers and mass-market retailers are on the rise this season — I'll give you one guess as to why. (Starts with "R"!) [WWD]
• Urban Outfitters has been unveiling an unusual number of collaborations, particularly with lesser known, cutting-edge designers, this season. But that didn't stop their design team ripping off a sandal design by Hayden Harnett. They even copied the name. The New York designers called their shoe the "Camille" — Urban's offering is the "Camilla." [Fashionista]
• Palm Beach's retail environment is struggling under the twin curses of Bernard Madoff and The Recession. [WWD]
• Lakme fashion week in Mumbai has a bunch of designers — and a Barbie-themed show. Because what world fashion week is complete without that? [FWD]
• The Lauren Conrad Collection is no more. Funny to think that you couldn't sell an entire line of boring jersey dresses produced by a girl whose claim to fame is playing herself on television in this economy. [P6]
• In somewhat more disappointing news of reality star fashion projects, House of Harlow, Nicole Richie's jewelry line, sold out online before it even reached stores. Alas, she plans an empire: "I'm focusing on my brand right now. There will be a maternity line, a clothing line, shoes, belts, everything!" [People]

It's a tragic irony that those few people who are genuinely ahead of their own time generally experience as a personal misfortune what future generations will recall as the locus of their genius. Miller, who worked as a top model for Vogue and other magazines after being discovered by Condé Nast himself in the 1920s, had enough creative energy and pure balls-out chutzpah to forge about 29 subsequent careers, often in women-unfriendly careers, none of which gave her any lasting recognition within her own lifetime.

There were the three years she spent living and working in Paris as Man Ray's assistant, muse, and co-collaborator — which generated many of the images that would prove definitional of Ray's career, and also featured their co-discovery of solarization. There was her marriage to an Egyptian businessman named Aziz Eloui Bey and the years in his homeland, which she spent quietly taking some of the most iconic Surrealist photographs, like "Portrait of Space."

Then, there was the separation from Eloui and the job with British Vogue, which brought her to England in the late 1930s, to do fashion and celebrity photography for the princely sum of £8 a week. Towards the end of World War II, Miller became the only known woman photographer to cover the combat. She landed in France just 20 days after D-Day, and recorded everything from the first wartime use of napalm — at the siege of St. Malo — to the liberation of Buchenwald and Dachau to the dire postwar situation of the Hungarian peasantry.

Even her wartime photography, like "Non-Conformist Chapel" and "Remington Silent" above, which were taken during the London blitz, retain a sense of her surrealist aesthetic.

And then, after the war, suffering from what we would now call post-traumatic stress disorder, Miller went back to England, went back to fashion photography at Vogue, before remarrying, bearing a son, and retreating to a farm in the country where she tolerated her painter husband Roland Penrose's various infidelities and threw her energies into entertaining. (Obsessed with gourmet cooking, she would host her old artist friends, like Picasso and Henry Moore, for dinners where she would serve things like blue pasta and cauliflower in pink sauce and drink sufficient quantities of alcohol to forget either what she saw in Europe during the war, or the fact that Penrose was sleeping with a trapeze artist, or both.)

According to just-released files from Britain's National Archives, it was in 1941 that an unnamed Vogue coworker denounced her as a communist to the MI5, Britain's domestic intelligence service. Investigations into Miller's "queer foods and queer clothes," wide and varied circle of friends, sexual activity, and working life ensued. Miller was at the time living at the Hampstead home of a convicted Soviet spy, Wilfred MacCartney, which also drew the authorities' attention.

It was MI5's conclusion that Miller, though politically left-wing and with apparent socialist sympathies, was — unlike her friend Picasso — not an ardent Communist, and certainly not a Soviet operative. Nonetheless, the agency kept reading Miller's personal mail and updating her file through the 1950s, by which time she'd long lived an uneasy but thoroughly domestic life with Penrose.

I've always enjoyed Miller's work, and the story of her life — a woman who, faced with the possibility of only finding recognition as a function of her connection to the powerful men around her, rallied through the system and forged her own way forward, wherever possible — is inspiring. Is it at all surprising she rattled authorities in her adopted country to such an extent that they thought she might have been a spy? In a way, it's almost flattering that she was considered a potentially subversive element merely for being a steely and talented woman. Like a lot of women, Miller gained notoriety through the media available to her — first as a subject for photographers like Edward Steichen (who, in addition to taking her picture numerous times for Vogue, made Miller into the first woman to be pictured in a menstrual pad advertisement in the late 1920s), and then later as a content provider herself. But unlike a lot of women, Miller managed to take the avenues open to her, at a women's magazine like Vogue, and use the opportunity to create some of the most compelling and enduring records of WWII. It's tremendously sad that the rising tide of postwar domesticity, the invented ideal of the woman's place being at home and hearth, combined with the lasting horror of her wartime experiences acted together to so circumscribe her world in the end. But it's also kind of cool to think about Miller marshaling all her emotional intensity and her exacting intellect to tackling three-stage reductions, braising, complicated pastries, and the invention of Surrealist cookery. I suppose you can't keep a good woman down.

British Spies Kept Tabs On Photographer Lee Miller [AP]
Glamorous Socialites Were Spied On By MI5 [Guardian]

All photos from the Lee Miller Archive

Horyn's critical voice is so fresh that she is regularly uninvited from even the most high-profile shows — her ban list, of which she seems perversely proud, has included Dolce & Gabbana, Giorgio Armani, Carolina Herrera, Helmut Lang, and Nicole Miller. It's no surprise that the flagship newspaper critics, particularly Horyn, Suzy Menkes at the International Herald Tribune and the incomparable Robin Givhan at the Washington Post are often some of the sanest voices in fashion, and, like the scrappier bloggers, the most willing to lay hands upon the industry's sacred cows: fashion magazines, as we all pretty much know, are too deeply compromised by their advertising to attempt any independent analysis of designers' wares. (Trust me, you don't want to know how many times a fashion editor has thrust a not-quite-matching item on me at a shoot with a remark about how the magazine needs the editorial credit line because the label is an advertiser.)

But an article taking on the embattled editor Anna Wintour headlined, astonishingly, "What's Wrong With Vogue?" raises the ante a little higher than usual.

"Vogue has become stale and predictable, and it has happened in spite of some of the best editors, writers and photographers in the business," alleges Horyn, in what amounts to a throat-clearing before she lets rip.

There are too many stories about socialites — or, at any rate, too few such stories that sufficiently demonstrate why we should care about these creatures. What once felt like a jolly skip through Bergdorf now feels like an intravenous feed. To read Vogue in recent years is to wonder about the peculiar fascination for the ‘villa in Tuscany’ story. Ditto staff-member accounts of spa treatments and haircuts.

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.

Cathy, you had us at Tuscany. (Of course, we've been saying this for ages.)

As for Wintour, the writing is also on the economic wall: For all of 2008, ad pages across the beauty/fashion magazine sector fell 8%; Vogue's decline was sharper, at 9.6%, while major competitors Elle and Harper's Bazaar beat the average. And 2009 has opened grimly for Vogue. The January magazines, though typically light in ad content ahead of the unveiling of major new spring campaigns in February and March, have seen an average of 20.41% fewer ad pages this year. But while Elle and Harper's Bazaar only shrank 8.04% and 7.12%, respectively, US Vogue had a whopping 44.06% decline in ads. That's the biggest monthly drop of any national women's fashion magazine. Vogue set the curve. (Interestingly, Essence, which had 22.5% more ads this January than last, was the only publication in the sector to show a net gain.) These developments make Condé Nast's 2-page ad in last month's Times Sunday Styles section touting Wintour's achievements as editor and boasting of Vogue's status as the fashion magazine with the highest overall number of ad pages for the year look more than desperate. Surely if Wintour's — and Vogue's — positions atop the American fashion world were so secure, we wouldn't need to be so loudly reminded.

And while American Vogue's bottom line has faltered under Wintour's leadership, so has its creative currency. Month after month of studio editorials with straight-from-the-runway styling and jumping models, covers with Hollywood starlets of questionable talent and accomplishments, and holier-than-thou Plum Sykes reportages on the indignities of having to blow-dry one's own hair will do that to a publication. The photographers Wintour brought in as fresh young talents early in her 20-year tenure, such as Steven Meisel and Peter Lindbergh, have long ripened into establishment respectability, and there's been little infusion of new blood since.

Vogue has not found a way to define fashion in ways that speak to women of my generation. For one, Wintour seems to labor under the profound misimpression that 18-29 year olds with an interest in fashion can only process interesting clothes when they're shown on a celebrity, as if fashion were some toe-curling foodstuff best stomached when pureed into a gossipy brownie. Vogue functions like a bloodless total institution, a stuffy closed feedback loop in the open-source Internet era: Wintour thinks that, by placing the designer's ad in her magazine, dressing an actress in the designer's frock for an event, photographing the actress at the event in the frock and running the photo in the society pages of the magazine, and finally reminding us of the frock's existence in an editorial where Caroline Trentini models it for an issue where the actress is probably on the cover, she can maintain her power. As long as the bleedthrough from advertising to editorial to real-life celebrity "culture" is smooth, so long as the algorithm of aspiration balances, nobody else in the equation has any choice but to play their assigned roles. But if the readers are literally no longer buying the goods, Wintour's system won't last much longer.

Horyn quotes Vanity Fair fashion editor Michael Roberts, a self-described friend of Wintour's, calling her "old news." Still, when pressed, Roberts manages to come up with an example of one good editorial decision Wintour has made at Vogue:

'I’ve never seen anything from Carine [Roitfeld] that astonishes me the way that I have in American Vogue. I’ve seen kinky, sexy but not astonishing. But I did see astonishing in Vogue when Anna published a picture of Nadia Auermann having sex with a swan.' He was referring to the Helmut Newton picture from the early ’90s. That kind of subversion made American Vogue really cutting edge, Mr. Roberts said.

I found the Helmut Newton photograph of Nadja as the mythical Leda; it is undeniably beautiful.

It was also published in June, 1994.

Earlier:
Being Anna: "Sometimes You Don't Love The Press"
3 Reasons We Hope The Wintour/Roitfeld Rumor Is True
Wintour Said Replaced By French Counterpart [Gawker]

Related:
"What's Wrong With Vogue?" [NY Times]
Magazine Monitor Master List [Mediaweek]

• A celeb designer we could actually get behind: Helen Mirren! If given a line for Marks & Spencer, she says she'd call it, "DWS: Dresses With Sleeves." [Telegraph]
• Meanwhile, addressing the crucial shortage of celebrity fragrances, Patrick Dempsey launches "Unscripted," replete with "lavender top notes, fig mid notes, and patchouli finish." Quoth the Can't Buy Me Love star, “Sometimes people are scared off by patchouli, but I think most people secretly like it!” Think again, mister. [Fashion Week Daily]
• Brit presenter Alexa Chung: "I stopped modelling because it was just so stifling. It is very hard, when something is your passion, to be controlled and told how to do it and what to wear." Um, exactly which part was she "passionate" about? [Telegraph]
• Vogue editor-at-XXL Andre Leon Talley is sporting a rhinestone-bedazzled "Obama" hat, overcoat. President-elect backs away slowly. [WSJ]

• Michael Jackson is auctioning off his iconic "Billie Jean" glove! The embattled King of Pop must be, ahem, embattled. [WWLTV]
• While we have no idea whether or not Michelle would actually wear Khuraira's new bronze "Lady Obama" lipstick, she'd probably approve of a percentage of profits going to a breast cancer charity. [Nylon]
• Victoria Beckham's dresses are selling like gangbusters stateside! [WWD]
• Maybe it's because Posh has her design priorities: easy access. "I knew I would spend a lot on the best-quality zips because, like many women, I’ve had my share of crappy zips. I wanted a zip that undoes from both ends because then you can either put the dress on over your head or, if you don’t want to mess up your hair, you can step into it. And also, you know, going to the loo wouldn’t be this whole big palaver." [The Sun]
• Conde Nast's new odds-beating Love mag has a secret blog. [Fashionista]
• Celebs are all about odd-looking custom knits. [Telegraph]
• Speaking of bespoke: Will Savile Row's custom tailors be a recession casualty? [Independent]
• Meanwhile, mild winters spell doom for Russia's fur industry; probably still spells doom for animals. [Reuters]
• Also hurting: the overseas factories who supply U.S. stores. [FT]
• Ugh. Theory lays off 50. [WWD]
• Oscar de la Renta, however, has hired 15! [Fashion Week Daily]
• As we suspected, the Leger bandage dress is apparently impossible to eat in. [Daily Mail]
• Conversely, sales of men's XL clothes are way up in England. [Telegraph]
• Fashionistas are pissed that Marc Jacobs has canceled his annual holiday party. But could he really top last year's camel toe? [WWD]
• Rich Parisienne scores some haute couture bargain. "It must be because of the crisis everybody is talking about." [Reuters]
• They say YSL's art collection is good. Judge for yourselves! [Vanity Fair]
• Given that Nike's collaborating with APC, you know the resulting sneakers will be chic, simple, and way out of our price range. [VogueUK]
• "Have you seen a toddler? They're all bums and tums. But if you look at a mannequin of a toddler, it's a little shrunken adult body, like a little alien. If you're making clothes and using that as the model, it's not going to work." That's why Janice Wang makes realistic fit mannequins. [FT]
• Save the planet, celeb style! "The event not only showed off McDonald’s exquisite pendants featuring pavé diamond bears on top of geodes, but also raised awareness for Conservation International, an organization that protects the Ursus Maritimus as well as other endangered species." [WWD]
• New "invisible panties" are way less sexy, more practical than they sound! [Daily Mail]
• When you remember that awful urine-drinking Diesel campaign, it's no shocker that the film for their new kids' line is totally freaky: "The finale is unnerving, as the whole cast—bathed in an unearthly, almost hellish glow—start screaming. " [AdWeek]
• Mario Testino's new Burberry ads, featuring moddles in a plant nursery, is somewhat less alarming. [WWD]

• Pseudo-alt schlockmeisters Urban Outfitters have pulled a tee from their California stores bearing the words "I Support Same Sex Marriage," while presumably continuing to carry shirts that say "Lebowski 08." Urban remains unrepentant. [Racked]
• Can you stand it? Probably: Now you can see the full ten minutes of Karl Lagerfeld's silent treatment of Coco Chanel! [Fashionologie]
• Okay, maybe you can stand that, but what about this: Mariah Carey has selected the fan's dress design that best captures the spirit of her new fragrance, "Luscious Pink!" [ET Online]
• Grateful Dead Converse premiere. University of Vermont rejoices! [Telegraph]
• Still standing? Well, clearly you haven't heard about Nicole Richie's trip to Moscow with the Russian Peaches Geldof! [WWD]

• Wait, what? Conde Nast is launching a new British fashion magazine! You know, those things that are closing all over the world? But you see, this one is called Love, and it's "edgy" and "high-end." Our prayers are with you. [WWD]
• Nigel Barker and his wife have a presumably stunning baby girl, Jasmine. [Us]
• Not shockingly, New York retailers are down. [WWD]
• Sergio Rossi is an economic casualty: they're closing all U.S. stores. [New York]
• Those vibrating mascara brushes are a recession bright spot. Tear-proof formula, we assume! [WSJ]
• Also presumably doing OK, H&M opens its first Israeli store. [WWD]
• Kenneth Cole says his new collection's going to do well, because it's better. Does this translate to fewer smug puns - or more? [Crains]
• New York Times reporter finds the Paul Stuart store a pleasantly classic antidote to outmoded excess. We find our bank balances serve the same salutary function! [New York Times]
• Of her naked romp for CK, Eva Mendes: "I certainly don't consider it modelling." [Telegraph]
• Will Monique Lhuillier be collaborating with Cinta? Or was she just having lunch with the designer? Or are they just good friends?[WWD]
• Some good news! A new report has found fewer creepy chems in perfumes and other personal care fripperies! [USA Today]
• We're liking reports of a new, lower-priced line from Doo.Ri. Let's think more Go! for Target then Moschimo "Cheap and Chic," 'k? [WWD]
  [Image via Support Shirts]

As might be expected given that there were three editors of Condé Nast flagship publications present, the discussion — moderated by New Yorker media critic Ken Auletta — mainly turned on commonalities between the magazines, namely the souring economy and the internet. (Yes, this thing you are reading. Graydon Carter thinks a lot about it.)

Wintour, dressed in brown suede kitten heeled boots, a brown satiny skirt, oatmeal knit top, and a grey jacket with a large fur collar that did her lapel mic an injury midway through the audience questions, was the first to bring up the recession. "Right now we're in difficult times, but I think it makes you a little edgier," she said. "Out of bad times can come great magazines." Remnick took a similar tack: "Editors have to keep a clear eye and do what they have to do. I think magazines—ones that mean something—have a future."

In response to a question from Auletta about whether the economic downturn poses temporary or fundamental problems for magazine publishing, Wintour cautioned first against "over-reacting."

"I see a lot of people in my industry who are over-reacting. Stores that are over-discounting, designers who are creating collections for the price and what sells rather than to reflect who they are." Straitened times, she said, should not mean the end of luxury. It takes a special understanding of the world — wasn't the Dow just below 8,000? And aren't advertising pages in this month's Vogue down 22% compared with last December's issue? — to frame the fashion industry's biggest problem right now as charging too little for its wares.

Still, Wintour did offer what might pass for a glimmer of understanding. Recently, a sequined mini-dress "not much bigger than your shirt, Graydon" came through the Vogue offices, on request for a photo shoot. When she found out the garment retailed at $50,000, Wintour said she told everyone, "I'm sorry, but we're not putting that in the magazine, no matter how magical Steven Meisel thinks it is." (Of course, just this September, Vogue featured an entire article about a $64,300 gold-dipped mink coat. I guess it's lucky the issue closed before Lehman did.)

When asked about the internet, Wintour took a surprisingly pragmatic view. She recalled how this past season when Alessandra Facchinetti was fired from Valentino after less than 10 months as head designer, she learned the news backstage, before the show began, and got the scoop online. (The announcement was to have been made at the show's conclusion.) "It was a horrific, horrific situation," Wintour continued. "I mean, [Facchinetti] was weeping backstage, telling the whole awful story."

Remnick mentioned how last week's attacks in Mumbai came too late for the New Yorker's deadline — but contributor Steve Coll, an experienced reporter who'd covered Lakshar-e-Taiba before, wrote a post about it to one of the magazines blogs. (Imagine that, using your website to keep your magazine's coverage up-to-date.) "Do we compete with the Internet? I don't know what that means. We compete with specific sources...It's foolish for me to think the magazine is this thing that comes once a week, and then there's this business over here [online]," Remnick said. "It is all the New Yorker."

In fact, only Carter seemed a little troubled in his understanding of the web. "What's the point of duplicating the magazine and putting it all on the web for free?" he asked, rhetorically. (Uh, so people can, I dunno, read it?) Later he compared the internet to a supermarket, and his magazine to a gourmet restaurant. He claimed he didn't see the web as a threat, though his language was a tad on the antagonistic side: "If you're in the business of telling long stories with great pictures, it's going to be a while before the internet takes that away."

Remnick — who does post all of his magazine's content online — had the most realistic approach. "The internet is a system of distribution," he said. Of the three, the New Yorker editor seemed to best grasp how the web could be employed to enhance his publication's reach.

When Auletta asked about the way Condé Nast's readership skews older, Carter joked, "Sometimes people ask me how to get a 21-year-old reader, and I say, 'Wait eight years. He'll read when he's 29.'" Wintour claimed Condé chief S.I. Newhouse had never asked her to seek younger readers. "I'm thinking of a discerning person," she claimed, "whether they're 16 or 62 doesn't matter to me."

The elephant in the room, naturally, was Wintour's rumored retirement. Neither Auletta, nor the audience members who got to ask questions, addressed the item directly. (Apparently low balls like "Which magazines did you read growing up?" were thought to be more important.) However, when asked indirectly about the "next step," Wintour denied she would be retiring.

"My father always said to me, 'The day you get too angry, that's the time to stop.' The day I get too angry is the day I take up gardening."

I suppose there we have it. For now.

Earlier: 3 Reasons We Hope The Wintour/Roitfelt Rumor Is True

Related: Wintour Said Replaced By French Counterpart [Gawker]

Anna Wintour Says She Has 'No Plans' to Leave Vogue; What Would It Take? 'The Day I Get Too Angry' [NY Observer]

1. Fewer Celebrity Covers
The formula for a typical American Vogue cover under Wintour goes like this: A celebrity, probably with a film to promote, posed in some self-conscious location, often outdoors, photographed full or 3/4 length, with an awkward expression, PhotoShopped to approach the point of plasticine unrecognizability. The styling is stagey, overproduced, and 80s.

Since Wintour took over in 1988, American Vogue began featuring more celebrity covers than ever before—a cancerous, fashion-averse trend that has since spread through the women's magazine industry. At first, the covers were said to improve sales: readers were motivated to pick up the issue to read the profile of the celeb within more than they were by cover images of models, who have always held a much more circumscribed kind of fame. You could even make the argument that for a magazine such as Vogue, which seeks out the independent, successful, working reader, giving more covers to women for what they do as opposed to what they look like was an empowering step of sorts.

But the celebrity cover has had two negative effects: firstly, it's made Vogue's fashion dumber, since celebrities inevitably go about posing for fashion magazines as though it's a promotional drudgery they only put up with for the benefit of the latest terribly important film they starred in, and they always come phalanxed with minders whose entire purpose in life is to insure that the celebrity never cede too much control of her image. It limits the creativity of all involved, and drains the resulting images of the drama and charisma that resides in the best fashion photography. Secondly, the prevalence of the celebrity cover has caused an inevitable gerrymandering of the definition of "celebrity"—meaning that instead of our magazines periodically serving up interesting in-depth profiles of only the best actresses, singers and public figures, we get puff pieces that examine the inner musings of Kate Bosworth and Jessica Simpson faster than they can think them up. And according to circulation figures, readers have grown weary of being told 23-year-old Keira Knightley's life story several times per annum.

Vogue shouldn't be a promotional arm of the film industry: it should be a luxury fashion magazine. And Carine Roitfeld understands this. Paris Vogue's covers are striking and evocative; there's no formula in evidence. Models frequently take the honors, because whose image is more easily molded to suit the story of the moment than a model's? A Hollywood ingénue, like as not, has neither the look nor the inclination to pull off, say, an all-black avant-garde ensemble. Or a wacky couture gown constructed out of 15 yards of orange silk. But you can find a model who can. And Roitfeld consistently does just that.

And when she does feature a celebrity on her cover, Roitfeld doesn't put her through the generic setting, lighting and retouching that makes American Vogue covers so sameish. Behold Charlotte Gainsbourg, whose magnificent aquiline nose would've been doubtless rhinoplastied into submission with the liquify tool over at American Vogue:

Or what about this 2004 Madonna cover? It's a vivid shot of a legitimately interesting icon — and it's not easy to find a compelling way to shoot and style a woman who's been photographed millions of times. Roitfeld, unlike Wintour, does not fear the close crop. I want to travel back in time just so I can buy this magazine.

Under Carine Roitfeld my bet is American readers would finally be treated to more interesting and more varied covers, featuring singularly striking images of whoever embodied the given moment best — not just more portraits of some pretty so-and-sos who can give empty quotes about a (probably average) movie.

2. Diversity
In March of 2007, Jennifer Hudson became the first black woman to grace a cover of American Vogue since a 2005 Liya Kebede cover. Under Wintour's leadership, readers ought not expect more than one black woman on a cover every 2-3 years. All told, 14 black women have made the cover alone, and another 4 have been included in group covers, in the publication's 116-year history.

As for Vogue Paris, I can bring to mind several very recent black cover subjects. Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss had a cover together in February.

Noémie Lenoir had a solo cover in June/July. (Half the print run featured a Laetitia Casta cover with identical lighting, styling, and pose.)

And who can forget the cover that introduced the world to André J, a bearded drag queen who was chosen after a chance meeting with Bruce Weber and Roitfeld? (Which shows the kind of freewheeling spontaneity that can go into a Vogue Paris cover, and which American Vogue's triangulated, procedural covershots under Wintour conspicuously lack.)

Obviously people of color are a part of Carine Roitfeld's conception of fashion in a way they simply aren't at American Vogue. Fashion as an industry still struggles with racism, despite the fact that black women spend more than $20 billion a year on apparel, despite the fact that closing issue after issue without a single editorial page devoted to a model of color ought to be a source of shame for any editor-in-chief, and despite the fact that it is the damn 21st century. Roitfeld's approach would be a welcome change.

3. Creative Freedom

At virtually every shoot I do, the photographer and the fashion editor come prepared with materials for inspiration. Sometimes it's as elaborate as a bulletin board covered in location snapshots, iconic art photography, historic or news shots, and tear sheets from magazines, where the images together inform the story of the shoot, or even just the mood. (Other times it's as simple as a post-it in a Tim Walker book that points to the picture the client would most like to rip off.) Either way, there are always a million magazines on set for supplementary inspiration, or just to stave off boredom. And during the hours it takes to set up, everyone flicks through the titles, searching for an image that might help inform the inchoate ideas. Fashion people are rarely highly verbal, and to aesthetes, the right picture means a lot.

At the danger of putting words in her mouth, I believe this was what Anna Wintour was getting at when she said that "If you look at any great fashion photograph out of context, it will tell you just as much about what's going on in the world as a headline in the New York Times." One can talk all day about how fashion reflects the world; the million little tells it betrays to anyone who cares to notice, like how a certain kind of soutache embroidery became popular in Europe in 1919 only because the Communist revolution, which expelled skilled workers, temporarily depressed the wages of the Russian garment workers who produced it, or any of the other myriad ways styles have points of origins the way wines have a terroir. When you work in fashion, pictures start off being in your world, then they define your world, then they become your world. You live in pictures. You communicate in pictures. Pictures are everything.

So it's perhaps telling that, for as long as I have worked in fashion, I don't recall ever being directed to an American Vogue image as an exemplar of something to aim for.

Stylists and photographers, they thumb through Vogue Paris, Vogue Italia. British Vogue. Because what are you going to find inside an American Vogue? We already know. A Craig McDean editorial, shot in a studio with a neutral background, of Caroline Trentini jumping. A boring profile of a celebrity you cared about three years ago. A showpiece editorial shot by someone like Steven Klein or Steven Meisel where the great photographers try and work dumbed-down versions of ideas they explored at greater length and with greater freedom—more suitable props, edgier locations, maybe a surrealist touch or two, or a reference to an obscure film—seasons ago in Vogue Italia's pages. Or in Vogue Paris's. Wintour reportedly demands a full selection of images from every photographer she works with, so that she can make the final photo choices herself (it's much more normal for a photographer to do a first edit, and for the eventual images to be something of a compromise between the photographer and the magazine). This level of control has hamstrung her publication, which consequently recycles the same tiny list of models, stylists, and photographers virtually every issue. American Vogue has, for far too long, been deficient in that most fashionable quality, surprise. Carine Roitfeld would breathe in some life.

Of course, S.I. Newhouse quickly denied the Roitfeld replacement rumor through a spokesperson. And Roitfeld herself has always claimed that she is not gunning for Wintour's job: Last year, she told a reporter, “My best quality is to be stylist. I never think about this career, this big job [...] I never wanted to be what I am today, and I will not die in the position.” Roitfeld is said to dislike New York. She spends as little time in the city as possible, and her daughter says she loves her home in Paris too much to ever leave. It's also possible that Roitfeld might not be keen to sign up to fill Wintour's shoes because in the current economic climate, it's a virtual certainty that Wintour's successor will never be granted the leeway Wintour carved out for herself, which includes vast editorial control, a reported 2 million dollar salary, a $50,000 annual clothing allowance, and a personal chauffeur. When Wintour wanted to buy an apartment in Greenwich Village, Condé Nast cut her a $1.6 million loan, interest-free. S.I. Newhouse will probably never grant a single editor-in-chief such extraordinary freedoms again.

It's possible that these rumors are unfounded, and perhaps the challenge presented by American Vogue—a mass-market title with a circulation of 1.3 million—might itself wreck all it is that's so inspiring about Roitfeld's editorial vision. A Roitfeld who could not change Vogue would be instead changed by it, and not, I would wager, for the better. And Roitfeld is, after all, comfortable overseeing a small-but-mighty 133,000 circulation magazine more loved by the fashion crowd than the wider world.

But even if the next in line proves not to be Roitfeld, it will be someone else, and sooner rather than later. Anna Wintour is nearing 60; the flurry of varying replacement/retirement rumors reported in different titles from different sources might at least be pointing in the right direction. Change is long overdue.

Related: Anna Wintour Said Replaced By French Counterpart [Gawker]

The Anti-Anna [NY Mag]

Marketing exec Nina Wales was given an Afro.

Earlier: 'Glamour' Editor To Lady Lawyers: Being Black Is Kinda A Corporate "Don't"
GlamourPussy
Glamour "Racist" Freed From Slavery To Fashion
Glamour & "Political" Hair: What Have We Learned?
How Does A Black Woman Feel About The Glamour Controversy? I Asked Myself!
Glamour Attempts To Negotiate Peace Between Blacks, Bitchy Redheads
Related: Dear Oprah, Mariah & Leona: Don't Forget That Curly Hair Is Beautiful Too

Now Valerie Frankel, a former editor at Mademoiselle, has a book called Thin Is The New Happy, in which she details her experiences at the magazine. What does she say about working at the glossy for smart young women? "I did more blow in my first two years at Mademoiselle than in college, when I lived with a coke dealer." Plus:

"Self-starvation was a competitive sport. At staff lunches, the girl who ate the least won," Frankel writes. "During downtime, we'd sit in our offices smoking cigarette after cigarette (to quell hunger) and talking about who ate what, the calorie counts of our lunches, the latest dieting trends, who on the staff looked heavy."

Oh, and by the way, Frankel had a sex column, in which she may or not have dispensed advice. While high. Coke psychology!

What I hate about stories like this is that it reinforces some shitty stereotypes, namely that women cannot work together without life being a living hell, especially in the magazine industry. But what I'm guessing is that things probably haven't changed that much. At the time, Mademoiselle was owned by Condé Nast. Frankel says human resources told new hires to "represent the magazine in [their] personal appearance," and the office motto of sorts was "get thin or die trying." Hence the "hillocks" of coke and the co-worker who carried a scale to weigh everything she ate. But even though Mademoiselle has folded, Condé Nast still owns and operates Vogue, W, Glamour, Allure, Self, Teen Vogue, Lucky, Brides and Modern Bride. What are the chances that those publications are being run by women involved in drugs and starvation?

Tales From ‘Mademoiselle’: ‘Self-Starvation Was a Competitive Sport’ [NY Mag]

• Okay, it's slightly less random than it seems: Dempsey's wife, Jillian, has been Avon’s global creative color director since July 2006. Not that this really excuses it. Or why WWD refers to "Unscripted", ominously, as the actor's "first scent." And about that name: does he really want to take credit for ad-libbing the Grey's dialogue? [WWD]
• Meanwhile, in other fragrance news, Josh Hartnett is fronting "Emporio Armani: Diamonds for Men," [ET]
• ...while Eva Mendes is the, um, face of both Calvin Klein's new Secret Obsession perfume and its "Seductive Comfort" underwear line. Quoth the loyal pitchwoman, ""I wear [Calvin Klein] G-strings all of the time on the red carpet and when shooting for a film because you don't see the [panty] lines." [WWD]
• Christian Siriano: "I am honored to be a part of this amazing group of talent!” Siriano said. “It is a dream to work with legends such as [director] Charles Shyer, Uma Thurman and [costume designer] Milena Canonero on a wonderful story filled with creative inspirations." The project? Eloise in Paris. [E!]

Meanwhile, fellow PR winner Jay McCarroll is shilling his wares on QVC. [Blogging Project Runway]
• I think we can all agree that there's no such thing as too many Karl Lagerfeld documentaries. [WWD]
• German Elle celebrated its big 2-0 in Berlin. Yes, Lagerfeld was there. [WWD]
• In one handy reference: the Ethical Fashion Directory. [The Guardian]
• Bravissimo offers "full-figured" nightwear; PJs that actually support. 'Rather than the 'one size fits all' approach, Bravissimo's designs are based on a standard sized back, shoulders and waist but, within each dress size, offer different sizes to account for the fullness of the bust.' [The Star]
• Model Lily Cole in French Playboy, which is allegedly more 'artistic' than the Yank version. Hm. [Fashionista]
• Long-awaited Prada flagship opens in San Francisco. [WWD]
• CondeNast'sFashion Rocks, the worst fashion and music magazine in the history of the universe, will come out in September, and the accompanying concert features Rihanna, Beyoncé, Justin Timberlake, Fergie, Mariah Carey, Keith Urban, Kid Rock and Lil Wayne. It'll air on CBS. [E!]
• Yup, the death watch is on for Mervyn's, all right. We feel bad for the chain's founder. [Los Angeles Times]
• That Visa London clothing swap LiLo fronted? Listen to this undemocratic twist: "Participants dropped off unwanted items at collection points over the last six weeks, receiving points on a swipe card. The more exclusive the outfit, the more points they received, which they could spend yesterday on other donated items." Wait, who determined "exclusivity"? [The Observer]
• Russian public schools ban "emo and goth" clothing. [Fashionista]
• "But fashion is also theatre, a world of make believe, and there is nothing more theatrical than revealing the layers of artifice that construct an image, especially when it is done within the image itself. It is like the conjurer's reveal." The intricate dance that is Fashion Photography. [The Guardian]
• Alexander Calder's jewelry, which he mostly made for family and friends, is on display at the Philly Art Museum. And it's amazing. '"He's not a jeweler,"a curator said. "There are no welds. He's working on an anvil and a bench, but he's not doing what jewelers do, not making links or soldering things. He's taking wire and doing stuff with it that no one else was doing. With basic wire."' [NPR]
• New York's Clock Tower Building, a century-old Madison Avenue landmark, is getting a makeover. By Versace. The quietly tasteful fashion house is decorating 55 apartments and a spa. presumably gold, cheetah, tanning beds will figure prominently. [Reuters]
• Betsy Johnson is awesome, has a "man-lover." [WWD]
• Parishoners at St. James United Church of Christ have modified 150 pairs of boxer shorts for wounded veterans, replacing the shorts' side seams with fasteners so they are easier to fit over bulky prosthetics and braces. Good work and probably something that people don't often consider. But the fact that they're bringing the undies to the altar to be blessed on Sunday is just peculiar. [USA Today]
• "Jacques Kaplan, 83, Bold Furrier, Dies." [IHT]
• Designers Kate&Kass name their designs after famous women. They have an Ingrid Newkirk. Also a Benazir Bhutto minidress. [Fabsugar]
• In spite of economic challenges, textile fairs thrive. [WWD]
• Seattle Jezzies: donate gently used prom duds for low-income teens. [,a href="http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/lifestyle/371628_tf222.html?source=rss">Seattlepi]
• Bravo's Runway replacement? UK import Fashion House , which "replicates the workings of the fashion business through a fashion house." Teams of designers will live together and work to create an entire line — rather than just individual pieces — that has the potential to be purchased by commercial buyers.' We want to believe! [New York Magazine]
• British denim brand Lee Copper celebrated its centennial with various one-off collabs: "From the gothic-inspired denim dress complete with Swarovski crucifix designed by Giles, to the vintage denim jacket emblazoned with signature gold lips by Jade Jagger, each and every piece is set to shoot straight to the top of every fashion fan's wishlist." Well, let's not get carried away, here. [ElleUK]

See, all this time I'd been assuming the developing countries would always imitate the useless consumption fads and phony neuroses that comprise the sorry substitute for purpose we call "lifestyle" around here. Otherwise, what is the West even good for? Well, funny you should ask, because I have an answer for that: nothing. We are good for nothing. Because I opened the fucking magazine, Anna. I couldn't not open it. And in a few flips of the page I almost regained my belief in something I should know better than anyone is a cynical con designed to sell shit to insecure women and perpetuate a lucrative unending cycle of the creation of new wants, which is to say: beauty. Beauty, of all things! Seriously, I was surprised as you. But check her out.







Who is this stunning broad? Well, look here, they actually give you her name. How gauche — and yet, useful! Don't strain your eyes; it's Lakshmi Menon.







And look, I Googled her! Would you believe she's the new face of Hermes? Not Hermes in India, Hermes in Everywheria!







Of course I fucking would. Look at her.







This girl could start the next Peloponnesian War and I would be like, "And?"







But let's face it, maybe the photographer deserves some credit. Who is this guy?







Do you think the only reason I don't open my magazines anymore is just fatigue with the anemic staged Leibovitz-Testino-Meisel-guy ripping off that guy who got AIDS sameness of Vogue and all the magazines that hire photographers on the sole basis that you launched their careers in Vogue??







Nah, probably not. She's just motherfucking stunning. Look, she doesn't even have a pedicure. Hot.

So anyway, don't blame yourself. The world is flat as the saying goes. So are magazines. Now, once upon a time it seemed like magazines were there to inspire you to get outside, walk around, learn a language, buy a fucking swimsuit, look at the pretty colors, educate yourself on the internal politics of whatever country's populist leader the CIA is trying to depose, and whatever else you're supposed to do. The flatness could almost convey the roundness, if you will. Yeah, I totally thought those days were over too. Maybe not! Oh, and don't bother coming in to get your stuff. Like Samantha says, we have people who can take care of that for us here. People whose children will one day put Bee out of a job, too!

Bestest,







Si

Earlier: Vogue India Debuts With Australian Blonde On Front, Bleeding Heart Inside?

Related: Wintour's Alleged Tryst With Conde Nast Boss [Gawker]

Images: Mark Seliger exclusively for Vanity Fair.

• Breaking news: a Telegraph profile today inspired me to finally watch the Agyness Deyn music video. It is generic and derivative and cynically targeted at the aging Britpop nostalgists who write blogs and I fucking love it. Oh man, and I don't even hate myself for this. Embedded after the jump. [Telegraph]
  
• Tinsley Mortimer's makeup may look light and natural but it is actually deceptively heavy and high-maintenance! One brave New York writer consumed three hours she will never get back in an effort to emulate the Tinz. And you wonder why they pay her the big bucks. [NY Mag]

• It's intern theme day at Rag Trade! Hockey player Sean Avery just started his internship at Vogue. WWD thinks it's kind of scandalous that he maybe gets to attend the couture shows with Andre Leon Talley. Fashionista thinks it's kind of scandalous that he's actually getting paid minimum wage when "almost every single other intern there not only doesn't get paid at all, but usually ends up actually paying to be there (as I, dear reader, did three times for Conde internships)." We can think of other things involving the minimum wage that scandalize us more, but why discuss the travails of ordinary Americans when...
• We found out the real reason Teen Vogue banned high school interns! A tipster tells us: "so last year, one of teen vogue's interns crashed the met ball in a dress she had borrowed without permission from the teen vogue fashion closet, and then [blogged] about all the celebrities she met and exactly what they said to her... and then Kimball Hastings lost his shit, obviously."
• We had high hopes that a recession would usher in a new era of fashion, but this is somewhat worrisome: retail sales are so dismal that H&M sales fell last quarter for the first time since the Clinton Administration. [WWD]
• And yet! Abercrombie & Fitch somehow continues to thrive. [WWD]
• Which can only be auspicious for the...Ugg clothing line! [FabSugar]

• We were "purchased" by Conde Nast...not. But you guys got your panties in some serious bunches about it.
  
• Maybe you were just cranky because you live in New York and you're not getting any.
  
• Perhaps you just discovered your second grader is a sexual harasser.
  
• Anna and Tracie crashed the New York Weddings Showcase and all they got was some moisturizer, lobster cups, mini-hamburgers and period-blood.

• We wondered if hot chicks make dudes financially irresponsible.
• We worshipped at the altar of baseball.
• We peed on the altar of Rush Limbaugh.
• But New Kids on the Block reunited! So crack open a cold one and pour some out for Donnie, Joey, Jordan, Danny and Jonathan. It's Friday!

The truth is that they are keeping me on because they know I am a "loose cannon" and will get myself fired for cause and that Dodai and Anna, being black, will have a fully reasonable case for a race discrimination suit, and they are pre-empting that potentiality with a generous severance package and, one imagines, seats on all Conde-sponsored "Our Hairstyles, Ourselves" panels forever and ever in perpetuity. And Dodai and I will laugh about it and go about our business because the universe is absurd that way. So I am going to make the case for them, since this is my last chance and their logins have been deleted from the system: America is not really a traditionally classist country but it is a traditionally "racist" country, and that racism masquerades as classism in the pages of all the Conde Nast magazines, where we don't see it as being so noxious because "classism" is not endemic here, it seems like some exotic foreign import a la Anna Wintour, and anyway, if you are not black you don't have to think about any of this stuff every day, because enough black people have confronted the obstacles that it feels like progress, and maybe, eventually, it will be.

Barack Obama is powerful and strong and visually charismatic enough to chip away at the likes of Vogue, and the imagery that forms the foundation of our consciousness will begin to salve the wounds to the national soul that has been forged by an economy that has overvalued the superficial for entirely too long. Economic realities beget cultural and societal ones. Slavery was just cheap labor, right? What's more American than cheap labor?

I began hating fashion when I covered retail at the Wall Street Journal and began learning about the hiring practices of Abercrombie & Fitch. Sometime in the early nineties Abercrombie had been recast — under the leadership of the Limited Brands and a bizarre Ralph Lauren clone named Mike Jeffries — as an "aspirational" brand appealing to middle-class mallgoing teenagers, and the centerpiece of this strategy was turning every kid who worked there into a "walking mannequin" for the brand. At first, this was organic; the hot frat boys they recruited found it easy to convince their lifeguard chick ex-girlfriends to come work too. But retail is a drag, and the company was growing quickly, so rules and procedures needed to be established. Every store was given a "target school" — a college university expected to supply some quota of students to the stores. Only Georgetown students could staff the Georgetown store, for instance; George Washington students were forced to take the Metro down to the less-coveted Pentagon City location, etc. etc. Management further isolated fraternities, sororities and sports teams at the schools for recruitment to work at the stores, and sent forth their most attractive and charming brand representatives to woo them in. The idea was that the stores would reflect some sort of idealized form of real life, and they did.

But as the chain continued to grow, exceptions needed to be made. Certain tony prep schools were targeted for recruitment. Exceptionally-attractive staffers were allowed work at the stores of their choosing. Local modeling agencies were sometimes tapped to staff the coveted positions at the front of each store. Target school quotas could be ignored so long as each store was hot enough.

But each store was never hot enough. District managers pressured by regional managers pressured by the constant pressure for increased profits assured to that. Weekly, they would monitor the stores, admonishing the manager for allowing Jeremy to work the register in last month's clothes, or letting Rick wear white shoes, or allowing Melanie to wear red lipstick when that wasn't "brand-positive," or ever hiring Melanie in the first place because, at 130 pounds she was horrifically obese. Uglies and fatties and people who didn't "get it" were cast out; new kids came in; the stores devolved into constant chaos and somewhere in the middle of the constant hire-purge-hire cycle a few too many minorities slipped in.

And that is when things really got nasty. Where the few token black people who had worked at Abercrombie in the nineties felt generally comfortable with the culture, blatant, stomach-churning racism gradually supplanted whatever the company's "culture" ever was supposed to be. In my investigation — and you must understand, as a 24-year-old reporter I took my "investigation" of Abercrombie & Fitch very seriously and interviewed literally hundreds of employees — a regional manager told me the VP of stores had referred to a Latina employee in a Texas store as "the maid," and his South Street Seaport store as "the Asian Invasion" and finally, a New Jersey store with an offensive quantity of black employees as "The Jungle."

Now, if I may offer you the chance to link this thing with that thing and chuckle at the irony, ha ha ha.

I got fired — well, resigned — before I could write that story for the Journal. It all happened because I emailed a copy of the draft to a "source," for fact-checking, and then he emailed it to someone else, and emailed it to someone else, and eventually it made its way into the hands of the Crisis Communications PR firm Abercrombie had hired to deal with all these race discrimination charges. That is a big no-no, chiefly because Wall Street Journal stories are considered tradeable information, which I wasn't really thinking about because I was too worried about getting my facts right and avoiding an unfair association with another sloppy young recently disgraced newspaper reporter named Jayson Blair, even though I, being white, was not an affirmative action hire like Jayson Blair, but anyway my career might have survived if not for the taint of Jayson Blair, but as it was the story never ran and I left newspaper journalism.

The coloreds eventually got some reparations from Abercrombie & Fitch, in the form of a $50 million cash settlement. I was disappointed. $50 million is a lot for a race-discrimination lawsuit, but Abercrombie makes a 20% operating on nearly three and a quarter billion dollars in annual sales, thanks to its still-potent cocktail of "aspirationalism" and sweatshop labor. I wanted "It's a jungle in there" on TV somehow. Talk to suburban high school students sometime; everyone knows someone who got fired from Abercrombie. From their dumbshit $6 an hour job at Abercrombie where they were required to spend the entirety of every paycheck on the latest outfits just to keep the job in the first place. It's the odd business story that could have captivated the nation's youth, you know? It's a business story that offered a pretty neat metaphor for the kind of Orwellian perils of allowing the American economy to become addicted to the satisfaction of manufactured desires and false, immediate wants. Of course, I can name about ninety other case studies that could do the same thing, at least one or two involving Conde Nast publications, but I don't work in journalism anymore, because I made a stupid slip of the keystroke and hit "send" on something without thinking, and come to think of it, I probably shouldn't be telling you this story since the terms of my resignation from the Journal were that I wasn't required to, that I left on my own volition, but the difference between losing my job five years ago and losing it now is that I have done it already, and I really don't give a shit. So fire me, Conde Nast motherfuckers! There is no more effective diet strategy than being POOR.

NEW YORK, New York, April 1, 2008 /PRNewswire/ — CondéNet, the leading creator and developer of upscale lifestyle brands online, has agreed to acquire Jezebel.com (http://www.jezebel.com), a leading women's news and entertainment website founded in 2007 by New York-based Denton Media. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The deal welcomes into the CondéNet fold one of the most buzzed-about new brands in women's media. Launched in May 2007 with only three staff members, the site quickly became popular with affluent, well-educated female "tastemakers." In March 2008, a month in which the site enjoyed more than 14.5 million pageviews, Jezebel brought two prestigious Weblog Awards home from the annual South By Southwest Media conference.

"Jezebel has quickly become a go-to site for upscale, trendsetting 18-34-year old women with its promise of 'Celebrity, Sex, Fashion. Without Airbrushing.,'" said Sarah Chubb, President of CondéNet. "Of course, even the best concepts need airbrushing! We think CondéNet can introduce Jezebel readers to some of the fashion and beauty world's most aspirational brands, while leveraging the diverse national audience of CondéNet's female-targeted properties to drive more traffic to Jezebel's original content."

A unique asset of the Jezebel brand is its popular commenting function. Jezebel quickly became the most-frequently commented site in the 14-brand Gawker Media Empire and is currently developing a suite of functionalities that CondéNet will use as the basis of a sophisticated platform for social networking, user-generated content creation and grassroots marketing.

"Jezebel's vibrant and growing base of users represents a rare opportunity for CondéNet's hundreds of existing sponsors to reach passionate, trend-focused female consumers," Chubb continued. "Uniting their passion and our products, including our stable of women's magazine titles like Vogue, Glamour and Lucky, will mark the start of a fruitful relationship."

About CondéNet: CondéNet is the leading creator and developer of upscale lifestyle brands online, providing enjoyable, useful services that build upon the heritage of the world's most prestigious magazines. The company publishes online properties in the categories of fashion (STYLE.COM), men's lifestyle (MEN.STYLE.COM), food (Epicurious.com), travel (Concierge.com), and technology (WiredDigital). CondéNet is an Internet unit of Condé Nast Publications. Condé Nast Publications, a unit of Advance Publications, includes twenty-six consumer magazines and their websites, eight uniquely branded websites, the Fairchild Fashion Group, Parade, the Condé Nast Media Group, and the Shared Services Centers.

About Jezebel: Jezebel (http://www.jezebel.com) is the most talked-about new online media property targeted at women. Since its launch in May 2007, the Gawker Media weblog has established a devoted fan base of more than a million unique users, garnering more than 15 million monthly page views. It was voted one of the "World's 50 Most Powerful Blogs" by the London-based Guardian newspaper in March 2008.

Press Contacts: Denton Media: 212-655-9524 or press@jezebel.com
CondéNet: Jennifer Miller: jmiller@condenet.com

Earlier: Meet The Editors

• Pregnant singer Lily Allen has announced that she has turned down multiple offers to design a maternity line, given that so many of her fans are tween girls and feels that attaching her name to getting knocked up just "wouldn't be suitable." Jaime-Lynn, are you listening? [BBC]
  
• Lily also opened the Harrods sale today, clad in a very non-maternity backless black dress. She told shoppers: "Unfortunately I did come in earlier for a bit of a preview so there's not much left." Oh the rich: They're so funny! [The Mirror]
  
• Wednesday, Giorgio Armani himself took a little stroll through his SoHo Armani Exchange store while customers were busy shopping. It's not difficult to imagine him entering and musing proudly, arms outstretched, "These are my lands." [Page Six]
  
• Estee Lauder, Inc: Friend to farmers! [WSJ]

• The new Fendi baguette bag bears an uncanny resemblance to the Chanel 2.55 bag. Karl Lagerfeld, incidentally, designs both Fendi and Chanel. Coincidence? [Sassybella]
• The Prada Spring 2008 print ads have the same delightfully kooky aesthetic as the Prada Spring 2008 line. [Sassybella]
• Premiere fashion trade paper WWD reports that the biggest new trend for designers is getting into the cell phone market. Seriously, where have they been? Also, why doesn't anyone want to give me a Prada phone? [WWD, sub req'd]
• Former Conde Nast CEO Steve Florio passed away yesterday due to complications from a heart attack. [WWD, sub req'd]
• I plan to spend New Year's Eve at home in my pajamas. But you know what makes sitting at home in pajamas more exciting? Wearing a full face of make-up, a la Dita von Teese. [FabSugar]

The Good:

L to R: Diane Kruger sticks with a short one, and shows that pale is beautiful too, especially when set against black! Mary J. Blige is a goddess in green and Elizabeth Rohm shows that maternity wear can be gorgeous and appropriate. These women rock.


The Bad:

L to R: Does Beyonce have just one dress that she dyes a different hue before each event? Fergie looks like a drag queen no matter what, but wearing something that appears both perforated and, um, tasseled? Oy. And Jennifer Lopez just annoys us. Also, she suffers from Beyonce look-alike-dress syndrome. (Also, she is married to Marc Anthony.) These women all need a new look in a bad, bad way.


The Ugly:

L to R: What threw up and died on Molly Sims? What 80's time machine did Sarah Carter step out of? And what the fuck happened to the back of Paz Vega's top? These women might be better off naked!

Their main purpose is a consumer-marketing purpose, a connection for the consumer to the brand. The reason for those sites first and foremost is renewing and selling subscriptions.

Um.

Hey guys? Thank you. For reading, for commenting, for paying my rent, for tolerating my F-words. That's all.

Is CondeNet's Approach Paying Off? [WSJ]

We've been reading old issues of Cosmo lately that we will post about when we sort out some scanner bullshit, but we have to say: it was a great magazine. Even the ads. I don't even look at ads anymore, although it's my job, but ads back in Cosmo's day were full of text, like they weren't afraid of stating the obvious: "We'd really like to do business with you, Cosmo reader, because oil crisis and hostage crisis and shitty economy be damned, you sure chose a FUN time to be alive." And they're mostly ads for shit you would actually buy, like booze and $37 dresses and booze and also fine liqueurs. There was none of this "ninety different levels of fooling ourselves in the process of fooling everybody else" aspirationalism bullshit. In short, magazines did then what we wish we COULD do if we didn't have to sit inside our houses marinating in our own amphetamine-laced filth all day. (Which by the way, is not the answer.) Will someone please start a magazine like that again right now?

Thanks
-The Management

P.S. If it wasn't clear, that headline was an invitation for your comments about shit from magazines you particularly miss, like The Face and my obsession with "Can This Marriage Be Saved" in Ladies Home Journal and other stuff like that we can rip off maybe.

"Glamour is not at all like Jane," says Holley. "It's the exact opposite. They preach fake empowerment of 'loving your flaws.' Jane doesn't point out flaws."

The only Conde publication worth reading is the New Yorker, but it comes out every week and your leftover Jane dollars won't go that far. Vanity Fair and GQ are okay, and saving trees is even better, but the true Jane devotee will call up Conde now and demand a subscription to its ill-fated, ill-advised business magazine Portfolio, because it will be really fun to be able to have this conversation again in six months when Conde shutters that, and it will be soooo much less emotionally fraught parting with them on eBay for birth control money on eBay in five years. (And then you get to say, I paid for that abortion with my Portfolio holdings!)

Glamour Is Sooooo Not Jane [Jossip]

First slide up: an African American woman sporting an Afro. A real no-no, announced the 'Glamour' editor to the 40 or so lawyers in the room. As for dreadlocks: How truly dreadful! The style maven said it was 'shocking' that some people still think it 'appropriate' to wear those hairstyles at the office. 'No offense,' she sniffed, but those 'political' hairstyles really have to go.

Um, hey, 'no offense' taken — my hair has been totally apolitical ever since I learned about the dangers of "Republican highlights" — but next time you tell a group of professionals they'll need to submit to extensive regular treatments if they expect to survive in the corporate world, maybe try a crowd that isn't so familiar with, like, the law?

The story ends happily, with the law firm Cleary Gottlieb's managing partner Mark Walker, who wasn't at the lady luncheon, sending everyone an email pointing out the stupidty of the Glamour editor and of fashion magazines and yeah pretty much all the things we here at Jezebel hold so near and reviled.

As for the identity of the editor, neither Cleary Gottlieb nor Condé Nast Publications Inc. (publisher of 'Glamour') would say. Indeed, almost all of the half-dozen 'Glamour' editors contacted for this story professed not to have ever set foot in a law firm. 'Cleary what?' asked several. And Walker says he has no idea whether the editor who sparked all this controversy is a well-known fashionista. Not that Walker would know, even if Anna Wintour herself crossed his path. 'Who is she?' Walker asks. 'I really don't know people in the fashion industry.'

Regular magazines are getting more like women's magazines every day. 'Fashion Rocks' is a particularly terrifying example of this.

• SYNERGY: "What a nice, serendipitous piece of brand extension!" marvels editor John Van Meter in an editor's letter titled "Photo Finish." (ah, "Photo Finish" — what a catchy headline! It's almost as good as "The Eyes Have It"). Whatever he's talking about, "Fashion Rocks" will also be a VH1 show hosted, natch, by Jeremy Piven. Also, every single thing featured in this magazine has been featured in another Conde Nast Magazine, generally Teen Vogue or Glamour, in the past two months.
• MUSIC-THEMED FRAGRANCES: Copyright infringement got ya down? Put out a perfume! "The once merely cozy worlds of celebrity fragrance and pop music have fallen madly in love with one another," the piece declares. (I smell even more synergy!)
• MISSHAPES: A story about the underexposed DJ trio! Summarizing sentences, not lying when I say they're verbatim: "Oooh, lok at this: all these kids and stars and wannabes, all brought together by the Misshapes, one of the strongest style collectives in ages. What makes it so? They understand fashion as a living thing...as it represents how people live and feel. I love the name! MisShapes! And I love the people behind it.. [Speak for yourself -Ed.]...Spank Rock, a band that mixes techno so deftly with funk....I especially loved the girl, loved her Julie Christie-meets-Nico look. Bangs always work for me...Dreams: That is what nightlife in Manhattan has always been about....It was really something. And you felt like something, too, standing around club 57, in the East Village, which was maybe the best place because it was small, just an ugly basement, really, but brimming once a week with a kind of crazy artistry." New Yorker staffer Hilton Als, everyone!
• KINGS OF LEON: Summarizing sentences: "It's hard to say what the Kings of Leon love more: beautiful women or superskinny jeans.. The Kings of Leon have been a longtime model favorite with their mellow Southern rock, laid-back attitude, and rocker-cool style."
• BLOODY SOCIAL: Summarizing sentence: "Based on looks alone, Jamie Burke is a rock star...'They have true rock-n-roll style,' says [model Jaquetta] Wheeler of Burke's band.
• RAZORLIGHT: Summarizing sentence: [Model Jessica] Stam thinks that music plays an integral part in her work because it 'controls the mood' on shoots."
• AMY WINEHOUSE: "My hair's just gotten bigger over the past year...I have to have bigger hair.....It's usually really big...Sorry, I'm going to do my hair now." That's all but about ten words of the story.
• JANIS JOPLIN: There's a photo shoot "inspired" by her style, and modeled by Raquel Zimmerman, a dead ringer for Janis. In that, they both have limbs and hair.

• Counterpoint:Your (sic) doing it yourself, the police officer of the world, I am not fond of the expression they are the new Hitlers, but If I think about the USA I have to admit that a lot of people are right.... Superpower USA it is only laughable, the only superpower I know is Anna Wintour..

OPENING REMARKS:

• Point I am Canadian, but live in NYC. I love the US it gave me opportunities of a lifetime, and since I live here I respect it. I would not dare go onto an Italian forum or any forum in another country and insult that country! Where is the sophistication, the class????
  
• Counterpoint Secondly, this war is like no other: all those in the past have not been so messed up as this. If there was a clearer and more in-depth study of this war you will see that the word crime is written all over it.

COCKY? OR JUST CONFIDENT..

• Point I am glad this subject came up. I am an American. I will tell you this: Most Americans are aware of how others feel about us. Truthfully.... none of us care. I will tell you why: We believe others are jealous of our rights and freedoms. Yes, we at times are cocky, arrogant, and self- righteous. However we are also compassionateand loyal , and will be there in a second to help any country who doesn't respect the freedom we are all entitled to Our country is the place where all people want to live, want to dream..... why you ask ? Beacuse anything is possible here.
  
• Counterpoint: Yah......I'm not the only one. I've actually taken the next step and am MOVING out of this country......This country is over flowing with ignorance, corruption, bulling, and arrogance. And yes the most of the world does NOT like us.

AND NOW COME THE TEARS..

• Point I went to bed and couldn't sleep at all. I've to solve some personal things. I guess they kept me awake. So I'd logged in again. I'm a bit amazed how this thread ended up......anyway, my grandfather and mother who fought underground during WWII in the Netherlands with danger for their own lifes have always been very grateful to the American, Canadian and English troops who'd came to their rescue. Maybe it's because I can't sleep but I'm really teary..
  
• Counterpoint: I'm a sensative individual about War - I'll tell you that I cry myself to sleep when I image the difficulty that they are living in. I honestly cry for these people, and I'm sure they cry too, but their cries are more silent and unheard to the world.

• Point As we say here in America, F*CK the HATERS! ;)

BLAH BLAH BLAH MISCELLANEOUS

• Counterpoint I still can't forget what a very arrogant men in the immigration office said to me on my return from Morocco when I showed him my brazilian passport, "Why are you still traveling with your Brazilian passport when you're an American? Make sure you put this one away and use the right passport next time". Excuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse me??????????????? I wanted yo slap that bastard on the face! I have dual citizenship and I'm damn proud of being brazilian too! I use whichever passport I feel like at the moment thank you very much!
  
• Point My 5 year-year old daughter is so patriotic that she herself respects the flag of America but expects the same from me & her dad. She is beautiful, inside and out, intelligent beyond her years and the most caring human being I've ever known (and I am not being biased).

AND NOW COMES THE PART WHERE THE AUTHOR MOVES WITH US TO CANADA..

Counterpoint I agree with you to a large extent...many Americans (cough, the Hiltons...hah) have it all and more...I sometimes take for granted the opportunities I have here... I certainly didn't mean to sound whiny with this original thread...I go to a Christian college, and part of that is mission and aid to the poor...we just held a benefit concert for Darfur... I am afraid that the rest of the world's view of the U.S. and it's people has been skewed by the media...channels like MTV, with shows such as "My Super Sweet Sixteen" may be fun to watch, but they are sickening...can you imagine spending thousands of dollars on a birthday party?!

WELL ISN'T THAT WHY YOU READ 'VOGUE' IN THE FIRST PLACE?
Exactly! In conclusion, CaroChouette deleted her original post and replaced it with a probing question of similar intellectual rigor:

Wow, I am amazed in regard to the responses this thread was getting....I think we can all agree that it would be a good idea to move on?! I actually have a fashion question this time! yay! So, what is more important to you personally...wearing what's trendy and in style, wearing whatever you want because you like it, or having a classic look that will be always be "in style?" I feel like I tend to have a more "classic" style, but I recently have been buying some more trendy pieces just because I feel kind of insecure in my white polo and khakis (which I guess is my version of "classic") surrounded by people wearing skinny jeans, and such...It's kind of hard to find a balance between the two, especially when you have a budget...yikes...

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=285952&view=rss&microfeed=true

• The Spice Girls are reuniting, and Donatella Versace may be dressing them for the reunion tour. G-d works in mysterious ways, and Jennie may have just forgiven Him for the Holocaust... [AHN.com]
  
• Prada sells Azzedine Alaia back to Azzedine Alaia. Which would sound all heartwarming and benevolent, if only it weren't a shrewd business decision. [WWD, sub req'd]
  
• Stella McCartney will be debuting a lingerie line next year, offering a "high-end product with prices that are a little below La Perla." And by that they mean $71 for panties and $447 for chemises. If these represent reasonable prices, Nick Denton is definitely not paying us enough. [WWD, sub req'd]
  
• Vanity Fair's September issue proffers its annual "Best Dressed" list, featuring a few members of the Conde payroll: Vanity Fair's fashion director Michael Roberts, contributing editor Lisa Eisner, and photographer-at-large Jonathan Becker, as well as Teen Vogue editor-in-chief Amy Astley, Vogue's style editor Alexandra Kotur, contributing editor Marina Rust Connor, and Anna Wintour spawn Bee Shaffer. That we are reading about this in an article penned by a few slightly, um, less-dressed members of the Conde payroll is not at all making us feel like we are seated at the nerd table in the cafeteria. [WWD, 1st item]

• In a move straight totally copped from our college's alumni association, the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) is launching a Business Services Network which seeks to connect members with "key industry executives" that can provide resources and help for their businesses. If you're already a CFDA member, how much help do you actually need? Oh wait. See financial records of the majority of American high-end fashion houses. Never mind. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Annie Leibovitz's latest way to pay the bills? The Bottega Veneta fall 2007 ad campaign! Woman's got a family to feed, yo! It ain't all taking celebrity portraits for the glossies and mourning Susan Sontag! [Vogue UK]
• Aw, models! They're just like us! One of Burberry's latest faces? The son of Virgin tycoon Richard Branson, 21-year old aspiring rocker Sam! [Vogue UK]
• One of our main reason's for not taking that fourth year of science in high school? Our aversion to safety goggles. Which look dumb, no matter how good your shoes are. So why the fuck would we pay Dolce & Gabbana to re-create this look? [FabSugar]
• Hermes bags: Ridiculously overpriced, but rightfully named for true style icons. [See Birkin; Jane; Kelly, Grace.] But Naomi Campbell? Puke. [Sassybella]

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• Fresh off her appearance on the cover of the June Glamour, Jennifer Lopez will grace the cover of Conde Nast's supremely stupid supplement Fashion Rocks. We don't know if it's more retarded that Jennifer Lopez is supposed to represent "rock" or that Conde Nast is so used to putting pointless, overexposed celebrities on their covers to sell newsstand copies that they did it on a supplement. [WWD, 2nd item]
  
• Banana Republic, on its demographic: "Our customers are creative souls, inspired by art and culture." [Uh, Substitute "creative" for "conformist" and "insecurity and markdowns" for "art and culture" and you will have the reason I shop there! -Moe] [WWD, sub req'd]
  
• Wait, seriously? NASA orange flight suits for $60 bucks? We sorta want one. [WaPo]

• Breaking News! "Jeans Still In" for college students! No way! And appearing on the crime blotter, spoons still being stolen from the dining hall. [MarketWatch]
• Dorina Dixon "D.D." Ryan died yesterday morning. The former fashion editor at Harper's Bazaar was also frequently a costume designer to Stephen Sondheim, a friend of Halston, and one of the people responsible for bringing some of our favorite books, the Eloise series, into the world. [MGross.com]
• And the finalists for the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund award are: too numerous to list here, Moe says. But it's one impressive class, from which we predict the three prizewinners will be Phillip Lim, the Vena Cava girls, and Erin Fetherston. Your guesses? [Vogue UK]
• First Levi's asks him to design, now Prada wants him at her parties: Will someone tell us why fashion is so relentlessly trendhumping Damien Hirst? No, seriously, we want to know. [WWD, 1st item]
• Like perfume? Then you'll love L'Artisan Parfumeur's new battery-operated "art" box that emits a burst of fragrance from magical glass beads every three minutes, yours for $230. [WWD, 1st item]
• And in other window design news, the Diesel store in London is incorporating the scorched remains of its recently burnt-down store into its holiday windows! How nouveau something!
• Husband and wife design team Y&Kei: Cried at The Notebook? [The Fashion Informer]

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=282212&view=rss&microfeed=true "It took a certain courage," Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour writes in her August editor's letter, for such luminaries as Harvard physicist Lisa Randall and Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin "to admit to the pleasure that fashion brings them." Well, Glamour "Slaves To Fashion" blogger Ashley Baker — for whom exemplifying that sort of courage is just another day at the office — today exhibited a new brand of fearlessness: she posted this picture of herself after a rainy trip to work, adding a succulent detail:

And of COURSE there were a few fellow editors on my train, including one very illustrious one from the twelfth floor (otherwise known as Vogue).

So wait a second, Vogue editors take the subway? On rainy days? But what of their blow-outs?

We sort of wish Ms. Wintour had the courage to recognize these illustrious editors for having the courage to commute amongst the paralegals and accountants, but we have a feeling Vogue editors only ride the subway because the MTA takes credit cards and they've spent their last twenties on resort wear and coke. Hey, it happens to the best of us.

Rain, Rain, Go Away. SERIOUSLY [Glamour]

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=281510&view=rss&microfeed=true The internal memo about the demise of Jane Magazine is making the rounds, and we've got a copy. The summary: It was a difficult decision to shut down the magazine, and Conde Nast President/CEO Charles H. Townsend says that his company has come to believe "that the magazine and the website will not fulfill our long-term business expectations." Blah, blah, blah. Translation: "We wasted too much fucking money on Portfolio." Townsend's memo, and a press release, after the jump.

After considerable thought, we have decided to cease publication of Jane, effective with the August 2007 issue. The website, janemag.com, will also be shut down. This difficult business decision was made despite the efforts and hard work of Brandon Holley, Carlos LaMadrid, and Jane's editorial and advertising staffs. The following press announcement was just released. Tom Wallace and I, and all of us at CNP, are grateful to everyone who contributed to Jane over the past few years.

Conde Nast Says Goodbye To 'Jane' Magazine [Crain's New York]

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=276371&view=rss&microfeed=true Poor Anna Wintour. First there was the news that recently-convicted fashion journalist Peter Braunstein wanted to kill her and now, one of the Vogue editor's own sister publications has essentially deemed her irrelevant. In a four-page feature on "the bob" in the June issue of Allure, readers are treated to how-to-wear it advice from celeb stylists and a photo gallery of famous femmes with the sheared-off style. But among the featured "A-list" models (Evangelista, Campbell), starlets (Bosworth, Tatou) and silver-screen icons (Dunaway, Brooks) with the blunt haircut there is no Anna to be found.

What gives? We know that Conde Nast editors have no problem featuring their publishing brethren in the pages of their glossy magazines, so what could account for the exclusion of the woman widely thought to be America's foremost arbiter of style? Does Allure editor Linda Wells simply not like Anna, with whom she worked at Vogue in the early-to-mid 80s? And, more importantly, does the magazine's inclusion of, um, Victoria Beckham mean there's only room for one expressionless English fashion "icon" per issue?

Allure

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