Vogue: Once and Forever | Fashion's Next Big Thing | 4

0:06I'm David Brown and this is Business Wars.

0:30It's hard to say what's more glamorous, the world of fashion or the world of fashion magazines. For more than a century, we've been fascinated by those glossy pages and gorgeous photo spreads declaring what's in and what's out. In the early aughts, movies and TV shows ate this scene up, enveloping us in all the behind-the-scenes drama. After all, who could forget the film The Devil Wears Prada, where Meryl Streep played the fiercely terrifying Miranda Priestly, an Anna Wintour type who lays down the fashion law. It's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when in fact you're wearing a sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room from a pile of stuff.

1:15But today, the rules have changed. Now, instead of the Miranda Priestleys of the world calling the shots, it's the TikTok generation redefining style while the fate of print media hangs in the balance. Magazine revenue has been steadily declining for more than a decade, and it's become harder to stay ahead of fast-moving digital trends. Fashion magazines are at a major crossroads. As they experiment with new strategies in live events and social media, there are still a lot of questions about the future of this aging industry. Washington Post fashion writer Rachel Tashjian has a front-row seat to that runway show.

1:52She's written for Vanity Fair, Harper's Bazaar, and GQ, where she covered both the evolution of fashion trends and fashion media. You've heard her on Business Wars for our series Fast Fashion and Gucci vs. Louis Vuitton. Well, today, she's Zooming out to talk about where the future of fashion journalism is headed. All that's coming up.

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3:57Rachel Tashtian, welcome to Business Wars. Thank you so much, David. You've worked for some of the biggest names in fashion journalism, including Condé Nast, the publisher of Vogue, among other glossies. Was this always something you knew you wanted to do? Do you know what's funny, David? I was not a Vogue reader growing up. I found the universe of the magazine and the images so remote from my life, which was, you know, a young suburban millennial woman growing up in the 90s, that it just didn't grab me. It did not seduce me. It was not until later that I fell prey to its powers of seduction. Well, when did you first connect with fashion journalism?

4:48What was it that brought you there? Actually, it was the people who were writing about the worlds of magazines and designers. So I was such a fan growing up of Robin Gavon, who is my colleague at The Washington Post, and Judith Thurman, who writes for The New Yorker about fashion, and Kathy Horn, who at the time was at The New York Times. And my entree really to magazines like Vogue was through reading what these women made of the product and the media that a magazine like Vogue was creating. What is it about the nature of fashion journalism that perhaps you can shed some light on that helps us understand?

5:30What is the appeal and the allure of it? You know, growing up and even into college, I should say, I mean, that's really when I was starting to become interested in fashion, but not through reading Vogue, again, through reading these other journalists. And I, you know, the experience I had looking at fashion magazines was that the photography seemed sort of surreal or unreal. The celebrities seemed very far away and the clothing seemed outrageously expensive and fantastical. There was a story that Kathy Horn did for the New York Times, I believe in 2007 or 2008, about the ways in which Anna Wintour, who is the editor-in-chief of Vogue, exerts her power.

6:17And I was fascinated to learn that a lot of the designers who are at these big luxury houses, the Louis Vuittons, the Dior's, they go to Anna Wintour and they ask her, who should we hire to be the designer of this brand? And that sort of clicked into focus for me that actually these very fantastical, even at times bizarre, sometimes offensive images that seem to come from a place of pure rationality actually come from a very strategic expression of power. And not simply the decisions of this one editor, but the decisions that multiple editors at Vogue who work with Anna and the CEOs of these very large fashion companies, you know, are looking to this magazine and to this person to help them figure out what the world we live in should look like.

7:20That is so interesting because what you're describing is a kind of universe that sort of revolves around a completely different axis than that of reality, perhaps, that has its own sense of gravity and its own power. It actually sounds almost surreal as if there's a whole different universe out there. Absolutely. And I think, you know, the magic of fashion for me has always been when this parallel universe intersects with our own, whether that be, you know, the clothing that a first lady chooses to wear. And, you know, very often first ladies have asked Anna Wintour or editors at Vogue for advice about what they should wear or even something where you have a fashion show that happens to comment on either directly or coincidentally comment on the issues that are happening in the world outside of fashion.

8:17You talk about Anna Wintour. You think of all of the iconic fashion editors in chief. I wonder, well, we've, of course, talked about Carmel Snow from Harper's Bazaar's early days, Edna Woolman Chase, the opulent Diana Vreeland. Out of all these sort of icons in fashion journalism, who's really stuck with you? Well, I would say personally, I feel sort of an affinity with Diana Vreeland. The way in which she looked at the 1960s and, you know, I think she had a sense of history that was really appealing. But what I find fascinating about Anna Wintour is that for much of the world, she is fashion.

9:05She's been the editor of Vogue the entire time I've been alive. It's hard to think of anyone in any industry that has that kind of longevity, whether it's a CEO at a Fortune 500 company, a fashion designer, or a creative person, an artist even. And I think that, you know, if you ask people, who are you aware of in fashion? A lot of the names, Coco Chanel, you know, has been dead for a long time. Louis Vuitton, most people don't know who that is, even if they know who the brand is. But Anna is synonymous with fashion, even with, you know, the sunglasses and the bob, even visually. And I find that really fascinating.

9:49Now, have you ever had a chance to meet Anna Wintour yourself? I have not. No. Would you want to meet Anna Wintour? Of course. Yeah? Yeah, of course. Well, if you could, what would you ask her? What would you want to find out from her? You know, I wonder if there's even a way to get to know someone like Anna Wintour, if you're an outsider or if you're a journalist who's trying to document what's going on. Well, I think what you hear from a lot of people who know her is that she's a very warm and caring person. And you also hear about her leadership styles, very direct and efficient. She is someone who has a lot of power and seems very good at collecting and gaining, in fact, more power as the media industry that she is such a large part of, you know, declines in some ways in power and traditional sort of holders of positions.

10:49The gatekeepers. Yeah. Many of them are not, you know, working anymore. So, I mean, what does power mean to her and why is that important, I think, is such an interesting question. Well, what about the magazines themselves? How are they performing today? I mean, you know, print is certainly not what it used to be. I can tell you when I worked at Vanity Fair, which was about 10 years ago, it was shortly before I had arrived that the very famous Katie Holmes Scientology expose had been on the cover of the magazine. And I think we had these charts that were passed out each month that we each had pinned to our desks.

11:29And the newsstand sales for that issue, which I believe came out in 2009, explaining the ways in which Tom Cruise had allegedly held these auditions for his wives. That magazine on the newsstand, so this is not counting subscribers, I believe sold over a million and a half copies. Wow. And by the time I left Vanity Fair, which was in about 2017, you know, there were some issues that sold in the hundreds of thousands of copies. Gee whiz. Well, that says a lot right there. Who is, though, buying those copies today? Who's consuming the content from the publication nowadays? I think most people are reading magazines online.

12:14And you do see a lot of, you know, at a lot of fashion magazines, especially the digital presence of the magazine has become totally essential. You know, so many people are consuming Vogue simply by looking at its Instagram presence. But I think, you know, if you also look at a magazine like The Cut, which is New York Magazine's fashion magazine, they've just decided to launch a standalone print issue. So it is clear that there's at least, you know, some kind of readership for these magazines. And I would also say that it indicates that fashion brands who are big advertisers see a return on their investment if they are advertising in these magazines, because that's how, you know, you're able to find money to make a magazine these days.

13:02Mm-hmm. You know, once upon a time, Elle and InStyle were considered major competitors to Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. That didn't last. Why not, do you think? You know, I think part of it is the specifics of the companies that own them. So I don't think it's, you know, I wouldn't say it's anything to do with any specific editor or publisher or anything like that. But, I mean, Elle is, under Nina Garcia, I think, has really broadened its scope and has kind of become a foil for Vogue in a way to say, you know, we're very interested in politics and feminism and the whole life of a woman, not simply, you know, what she wears.

13:46Although, of course, there were always lots of different – there have always been lots of different kinds of articles in Vogue. But that sort of is what shifted at something like Elle magazine. And you can see that that formula, that idea really has traction because of the performance of something like The Cut, which is just, I mean, they generate conversation with their stories and their coverage of fashion in a way that very few other magazines do in this day and age. Has social media become a bigger threat to Vogue than competing publications, would you say, or no? Well, I think, yes, in the sense that fashion is an industry that likes to gatekeep.

14:30And it's an industry that is a lot about power and insecurity. You know, I mean, part of the reason why people like Fashion Week is because you get to sit in a room and some force has decided that you get to sit in one seat and someone else gets to sit in another. You know, and so people like to sort of, oh, OK, like this is where I stack up and that's where he stacks up. And, you know, so and I think social media in fashion and especially in fashion media, as it is anywhere, is a force that disrupts that, that says, well, I don't have to wait for someone to say that my opinion matters for my opinion to matter.

15:09And, you know, Vogue, like any other magazine, has had to adapt to the landscape of other people, you know, anointing various designers and models and so on and so forth with power and influence, even if they may not agree with that. I mean, it's interesting to look at the case of someone like Kim Kardashian who for years, you know, it was rumored that she really wanted to be on the cover of Vogue. And, you know, would she or wouldn't she be? And I remember the day that that Vogue cover came out in which she and Kanye West were posing for Annie Leibovitz in Paris. And we at the Vanity Fair office were shocked.

15:51And a lot of commenters, I recall, on Instagram said, you know, I'm unsubscribing to Vogue. And it's crazy to think that, one, that we put that much trust in a magazine to tell us what to think and believe, but also that a magazine in this decade still has that amount of sway, you know, that people seem to believe that it is an arbiter. And it is. Let's take a short break. Our guest is Rachel Tastjen, fashion writer for the Washington Post style section. When we come back, we're going to find out what Vogue is doing to stay at the top of the style pyramid. Stay with us.

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18:46Hi, welcome back to Business Wars. Our guest is Rachel Tashgen. She is fashion journalist at The Washington Post. who also runs her own fashion newsletter, Opulent Tips. Rachel, I have to ask, as someone who's been in the business for a while now, what exactly is a fashion magazine these days? Do you think of it as a print magazine, a website, a kind of store, perhaps a production company, all of the above? How do you think of fashion magazine, in quotes? Well, a lot of traditional magazines, I think, are really expanding their sense of identity in order to survive in this landscape where, you know, sales and advertising are both in decline.

19:30And, you know, it's interesting to see how many magazines have begun, for example, doing events, you know, doing festivals and also creating these subscriber tiers in which people who pay, in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars might have special access to the editors of the magazine or the goings on of the magazine. I've also seen, you know, there are fashion magazines that create products that, you know, create merchandise or that have tried to start stores. I mean, I think we're in an era of big experimentation. And then, of course, you also have a number of people who are starting their own sort of independent, you know, sub-stack newsletters.

20:17That in some ways, you know, when I read them, it really reminds me of reading Glamour magazine or the market pages of Vogue 20 years ago. Why do you think that is? People feel unleashed. They have more autonomy. They can say some of the things that they might not otherwise. Or what do you think is going on there? Well, I think we're in a moment where people really trust the recommendations of someone who they feel like they know. And I wonder if, is it easier to trust an individual than it is to trust an institution? Uh-huh. That's interesting. But it also seems very, very much in line with the tumultuousness surrounding this transition from print to digital.

21:01And you talk about the experimentation, which sort of seems to be hand in hand with that transition. Do you think that Vogue has finally caught up with some of the leaders in that digital transition? I wonder how you would gauge where they stand now with their online presence. I think their online presence is less about the day-to-day sort of articles that they're publishing. And it's more about the world that they are creating when you go to their website. What Vogue, I think, provides digitally is this aspirational and I think even witty universe. You know, they, for example, did a project recently on their website in which they photographed, I think, a dozen dogs belonging to celebrities from Demi Moore to the vice presidential candidate Tim Walls.

21:54And they put the dogs sort of on mocked up Vogue covers and replaced the V with a D. And I thought, you know, that's really clever. That's a great way to sort of be in the cultural conversation and even sort of drive it without necessarily saying, hey, you know, we're going to sort of weigh in on what Kamala Harris is wearing or, you know, this designer change at this going from this house to that house means. I mean, they still do those things, but I think they want to have a sort of like broader, almost like a feeling of commentary rather than, you know, or reflecting the culture rather than just sort of demystifying or explaining it.

22:35Do you think that other fashion magazines are trying to riff on it or take a lesson from it? And I wonder what that lesson would be unless you're, you know, you run the risk of just sort of imitating, I suppose. Well, I think if you look at, I would say, two of the big competitors to Vogue are The Cut and Harper's Bazaar. Both of them are taking very different approaches to modernizing in a way. I mean, I worked at Harper's Bazaar for a number of years. In fact, before I was at the Washington Post and we, you know, Samira Nasser, who's the wonderful editor in chief there, had a very specific vision of the woman she wanted to speak to with her magazine.

23:19And I think she's still very invested in the print product. And there were so many people who read the magazine in print. That was really interesting to me, even though, you know, the digital presence of the magazine is also quite important. And then, you know, if you look at something like The Cut, again, you have, you know, a fashion magazine led by Lindsay Peoples, who is in her mid-30s. And she, again, is looking to print as an important product for her, even as, again, you know, has a fantastic digital product. So it's interesting to see everyone is sort of like turning back to these old-fashioned ideas, but trying to refresh them.

24:01And I would say I'm, you know, biased in the case of Harper's Bazaar because I worked there for a number of years, but I'm very interested in what the Cut and Harper's Bazaar are doing with their print magazines and also with their digital presences to sort of say, hey, actually, it seems like this thing we felt like wasn't really working anymore. We can do this in a fresh way. And maybe people do want to read print magazines again. You know, I think when people think of events and the fashion world, probably the Met Gala is the one that most frequently comes to mind. Although it's not an official Vogue event, and I think sometimes people get a little confused if they're not in that circle because this has been under Anna Wintour's orchestration since, what, 1995 or something like that.

24:53This is a fundraiser for the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. And this has become a kind of it event over the years, something for the rich and the famous, emphasis on the rich. What has this done for the Vogue brand over the years and maybe for fashion journalism more broadly, I don't know, how would you characterize its importance? It's incredibly important. It's another example of the ways in which I think Vogue has become synonymous with fashion. I think that probably more people are aware of the clothing worn at the Met Gala than they are of the clothing that comes down a runway in Paris, Milan, London or New York.

25:40I think that is actually that red carpet, which is highly orchestrated, is kind of how a lot of people learn about fashion designers and how many people's perception of glamour and ostentation is formed in the United States and probably even around the world. Now, can you say something about Vogue's own live event strategy? What kind of events are are they hosting to sort of remain front and center in fashion? They've really invested a lot in events over the past two years. And one of their new initiatives is called Vogue World. And it is an in-person runway show. You know, anyone can buy tickets.

26:26The tickets are quite expensive. They are sometimes more than$1 ,000. And they'll take over, for example, a street in New York, and they will have an interesting mix of models and celebrities and athletes who are walking down the runway in clothing that is not, it's not new clothing. It might be clothing that's coming into stores soon or that already is in stores. So that's something that sort of usually at a fashion show, the clothes have never been seen before. So this is kind of an unorthodox thing. But it's sort of like, you know, a little bit Coachella. It's a little bit Burning Man, a little bit of the New Yorker festival.

27:04So interesting. And then the other event that they have done for the past couple of years is called Forces of Fashion. And it's a way to sort of bring the magazine to life. There are interviews with designers, but also with the editors and photographers who make the magazine. You've talked about these events as, I believe you said, a linchpin for maintaining the mystique in a world where magazines have all but lost their luster. How is that working out for the brand? You know, the attendees at these events, when I've gone to them and spoken to them as a reporter, they seem quite enthusiastic to be there.

27:41I think there is in some cases a sort of feeling of cheerleading for fashion that some industry professionals feel they need to perform. And then I think for a lot of these sort of attendees who are not necessarily in the fashion industry, but who might be buying these tickets, this feels like a way to participate in a world that is otherwise quite remote and inaccessible. You know, to go to a fashion show or see a fashion designer, you know, you have to be invited, whereas this provides a kind of different access. To me, it's interesting to see a magazine kind of double down on or lean into a reputation which was minted, you know, in many ways decades ago in order to move forward.

28:33It seems to be working from the people I've spoken to anecdotally who are attending, but it also feels like, you know, for example, at the forces of fashion that took place a year ago happened at the Condé Nast office building. And so many people I spoke to brought up The Devil Wears Prada. And I do think that that sort of cinematic appreciation of fashion is what keeps a lot of these subscribers or attendees coming back for more. Interesting. I know Mark Holgate, who is Vogue's fashion news director, said that readers want more on Vogue behind the scenes. And you think about all the movies and TV shows that have centered on fashion magazines over the years.