I recently saw The September Issue, a newly-released documentary about Vogue magazine preparing its mammoth September 2007 issue.  This was still the Gilded Age of fashion: Neiman Marcus CEO Burt Tanksy is seen asking Vogue editor Anna Wintour to admonish young designers to keep up with a spiraling global demand for their apparel; today many of those designers can barely sell a scrap of clothing off the floor at Barneys or Bergdorf Goodman. 

Much has changed for the fashion industry in the last two years, and for Conde Nast, Vogue‘s parent company as well.  It has been reported that business consultants McKinsey & Company have been hired to reorganize how Vogue and other Conde Nast titles operate; the idea is to keep the magazines competitive in the Internet era.  One feels that imminent change is in the air, making the documentary’s subjects appear rather sepia-toned, acting out a dated play under a bell-jar of sorts. 

Particularly poignant is a scene featuring Vogue‘s creative director, Grace Coddington, as she stands alone at Versailles; the wind blows her famous red hair as she contemplates the history of the place and wistfully recalls the days of Romanticism.  Coddington, 68, does indeed seem to belong to another era—perhaps that of the Aesthete, in which living-life-as-art was the highest priority; one wonders what vision will eventually replace hers at Vogue and other bastions of fashionable fancy.

A Vogue editor once said that Vogue is “the magazine of record;” in 100 years, she told me, people will look to back-issues of the magazine to learn about the styles and mood of previous decades.  I’m not convinced that Vogue serves as a wholly accurate barometer in this regard; in the best of times and the worst of times, magazines always present a curated, rarefied view of the world around them.  That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially when one considers that they are meant to be backdrops for theatricality and vehicles for escapism (particularly Ms. Coddington’s gorgeous, wildly imaginative features) as well as guides to what’s in stores that season. 

It would be a shame if the more Coddington-esque aspects of the Vogue fantasy were downgraded into a more literal-minded, catalogue-like format, as the magazine’s publishers seek to make its business-model more efficient.  Only time will tell. 

- lmmb