Anna wintour

Thursday

Alexander Larman

Will Anna Wintour survive the Galliano debacle?

In this summer’s couture blockbuster The Devil Wears Prada 2, the moment of greatest humiliation for Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestley comes about halfway through the film. With her Vogue-adjacent fashion magazine Runway imperiled by budget cuts and its philistine new owner, Miranda is not spared the hair-shirt treatment the rest of her staff endure. In a scene that is supposed to be funny but ends up being almost tragic, this ice-hearted doyenne of the fashion world is compelled to travel from New York to Milan Fashion Week in coach class, among hoi polloi. As the usually excellent Streep is forced to mug and gurn at the humiliation that she endures, I found myself mouthing “The horror! The horror!” – but for altogether different reasons.

Thursday

Sarah Beth Spraggins

Who says Lauren Sánchez Bezos doesn’t belong at the Met Gala?

Lauren Sánchez Bezos, with her blown-out lip filler, understands fashion. She understands that, unlike the gatekeepers of painting and literature, fashion figureheads aren’t ashamed to dirty their hands by digging around in the money pot. It was only fitting, then, that Lauren and her husband Jeff Bezos sponsored this year's Met Gala. Its theme was "Fashion Is Art." All Kardashian-Jenners present came in bodices protruding in the shape of their nipples Sánchez Bezos showed up to the Met red carpet in a navy-blue gown that nodded to John Singer Sargent's painting of Madame X, a socialite and the wife of a French banker. The painting's portrayal of a pale, corpse-like, high-society woman was considered indecent because of the single strap falling off her shoulder.

Taki

The day Elizabeth Taylor kidnapped my daughter

From our UK edition

New York Back in the good old days the Carlyle Hotel on Manhattan’s Upper East Side was the hotel for Yankee swells, rich politicians such as JFK, and, of course, upper-class Eurotrash. Both my children were born at a hospital nearby, and both newborns spent their first month of life at the hotel. Alexandra and I would leave our nearby brownstone, which was more upside down, and move to the Carlyle, which was more sideways, thanks to my dad’s generosity. We were given the presidential suite with round-the-clock service and doctor availability galore.

Tuesday

Margaret Mitchell

The battle for Anna Wintour’s Vogue empire

When Anna Wintour announced she was stepping down as editor-in-chief of Vogue in June, it appeared to be the end of the ice queen’s reign. Yet Wintour retained her large, chintzy corner office as well as her two other roles – as Condé Nast’s global chief content officer and Vogue’s global editorial director. If you looked closely, you might have seen a steely determination lurking behind her trademark sunglasses, the look of a generational editor intent on more power – and perhaps even revenge. The Condé Nast Union naively regarded Wintour’s move as that of a then 75-year-old drifting into quiet retirement, the old guard surrendering to youth.

Thursday

Dot Wordsworth

My discontent over ‘content’

From our UK edition

Dame Anna Wintour, with her rather marvellous bob hairdo, this month became chief content officer for Condé Nast. I had forgotten that a couple of years ago she was appointed a Companion of Honour – one of those interesting people the King likes to have for lunch. And I couldn’t remember whether I’d written here about content. ‘That is probably not a sign of dementia,’ said my husband encouragingly. Why is content such an unpleasant label for articles in a magazine? After all, the title page of the Great Bible, ordered to be published by Henry VIII in 1539, read: ‘The Byble in Englyshe, that is to saye the content of all the holy Scrypture, bothe of the olde and newe testament.’ Still, no one thought of Moses as a content-provider.

Tuesday

Emily Smith

Kamala chooses the Met Gala over the presidency

It was typical Kamala. Did she really want to be at the Met Gala or not? She couldn’t seem to make up her mind. So the candidate that the Democratic party thought could beat Donald Trump in the race to be US president skipped the red carpet, slipped in a backdoor of the Metropolitan Museum and posted a photo of herself in a black and white silk gown on social mediaThe look in her eye as she stared at the camera was pure uncertainty. Had she just stepped on another landmine, obvious to everyone else but her? The caption on the photo tweeted from the Democrats account may have read, “Kamala Harris stuns at the Met Gala,” but that is not how most Americans will view it.

Saturday

Emily Smith

The Met Gala flirts with MAGA

The Met Gala, hosted by the almighty Anna Wintour, will see the world’s most fashionable float up the red carpet on May 5 in New York City. The throngs of designers, models, influencers and celebrities who manage to get the golden-ticket invitation must dress in a style inspired by the theme “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.” This theme is inspired from Monica Miller’s 2009 book, “Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity.” Dandyism, we’re told, has its origins in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in the 18th century when slaves were dressed up in an extravagant fashion to please their master’s aesthetic.

met gala

Monday

David Christopher Kaufman

What’s the media’s problem with black masculinity?

No experience in my many decades on this planet felt more degrading than being repeatedly referred to as “intimidating” by my former boss. As far as I know, the affluent, influential white women that I used to work with at Condé Nast lost their right to refer to their black male employees in such racially laden language long before the death of George Floyd. Especially when I was merely asking my (mostly white and female) underlings to simply do their jobs. I’m reminded of this charge every time I see a black man done up like a woman — which is seemingly all the time these days. Take Alex Newell and J. Harrison Ghee, who were awarded Best Actor statues at the Tony Awards in June, and both accepted them clad in colorful gowns and full makeup.

black masculinity

Thursday

Ross Anderson

The legacy of Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel

Monday night marks the fashion calendar’s most overrated, overcovered event: the Met Gala. Each year it’s the same. The outfits are underwhelming (unless they’re worn Rihanna). The publicity stunts are boring. Its political outbursts are predictable and hypocritical. Most disappointing, the theme of this ultimate costume party is either uninteresting, completely ignored or both. But Monday promises something different, or at least above average. Its theme is “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty,” in tribute to the late fashion design icon, who revived Chanel and made it one of the greatest houses, and businesses, in Paris. An exhibition examining the work of Lagerfeld will run at the Met from May 5 to June 16.

Karl Lagerfeld chanel
Taki

The night I danced with Ginger Rogers

From our UK edition

Gstaad When indolence becomes intolerable, remembrances of things past become a lifesaver. Charles Moore’s Spectator Notes also helps. His recent item about his friend Lady Penn reminded me of events long ago that had slipped my mind because at the time I was under the influence and without sleep. About 20 years ago, the designer Carolina Herrera rang to invite me to a dinner in New York for Prue Penn, who was staying with her and her husband. When I was introduced to Lady Penn, she laughingly told me that we had met before, ten years earlier, ‘when you tried to pick me up at ten in the morning in a petrol station on the M4’.

Friday

Cockburn

Are Anna Wintour and Bill Nighy back together?

We need to deep-clean the halls of Congress January is a month for shedding the pounds — and the latest fitness fad for Capitol Hill reporters is chasing around disgraced congressman George Santos. In a show of collegiality, the staffers of other representatives have been alerting the press to Santos's whereabouts. Take deputy chief of staff Aaron Fritschner, whose boss Representative Don Beyer, a Democrat from Virginia, shares a hallway with Santos. "I've done it twice now," he told Politico's Huddle newsletter. "I'm gonna keep on doing it for as long as he's there. And it seems like he's not going anywhere." Cockburn is delighted that Fritschner has found a fun new hobby to plug the hole left by his last one: explaining why Don Beyer is inadvertently employing Chinese spies.

bill nighy anna wintour

Friday

Grace Curley

The Zelenskys’ Vogue publicity misfire

The legendary nineteenth-century showman P.T. Barnum is credited with first uttering the words, “all publicity is good publicity.” Barnum had the good sense to die a century before he had the chance to see the Zelenskys’ Vogue photo shoot. https://twitter.com/MayraFlores2022/status/1552267933501489152 Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and his wife posed for renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz. In one shot Olena stands near Ukrainian female soldiers at the Antanov airport. In another she holds hands with her husband in the presidential office compound in Kyiv as the pair stare pensively at the camera.

zelensky vogue

Wednesday

Cockburn

Huma Abedin trades up for Bradley Cooper

A few things Cockburn always enjoys (aside from alcohol and low prices) are drama and scandal. He was therefore delighted to learn this week that actor Bradley Cooper has been secretly dating Huma Abedin, the former top aide to Hillary Clinton and ex-wife of the political excommunicate Anthony Weiner. Per Page Six, "The top aide to Hillary Clinton... has been seeing the A-lister for the past few months, according to multiple insiders... Page Six is told that the high-profile pair arrived together at the Met Gala on May 2 and then split up for the red carpet. Pictures show Abedin, forty-six, in a canary-yellow gown posing for the cameras, with Cooper, forty-seven, keeping his distance behind her.

huma abedin

Tuesday

Chadwick Moore

AOC is a hot glue-gun mess

I get what socialist congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez thought she was doing. She shows up to the Met Gala, the glitziest event of the year, where tickets are upwards of $30,000 and a table can run nearly a quarter of a million bucks, wearing a white dress with the words ‘Tax the Rich’ scrawled along the back. How cute, she thinks she’s trolling, you know, like the kids do. Except none of the kids on her side are any good at it. AOC, their leader, also proved Monday evening she doesn’t understand how a joke works. That put her in good company. Increasingly like the pop stars and celebrities she spent the evening hobnobbing alongside, her dress stunt showed she, too, bleeds tedium. Take, for example, a comparable incident from last week.

aoc

Thursday

Taki

We need Voltaire more than ever

From our UK edition

New York The high life has gone with the wind because of you know what. The last time I went to a glittering ball, Marie Antoinette still had a head on her shoulders, or so it seems, and sweats and leggings are now ubiquitous at intimate dinner parties. Here in the Bagel fashion has followed the street for a long time, making high fashion seem as irrelevant and obscene as Anna Wintour being paid millions to kiss the ass of celebrities. No sweats, no leggings was my only rule for an intimate dinner for Prince Pavlos, expertly cooked by Michael Mailer and attended by Arki Busson and three youngsters of the female persuasion.

Thursday

Anne de Courcy

Malice and back-stabbing behind Vogue’s glossy exterior

From our UK edition

‘What job do you want here?’ asked the editor of Vogue, interviewing a young hopeful. From behind her black sunglasses the 24-year-old replied coolly:‘Yours.’ It took time, but she got it. The girl was, of course, Anna Wintour. Now she is the global Vogue supremo and queen of fashion, before whose lightest frown the whole industry quakes, and the magazine is acknowledged to be the top glossy. Its beginnings were small. It was launched on 17 December 1892, at a cost of ten cents an issue, and its dedicated founder struggled to keep it going. Its first editor was passionate about animals and its second was a female golfer with no previous publishing experience.

Friday

Amber Duke

Slayed queens: the girlboss, dethroned

The girlboss is dead. Intersectionality killed her. Female CEOs who sacrificed their twenties to build their women-focused businesses are being run out of the industry in droves over accusations that they haven't been inclusive enough to staff and customers. The progressives who believe 'my feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit' have decided that the clothing brands and publishing companies built by and created for women no longer meet the standards of political correctnesss. Put in terms a normal human can understand, these companies are simply too white. It is a valuable lesson for those that try and cater to the demands of the far-left: no matter how feminist you are, it will never be enough and eventually the mob will come for you.

girlboss

Saturday

Chadwick Moore

Christian Dior’s woke advertising woes

The left is really going to hyperventilate once they realize during World War Two Christian Dior, along with most French designers, made dresses for the wives of literal Nazis in occupied France. The fashion house that carries his name has come under attack for ‘racism’ and ‘cultural appropriation,’ after running an ad for its Sauvage perfume that featured overly flattering depictions of Native Americans. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYyGHOwxjUY Fortunately, anyone who’d get upset by this can’t afford Dior, so the idea of a boycott never occurred to them, but the online left screamed regardless, causing Dior to remove the ad from Twitter.

christian dior