"I can't believe the bespoke NY magazine biz hasn't yet realized that an Annie Leibovitz puff piece photoshoot is a political death sentence."

I can't believe the bespoke NY magazine biz hasn't yet realized that an Annie Leibovitz puff piece photoshoot is a political death sentence pic.twitter.com/INL4dWe7Hb

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) February 2, 2026

"The new job is not quite the same role that has made Wintour one of the most recognisable women in the world with her signature blow-dried bob and sunglasses and just-as-famous froideur."

"Instead, the title is 'head of editorial content, US'.... Over three decades, Wintour has transformed fashion from a mainly trade-facing industry to a billion-dollar celebrity and pop culture vehicle.She has turned Vogue from a monthly print magazine into an omnichannel digital brand.... 'Anna is basically the CEO of fashion and this new job isn’t that,' says a fashion veteran who did not want to be named. 'As we’ve seen at the other editions, these heads of content aren’t mini editors-in-chief — they’re quite muted figures. This person might be seen as ‘the new Anna’ from the outside, but Anna is still very much in control.'...There are those who say that, rather than marking a new era, this job indicates the end of one. As one industry stalwart puts it: 'This is very much an assistant position. Vogue dies with Anna.'"

From "Chloe Malle steps into Anna Wintour’s shoes at US Vogue/The fashion doyenne has stepped back from the day-to-day US Vogue editorship. Chloe Malle, the daughter of Candice Bergen and Louis Malle, has been confirmed as her replacement" (London Times).

The headline on the home page of The Times calls Chloe Malle "the daughter of Hollywood Royalty." Imagine having such parents!

"But that might be a mistake—as it turns out, many of those edible villains have earned their 'bad' wraps unfairly, and, according to recent studies, some of them might even be healthier for us than we initially thought."

Says the first sentence I read in this Vogue article Meade sent me — Meade sends me Vogue articles?! — "9 Foods That Are Healthier Than You Would Think."

That article is from March 2024, and no one has corrected the error yet?

I'm giving Vogue a "bad wrap" — perhaps a tainted burrito or a scruffy mink stole.

By the way, these 9 foods are healthier than I "would think" if I hadn't already read numerous articles touting potatoes, eggs, coffee, butter, cheese, whole milk, nuts, chocolate, and fatty fish. 

"The image is saintly."

Announces Washington Post fashion writer Rachel Tashjian, in "Jill Biden is Vogue’s cover star. What timing. The first lady covers Vogue for the third time, positioned by the magazine as a savior of the country’s fate."

Here's the image:

Tashjian proclaims that "a striking, fascinatingly out-of-character image in its storytelling."  What's the usual "character"? More smiley? More of a sidekick? I really don't know. Do you? We're told "the religious undertones are startling": "Her pose and visage, not to mention the color of her dress, recall religious paintings of saints communing with their higher power."

IN THE COMMENTS: Rafe — short for Raphael? — says "Which paintings? What a lazy comparison, to paintings which only exist, apparently, in her mind." 

I went looking for paintings of saints gazing upward. There's this, by Raphael:

Notice that Catherine's hands do not hang limply at her sides. They are expressive of ecstasy and placed in locations that would seem truly odd on a modern-day politico. Unlike Jill, she's got her weight shifted to one side, and also unlike Jill, she's leaning on what we know to be the device used to torture-murder-martyr her. Jill exists in an empty brown-gray void.

But it's the difference in the eyes that is most striking. Jill's eyes are rotated sideways, and only slightly upward, as if she is gazing fondly at her somewhat tall husband. They're not fixed on Heaven. 

Can we find paintings of saints with eyes rotated sideways, which seems mildly coy? Consider the entirely un-Jill-like Saint Lucy:

"The 106-year-old Whang-Od... has been perfecting the art of hand-tapping tattoos since she was a teen, learning under her father's instruction."

Reports CNN, at "A 106-year-old from the Philippines is Vogue's oldest ever cover model."

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Vogue Philippines (@voguephilippines)

"'It’s a timeless bridal look,' says hairstylist Xavier Velasquez—who met Biden through her longtime brow artist Azi Sacks—of the sculptural bun look he crafted. "

That's just 2 of "All the Details Behind Naomi Biden’s Timeless Wedding Day Beauty" (Vogue).

Imagine having a "longtime brow artist." Imagine "crafting" a "sculptural bun look." It's not just a bun. It's a crafted sculptural bun look.

In Vogue. Which also has "Exclusive: Naomi Biden on Her White House Wedding."

 

I would not have posed Jill like that. Too evocative of Joe Biden's hair-inhalation propensities. But I mainly wanted you to see what longtime brow artistry and sculptural bun look craftsmanship can do. And I wanted to set up the laugh you'll get when you read what White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said: 

"The wedding of Naomi Biden and Peter is a private family event. Naomi and Peter have asked that their wedding be a closed to the media and we are respecting their wishes. This is something that the couple has decided."

What is the controversy about this magazine cover at British Vogue?

Consider the question for yourself before reading the criticisms.

At Instagram, British Vogue says: "The nine models gracing the cover are representative of an ongoing seismic shift that became more pronounced on the SS22 runways; awash with dark-skinned models whose African heritage stretched from Senegal to Rwanda to South Sudan to Nigeria to Ethiopia. For an industry long criticized for its lack of diversity, as well as for perpetuating beauty standards seen through a Eurocentric lens, this change is momentous."

At CNN, a writer based in Nigeria says: 

"Given to drama in his personal style (he favored capes, gloves and regal headpieces), his pronouncements ('My eyes are starving for beauty') and the work he adored, he cultivated an air of hauteur...."

"Mr. Talley was a fixture at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, where, according to the church’s pastor, the Rev. Dr. Calvin O. Butts III.... Mr. Talley, who was openly gay, lived alone and had little semblance of a romantic life... It was through [Vogue editor Diana] Vreeland... that he entered the magazine world, and... met [Andy] Warhol. 'He was constantly trying to grab my crotch,' Mr. Talley later told The New York Times. 'It was not a Harvey Weinstein moment. Andy was a charming person because he saw the world through the kaleidoscope of a child. Everything was 'gee golly wow."'... For [Talley], fashion was both inspiration and disguise, camouflage against the racist barbs he experienced, such as being referred to as 'Queen Kong.'... There were 'many in that industry who really did love André for his talent,' Mr. Butts said. It was also the case, he added, that 'there were others who exploited his talent and used it to their advantage,' who 'never really gave him respect as a man and were condescending.'"

From "André Leon Talley, Editor and Fashion Industry Force, Dies at 73/Called 'a creative genius,' he was the rare Black editor at the top of a field that was mostly white and notoriously elitist" (NYT).

Under the heading "Reset," British Vogue — Vogue! — has a landscape — a landscape! — on its cover.

Yes, it's David Hockney. That's sort of like getting an important actress for a normal cover, a cover about feminine beauty and fashion. They're "resetting" to a landscape — a wheat field — the very landscape that inspired Vincent Van Gogh to blow his brains out?

The British Vogue Editor-in-Chief Edward Enninful explains (in the Independent). He says it "highlights that at the core of everything is our planet." And — referring to the coronavirus — "As the world rushes to find its feet again, we all need to be more mindful of the toll our previous pace of living took on nature."

You mean we ought to wake up from the trance you've worked so hard to put us under that has made us believe we must be ever searching for new and different clothes and paying lots of money for them?

Is that "mindful" enough?

"Though Mr. Talley clearly makes an effort to wrestle with topics he spent a lot of his life not acknowledging, from all fashion’s shameful isms..."

"... (sizeism, ageism — and, above all, racism, a recurring and painful through-line) to his own failed lap band surgery and inability to have a romantic relationship (he was abused as a child by a neighbor), it’s as if simply acknowledging the existence of these facts — the way they marred the otherwise gorgeous vistas of the industry as it unfurled in his mind — is enough. He never really looks at whether the rewards were worth the price exacted.... He was the diva he wanted to be... complete with his own often demanding behavior, and the diva his boss [Anna Wintour] needed, shaped by the divas of yore (Diana Vreeland, Andy Warhol). But today fashion has no more room or patience for such divas — not in magazines or modeling or designer ateliers — and Mr. Talley has grandiosed himself out of a job.... It’s the tension between fantasy (or the world as you would like it to look) and reality, that is the essence of fashion. But perhaps the attempt to have one without the other is what it took to be him: a pioneer; the most famous black man in the glossy world — often the only black person in the room...."

From "André Leon Talley’s Tales From the Dark Side/The juiciest fashion memoir of the year is out. But is it a tell-all, a tragedy or a harbinger of things to come?" by Vanessa Friedman (NYT).

Marianne Williamson edits herself into the Vogue photoshoot of female Democratic candidates.

Via "Marianne Williamson was left out of a photo shoot of the women running for president. So she posted an edited version" (CNN).

"'Will you wear a star in your hair at night ... or a little embroidered black veiling hat? ... Will you wear a close little choker of pearls or a medal on a long narrow velvet ribbon?"

"... Will you serve a lunch, in the garden, of prosciutto and melon and a wonderful green salad ... or sit in the St. Regis’ pale-pink roof and eat truite bleue?'... It is the 'Make Up Your Mind' issue: Vogue’s editresses are gently pressing the reader, in the vise of these velvet alternatives, to choose the looks that will 'add up' to her look, the thing that is hers alone. 'Will you make the point of your room a witty screen of drawings cadged from your artist friends ... or spend your all on a magnificent carpet of flowers that decorates and almost furnishes the room itself?' Twenty years ago, when Vogue was on the sewing-room table of nearly every respectable upper-middle-class American house, these sapphic overtures to the subscriber, this flattery, these shared securities of prosciutto and wonderful and witty had no place in fashion’s realm. Vogue, in those days before Mademoiselle and Glamour and Charm and Seventeen, was an almost forbidding monitor enforcing the discipline of Paris."

"Twenty years ago" was 88 years ago, because I'm reading a 1950 essay by Mary McCarthy "Up the Ladder from Charm to Vogue," found in the collection "On the Contrary: Articles of Belief." I just put that in my Kindle because I needed to search for something I knew was there, because the Oxford English Dictionary said it was there, even though Google books said it was not there.

No, it wasn't "sapphic." That word has been used to mean lesbian since 1766 — according to the OED — when it appeared in "Genuine Memoirs of the Celebrated Miss Maria Brown Exhibiting the Life of a Courtezan in the Most Fashionable Scenes of Dissipation Published by the Author of a Woman of Pleasure": "She whispered to me the plan of bliss which these extraordinary letchers had chalked out to themselves, and which they stiled the indulgence of the Sapphic passion."

I love the use of "sapphic" to describe the voice of Vogue seducing readers to the pleasures of long narrow velvet ribbon and prosciutto. But it's something else in that essay that I needed, something that relates to the third post of the day, "It's Orwellian the way it's always the other side that looks Orwellian." That Mary McCarthy essay contains the first appearance of the word "Orwellian." I mean, I am fascinated by the whole subject. Click on my "women's magazines" tag and you'll see. But I really wanted to see the context of this first use of "Orwellian" — the squib in the OED being merely "A leap into the Orwellian future." Let's read:

"I picked up a copy of Vogue just because I was, like, I need to know about women’s fashion now, because I’m gay."

"Jack and Will make fun of everything Grace wears on 'Will & Grace,' so I need to be like that."

Said Phillip Picardi, quoted in "Condé Nast’s 26-Year-Old Man of the Moment/Is Phillip Picardi, a former intern who now heads up Teen Vogue, the future of Condé Nast? Anna Wintour seems to think so."

Mr. Picardi grew up in North Andover, Mass. His father, a devout Catholic, owned a technology company. His mother was a homemaker and an executive assistant.... It made for a sometimes challenging environment for the young Mr. Picardi. “I was gay,” he said. “G.A.Y., with an exclamation mark and a little asterisk.”

He came out to his parents in the summer before ninth grade. It was 2 in the morning, and Mr. Picardi, who had just finished watching “Queer as Folk,” burst into their bedroom and said: “Mom, Dad, I have something to tell you.” His mother sobbed as he said everything he had to say. Ten minutes later, his father rolled over and asked what was going on. He had slept through it.

His parents sent him to a Catholic therapist and instructed him not to tell his neighbors, his friends or his younger brother. Before coming out, he had wanted to be a lawyer. Now, he decided, he should work in fashion.

“I watched ‘Will & Grace,’ and that’s what it felt like they were doing, more or less,” he said.

TV is influential!

You know, I find "Philip" such a hard name to spell. It it one L or two? It's hard to see, because the lower-case i also looks like an L. Picardi is a 2-L Phillip. He even spells "Phill" with 2 Ls, which seems excessive, but it was "Will & Grace," not "Wil & Grace."

Philip means fond of horses. "Phil" is love, of course, as in "philanthropy," and "ip" is the same as "hippos," which means horse. (A hippopotamus is a horse of the patomos (the river).)

Anyway, did you as a child get any ideas about how to live and be your true self by looking at some TV-show character? Here's a list of the top-rated TV shows when I was in 9th grade. Who would I have looked at and thought, well, that's where I'm going? I see 3 housewives and a "jeannie." The jeannie and one of the housewives had superpowers, and the other 2 were Laura Petrie (Mary Tyler Moore) and Lisa Douglas (Eva Gabor). I can see why I was so deeply affected when the hippies suddenly appeared on TV...



And, people, Gomer was gay.

ADDED: I found that 1969 Gomer clip because I was looking for things with "Goldie" (that is, Leigh French), and I did not recognize — until EDH asked about it — that the other hippie there is Rob Reiner. And here's Reiner as Mitch the hippie in a scene in a 1969 episode of "The Beverly Hillbillies":

Vogue Magazine apologizes for saying "Gigi Hadid and Zayn Malik are Part of a New Generation Embracing Gender Fluidity."

The Daily News reports.

"The story was intended to highlight the impact the gender-fluid, non-binary communities have had on fashion and culture," the statement read. "We are very sorry the story did not correctly reflect that spirit - we missed the mark. We do look forward to continuing the conversation with greater sensitivity."...

Throughout the article, Hadid and Malik are quoted engaging in light chit-chat about how they enjoy going through each other's closets and finding new pieces to wear, regardless of whether they were marketed to men or women.

"I like (your shirt)," Malik says to Hadid. "And if it's tight on me, so what? It doesn't matter if it was made for a girl."

"Totally. It's not about gender," Hadid responds. "It's about like, shapes. And what feels good on you that day. And anyway, it's fun to experiment."

So what exactly did Vogue do wrong here? It seems Hadid and Malik are not real gender-fluid people, but just a couple of kids wearing each other's clothes.  I'm not seeing the word "appropriation," but it seems like an appropriation problem. Gender fluidity must be understood as an inward condition, and your inside should match your outside or you are just playing with appearances.

Of course, Vogue is a fashion magazine, and fashion really is about the outside, but it's often the case that you speak about fashion as an expression of what you are inside. And yet fashion is not always about getting the inside to match the outside. Sometimes one dresses against one's inner feelings. Fashion magazines often rave about a very feminine woman in menswear tailoring or a tomboy-type suddenly getting up in a frou-frou dress.

Isn't it funny that the excitement about gender fluidity is manifesting itself in disciplining other people about keeping strict conformity between interior and exterior? You'd think fluidity would take us somewhere liberating, but it seems to bring new censoriousness and restriction.

But I do understand how irritating it is when fashion magazines pick up on some new social phenomenon, something you think has substance and depth, and turn it into a lightweight trend for the pretty people to have their shallow fun with.

Here's how my favorite fashion blog — Tom & Lorenzo — reacted to the cover story. Just a bunch of pictures (including Hadid and Malik standing in water wearing horrendous orange-brown corduroy suits). The top-rated comment over there — where the comments are excellent — is: "they are both HIGHLY ridiculous, but I love them. I'm iranian-american and it's nice to see these two -- both half middle-eastern, zayn open about his muslim faith -- being adorable and in love. and for real that track jacket portrait is hilarious."

Oh! The gender-fluidity police went after a Muslim! A crash in the crossroads of intersectionality.

"We were all sort of awestruck because her body looked amazing.... She looked just as comfortable in Manolos as she does when she was about to ski."

Says a Vogue editor, pushing the August issue.

The powerful, sexy image of [Lindsey] Vonn skiing on a hotel table, which appears in the August issue of Vogue, is just the latest notch in her stylish belt. In the past few months, the Olympic gold medalist has catapulted onto the fashion scene like she was jumping out of the starting gates.

With her svelte, 5-foot-10 figure and gorgeous blond mane, insiders say Vonn is poised to make a sports-to-fashion crossover....

Where does the competition end? The relationship with Tiger Woods is part of sexing her up for general celebrityhood, right?

That Woods, who was disgraced for cheating on his wife with a string of hookers, porn stars and waitresses, could be considered by Vonn to be an excellent suitor was shocking to some. Until that point, she had been perceived as a wholesome, all-American girl. But clearly she was ready for change in her life.

Win win.

"Michelle makes me tidy up, admits messy President Obama."

Actual headline at The NY Post for an article about how the First Lady is on the cover of Vogue again.

“I had this little bachelor apartment that Michelle refused to stay in because she thought it was a little, uh . . . you know, pizza boxes everywhere... When she came, I had to get her a hotel room.”

That's a very casual revelation that she would have slept overnight with him if only he'd had a nicer looking place. There's zero regard for the folks in this country (and world) who think you shouldn't have sex until you're married. And he's going out of his way to make her sound snooty. I had to get her a hotel room.

“And what Michelle has done is to remind me every day of the virtues of order,” the chief executive said. “Being on time. Hanging up your clothes. Being intentional about planning time with your kids.”

Why would a man say that about his wife? It makes it sound like they have a mother-and-son relationship. And what woman wants to be thought of as a stickler for order? It's not sexy, and it's not  respectful. Plus, from a political standpoint, it sounds fascist, and it prompts us to think about her efforts to tell us what we're allowed to eat. Does she care about our health, or is it — as the right-wingers like to say — all about control?

He added, “We’re very different people, and some of that’s temperamental, some of it is how we grew up. Michelle grew up in a model nuclear family: mom, dad, brother. I had this far-flung family — father left at a very young age, a stepfather who ended up passing away as well. My mother was this wonderful spirit, and she was adventurous but not always very well organized.”

So your wife is the mother you never had, and your mother sounds like the sex partner an adult male would want!

“Ninety percent of our conversation is about these girls: What are they doing? And who’s got what practice? And what birthday party is coming up? And did we get a gift for this person?” the first lady said.

90%? If true, that's terrible. Where is their relationship as adults? I have trouble believing it's true, since I assume Michelle has people to handle the girls' social schedule and gift-buying. Whether it's true or not, it's a choice to present us with this picture of their relationship, all about fussy household details, short on wide-ranging conversation, and utterly unsexy. It's in Vogue, so it must be what they think women want to hear. They must think women love the idea of a man tamed by his woman. Or maybe they are revealing how they think ordinary couples behave and they're posing as just like you.

President Obama admitted that he benefited politically coming into the public’s eye as a young parent. He and Michelle looked like any other husband and wife struggling to make ends meet:

“We had to figure out how to make a mortgage, payin’ the bills, goin’ to Target, and freakin’ out when . . . the woman who’s looking after your girls while Michelle’s working suddenly decides she’s quittin’.”

You've got to give him some credit for genuineness amid the fakery. He admits he's using this material for political benefit, and the pose is so exaggerated that only a nitwit would fail to see that it's posing. In that sense, we can see that he is an ordinary guy... if the ordinary guy is a self-advantaging faker. But is that what women want? A man who exploits his family life for careerist goals?