Ode to Vogue

Oh lord how I miss NYC at times like these: Fashion Week. Obv. I'm a little obsessed with fashion and fashion magazines. Yesterday I wrote a letter to the good folks at Gawker, because they are looking for a writer to cover women's magazines. The job ad requested a paragraph about you and a couple paragraphs about the women's magazine you are obsessed with.

I have always been obsessed with Vogue. My grandmother was an obsessive-compulsive hoarder, and in addition to collecting designer clothing, accessories and jewelry as if they were cheap trinkets, she also kept every magazine she ever read, including priceless back issues of Vogue and W. So when I went to her condo in Sarasota, I pored over the Vogue back issues and sifted through the designer duds and escaped into this fantastic, fashionable fantasy world. Thus my Vogue obsession was born.

Naturally, Vogue is the magazine I chose to wrote about to illustrate my obsession with women's magazines. My dream since about the age of 16 was to work for Vogue. I've long-ago faced the fact that this likely will not happen, but I continue to hold the magazine in great esteem. Obv. this job is a complete long shot; I'm sure they got hundreds of letters, so I thought I would share mine with you. (Keep in mind that the web site is a very snarky, tongue-in-cheek site that pokes fun at the media from an insider's perspective, hence the informal tone of the letter.) Anywho, here's the excerpt from the letter detailing my ongoing Vogue fixation:

Now, as far as women's magazines go, I have to admit I'm a devotee of the much-maligned, yet truly essential fashion bible, Vogue. I've always worshiped at Anna's altar, Devil Wears Prada or not. Off the record, I'll share with you a couple of embarrassing tidbits to illustrate my Vogue obsession. My first official clip—if you can call it that—was a letter to the editor in Vogue, published when I was 17. And (this is the truly embarrassing part) the cake at my high school graduation party was a mock-up of a Vogue cover, replete with headlines and decks that I wrote. I kid you not—I still have the photos. In my opinion, Vogue continues to be the arbiter of the fashion industry, and no other editor in chief in the history of women's magazines, aside from Diana Vreeland, has been as influential, infamous and intimidating as Anna. Sure, the layouts are increasingly, er, whimsical, the items featured are completely unaffordable, the covers are often messy and the writers' tones sometimes make you want to hurl, yet the magazine is still relevant. It's like family—you can't live without it, you can't kill it and it's always there for you when you're feeling down.

Okay, so I exaggerate, but the truth is that Vogue is a magazine that is aspirational, and in today's age of instant gratification that's somehow comforting. I know I won't be able to afford the handbag, shoes or bauble featured on the last page, yet I am still dying to see what it is. A girl has to dream, and if my fantasies were spilled out onto four-color spreads, they would look a lot like Vogue's Index.

And though I haven't reviewed the Fashion Week collections as yet, I did look at photos from the shows and was absolutely horrified to behold this picture of Vogue editor/writer Plum Sykes. Ugh. She's giving writers, fashionistas and Conde Nasties a bad name with this ensemble; the jeans are too long, the hair is disheveled, the scarf is taking up half her body, the redneck hat that I know is all the rage but is still hideous, the clunky black shoes paired with a beige bag and a gray coat. She's just all over the place:




On the other hand, Anna Wintour is uber-chic in this delectable sheared (what looks like beaver) fur coat, during a season when most other NYC girls' furs look like just-killed raccoons fresh off Davy Crockett's farm. Although I am a vegetarian simply because I don't care for meat or fish, I love a good fur. But there's a fine line between fur fabulousity and fur atrocity.

Fabulous Fur on Anna with her gorgeous clone daughter Bee Shaffer:




Fugly fur on longtime media figure Lauren Ezersky: