It goes without saying that the fall edition of fashion magazines tend to be on the bulky side. The back-to-school mentality pops up in all fashion magazines, even in those whose demographics are not going back to school. Let’s face it, we (generally referring to women) look forward to those editions. Even though the issues are beefed up with advertisements, it is still fun to flip through 350 pages instead of the normal 250.
This year, Vogue decided to up the ante with its September 2007 edition. According to CNBC.com, Vogue’s September issue set the record for the most advertising pages ever published in a monthly consumer magazine.
The front cover reads: “Our Biggest Issue Ever, 840 Pages of Fearless Fashion.” The cover should have read: “Our Smallest Issue Ever, 727 Pages of Advertisements.”
With its usual cover price of $4.99, I decided this edition of Vogue was worth buying. It was like getting three magazines for the price of one. How could you go wrong?
Here’s how: for starters, the first page of the table of contents is on page 54, and the first page of the masthead is on page 288. Flipping a page or two of advertisements to finish reading a story has come to be expected in most magazines. But when readers cannot find the rest of a story because it is buried in pages of ads, they tend to get frustrated.
The longest piece of written journalism in this edition of Vogue was an “up front” article about a woman who moved to India to massage leprosy patients. Not much fashion there.
It took an excessive amount of effort to find the cover story about Sienna Miller, buried in ads on page 726 in the back of the book. Normally the table of contents would assist in this situation, but it is buried in ads in the front of the book. Different from the rest of this issue, the photo shoot with Miller is 20 pages long, actually devoid of ads. Two and a half pages have type, while the other 17 and a half pages consist of large glossy photographs with a handful of words thrown on here and there.
The launch of www.shopvogue.tv by Vogue’s owner, Conde Nast, corresponds to the release of its September 2007 issue. www.shopvogue.tv is a place where readers can shop the ads of the companies that advertise in Vogue. It just seems in poor taste to bog down the fall fashion issue with advertisements for the launch of a web site that will essentially be all advertisements.
Needless to say, after a week of hauling around an 840 page issue of Vogue, which lacks the fashion advice that I crave, it does not seem worth the $4.99 anymore.
–Christine Birmingham
You missed the point & clearly did not check out the broadband network. it is shopvogue.tv — not.com.