FBR Brief #6: Fashion month and print media
Condé Nast and the state of traditional fashion media, news digest
Hello readers!
From the debut collection of Matthew Williams for Givenchy to the breaking news of Kenzo Takada passing away (may he rest in peace), what an eventful Sunday it was!
October is in full swing and brrr... it’s getting colder in Milan 🥶. Traditional fashion month is coming to an end, but there are last two physical shows of #PFW to look forward to - don’t miss Chanel and Louis Vuitton this Tuesday.
Despite live streaming has democratised fashion, there was no lack of drama between Balmain's digital front row. While industry's veterans might be craving the pageantry of real-life catwalk shows and globetrotting, the data showed this year Digital Helsinki Fashion Week’s carbon footprint was less than half of traditional format. A case in point in favour of sustainable fashion activists.
The fashion carousel never stops turning (btw any update on #TikTokFashionMonth?). Next destination is China, Shanghai Fashion Week: A Barometer for the World’s Largest Fashion Market.
Enough about fashion shows. This weekend I’ve been reading former British Vogue editor-in-chief Alexandra Shulman’s “Inside Vogue: My Diary Of Vogue's 100th Year” and it reminded me an article I came across few weeks ago while surfing on the web:
Let Si Get This: The Condé Nast economy–all expenses paid, all the time
This article from 1997 tells the economy behind the glamorous life of fashion editors:
Condé Nast’s magazines are all about glamour, wealth, prestige. To uphold that image, magazine editors need to circulate at the top of New York society. But the top of New York society consists of people who make far more money than magazine editors do–investment bankers, corporate chieftains, and fashion designers. Million-dollar salaries aren’t enough to mix as equals with the Trumps and Karans. Si’s perks are equalizers.
Ever since the rise of social media, much to magazine editors’ dismay, fashion bloggers became regular guests of the fashion shows. Lavish, all expenses paid press tours, once a privilege for the editors' coterie, became content creation opportunity and part of the brand's influencer marketing budget. And what’s worse — pay cuts, reshuffling and restructuring that were happening at Condé Nast, even before the COVID hit. Its rival Hearst Magazines wasn’t in better shape either.
Indeed, Business of Fashion wrote on the state of traditional fashion media:
With marketing budgets under pressure across channels this year, and with platforms like Instagram taking a bigger piece of the pie, the shift to more digital advertising is unlikely to plug the gap for fashion media.
Faced with collapsing revenue, magazines are either closing shop or downshifting their operations at dizzying speeds. Whether it’s Elle Italy moving from a weekly to a bi-weekly cadence, W suspending operations for several months and Vogue printing fewer issues in the US, or Grazia ceasing print in France (like Elle in India, or Harper's Bazaar in Australia), it’s a brutal moment for fashion media.
The phrase "Print media is dying" still makes headlines whenever magazine ad spend gets cut. The “golden age” of print media is far gone and maybe it's for the better. There is still a debate on whether paperless communication has a smaller environmental impact than print, but with less paper to print, fewer trees to be cut. When was the last time you bought print magazine actually to read, not just for a pretty coffee table?
One thing for sure: in digital age, it's hard to get the reader’s attention and keep up with ever-changing multimedia formats, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest and other platforms. There is less control of the distribution and algorithms decide what will appear in your feed (have you watched The Social Dilemma?).
While American Vogue and Anna Wintour try to revive its title as the Fashion Bible with video and podcast format, in Russia the fashion media players are all over Telegram (read more below).
New times, new heroes: first there was HBO and Carrie Bradshaw from SATC, now there’s Netflix and “ridicule” Emily in Paris.
Enjoy your week,
Assiya Assanbayeva
FEATURED ARTICLES
A Brief History Of Paris Fashion Week
Paris Fashion Week is known for its theatricality and couture, established by the originals: Coco Chanel, Christian Dior, and Karl Lagerfeld. In this article Vogue looks back to the beginning. (British Vogue)
The Banned App Driving Fashion Sales from Moscow to Tehran
One of the pioneering fashion channels on Telegram, and one of the go-to sources of fashion news in Russia, was created by Katya Fedorova, a former editor at the Russian editions of Vogue,Grazia and Interview Magazine. […] Since then, it has evolved into a place for her to give unvarnished opinions about collections, industry developments, and even political events, a content mix many Russians feel they can’t get in the pages of glossy magazines. (Business of Fashion)
Link to “Good Morning, Karl” Telegram channel in Russian
Link to “Good Morning, Karl” Telegram channel in English (not updated since January, but gives you a taste of Fedorova’s tone of voice)
What Fashion Media Can Learn From the Chinese Model
Today, players like Huasheng Media and Modern Media dominate in mainland China alongside global mainstays Hearst and Condé Nast. While many Western publications have been digital laggards, China’s industry has thrived on the rise of new digital models. (Business of Fashion)
Can Luxury Fashion Ever Regain Its Luster?
The pandemic has further polarized luxury’s winners and losers and accelerated trends that were already underway before the crisis began. Brands like Hermes and Chanel, who never discount, are less trend-led and, with product ranges that sell through multiple seasons, have emerged in particularly good shape. (NY Times)
NEWS DIGEST
Condé Nast Reverses Pay Cuts for Staffers Including Anna Wintour, Roger Lynch
After five months, Vogue publisher Condé Nast is on Thursday reversing the pay cuts it made for U.S. employees as the coronavirus wreaked havoc on already fragile advertising revenues. (WWD)
Condé Nast bets on Singapore with Vogue relaunch
Despite its smaller population, Singapore witnessed one of the 10 highest growth rates of ultra-high net worth individuals (those with a net worth of US$30 million) in the world, from 2018 to 2019, according to Knight Frank’s Wealth Report. […] “It’s such a cosmopolitan, forward-thinking city. There’s a lot of appetite for what’s new and what’s next, and that has helped the media scene flourish.” (Vogue Business in China)
Pinterest announces new site tools and UK shopping
The platform is launching ads alongside visual search engines, more places to shop, and new conversion insights which advertisers can benefit from seeing the impact of both their paid and organic Pinterest content. (Fashion United)