Vogue: Once and Forever | Red Ink | 3 AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast Business Wars

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Episode: Vogue: Once and Forever | Red Ink | 3

Author: Wondery
Duration: 00:38:33

Episode Shownotes

It’s the 1990s and new media is changing the game for all the glossies. InStyle leads the way in featuring celebrities as fashion and lifestyle icons. Meanwhile, Vogue struggles to establish its first website and television vertical, and is laid low by 9-11, along with Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar and most

of the media industry. Then Wintour has a series of missteps. But by the 2010s, Vogue’s entertainment offerings boost the brand’s digital game. And Harper’s Bazaar raids InStyle’s talent to up their social media strategy. Vogue and all the glossies continue to fight for relevance as the internet and new technology continues to decimate profit margins for print, and live events aim to cement the brand long known as the high priestess of fashion.Listen to Business Wars on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season. Unlock exclusive early access by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App or on Apple Podcasts. Start your free trial today by visiting wondery.com/links/business-wars/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Summary

In this episode of Wondery's "Business Wars," titled "Vogue: Once and Forever | Red Ink | 3," we examine Vogue's challenges in the 1990s as it struggles to adapt to the rise of new media and the competition from InStyle. Despite hosting her first Met Gala in 1995, Anna Wintour faces a growing rivalry from Harper's Bazaar and InStyle, which innovates with celebrity-focused content. By the 2000s, Vogue attempts to pivot with online initiatives, yet struggles with the impact of the 2008 financial crisis. Ultimately, Vogue seeks revitalization through digital strategies amid declining print revenues and fierce competition.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Vogue: Once and Forever | Red Ink | 3) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_05
Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of Business Wars Chuck E. Cheese vs. Showbiz Pizza early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. It's early evening in December 1995 in Manhattan.

00:00:24 Speaker_05
Anna Wintour and a vogue copywriter stand in front of a huge Christmas tree in the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The tree is made up entirely of blood-red roses. This is Wintour's first time hosting the Met Gala.

00:00:37 Speaker_05
The legendary fashion editor Diana Vreeland retired from the job in 1987. Now the museum is banking on Wintour to bring back the models, artists, glitterati, and deep-pocketed celebrities who flock to Vreeland's fanciful extravaganzas.

00:00:54 Speaker_05
Wintour's wearing a sleeveless white satin column dress by Oscar de la Renta with matching gloves that extend past her elbows. She points at a rose not far from the top of the 18-foot tree.

00:01:06 Speaker_11
That one pops out to the left a bit too much. Fix it.

00:01:10 Speaker_05
The Vogue copywriter's eyes open wide in alarm. The first guests are due to arrive in half an hour. She's only working the event because Wintour banished the usual Met staffers after she deemed them not attractive enough.

00:01:24 Speaker_05
The copywriter's afraid of heights and has no idea whether the Met has a ladder tall enough to reach the offending bloom, but no one ever says no to Anna Wintour. The copywriter scurries off to find help.

00:01:40 Speaker_05
30 minutes later, Wintour makes her grand entrance up the Met's famous granite steps. Supermodel Naomi Campbell glides up the staircase in shimmery silver Versace, followed by Kate Moss in a slinky yellow number from Calvin Klein.

00:01:56 Speaker_05
After them comes a long string of models, designers, and members of New York's glitterati. They mingle in the hall around the tree with its now perfectly aligned roses, A Met board member tosses back a glass of champagne and winces.

00:02:11 Speaker_03
Oh, that is not thousand-dollar-a-ticket quality. And Anna may have packed the place with big names, but I've seen better crowds. Remember when I met Jackie at one of these galas? She had me take her through the whole first floor.

00:02:24 Speaker_05
The board member points to a man wearing a dress shirt held together by safety pins. The man's black mustache is waxed into long points.

00:02:35 Speaker_03
I thought Vogue was classier than this.

00:02:38 Speaker_05
After the A-listers eat dinner, more guests arrive. The tickets for late arrival only cost 150 bucks. Later in the evening, the second-tier guests spill over the edges of a small dance floor in the museum's Temple of Dendur exhibit.

00:02:54 Speaker_05
It's a 2,000-year-old Egyptian temple fronted by a moat that represents the Nile River. The liquor flows all night. A young woman reels away from the dancers who drops to her knees on the edge of the moat and boots her champagne into the Nile.

00:03:10 Speaker_05
It's an inauspicious beginning for Wintour as the next reigning queen of the Met Gala. The Met bristles at her guests' debauchery in Wintour's bossy manner. The next year, they invite her arch-rival, Liz Tilberis, to host.

00:03:26 Speaker_05
Tilberis is the editor-in-chief of white-hot Harper's Bazaar. and joining her as guest of honor is her close friend, the celebrity of the century, Princess Di.

00:03:38 Speaker_05
The ultra-glamorous decorous event honoring Christian Dior generates global buzz for the already surging magazine. Classy, bizarre, and savvy newcomer in style magazine are ready to usurp Wintour's throne.

00:03:56 Speaker_05
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00:05:09 Speaker_05
From Wondery, I'm David Brown and this is Business Wars. It's the mid-1990s and cable television is revolutionizing media, bringing celebrity fashion to viewers in more immediate and intimate ways than ever.

00:05:44 Speaker_05
MTV and shows like Extra and Entertainment Tonight reveal rappers and movie stars' outfits long before magazines like Vogue arrive at people's doorsteps or local newsstands.

00:05:55 Speaker_05
But the biggest menace to all the glossies is just now emerging from its shell. And when the internet takes wing, it will threaten to leave the lead-footed print media outlets far behind, grey, gone, and gasping for relevance.

00:06:11 Speaker_05
This is Episode 3, Red Ink. It's February in 1999 in New York's Grand Central Terminal. Broadway actor Alan Cumming struts down a brilliantly illuminated white runway at one end of the historic station's Grand Hall.

00:06:33 Speaker_05
Most of the terminal's lights are turned off to heighten the drama. Cumming is the surprise celebrity guest of designer Cynthia Rowley's fall show.

00:06:42 Speaker_05
He's bare-chested and a dozen tiny gel-stiffened ponytail sticks straight up all over his head like a demented mohawk. Another model catches up with him and Cumming opens his bright orange wraparound skirt to cinch it around both their hips.

00:07:04 Speaker_05
The men walk arm-in-arm back up the catwalk. Floodlights wash the marble walls with columns of red and purple from the tile floor to the ceiling mural of the starry sky. Fashion editors and A-listers watch stony-faced from rows of folding chairs.

00:07:20 Speaker_05
Paparazzi flashbulbs strafe the crowd. At the other end of the terminal, commuters and tourists crisscross the hall. A suburban couple in matching L.L. Bean jackets descend the station's staircase entrance and walk toward the central information kiosk.

00:07:36 Speaker_05
The woman points to the huge video screens that flank the train departure board. They're playing a live feed of the fashion show.

00:07:43 Speaker_03
Look, isn't that Alan Cumming? We're going to see him tomorrow in cabaret.

00:07:47 Speaker_05
The man squints at the screens.

00:07:49 Speaker_06
Is that a fashion show? Why the hell is it so dark in here?

00:07:55 Speaker_05
More and more passers-by are confused. InStyle sponsored this runway show and chose Grand Central so they could use live video coverage of the event in an iconic New York space.

00:08:07 Speaker_05
It's a groundbreaking use of a technique already appearing in pro sports, but not yet common in fashion. InStyle's innovative focus on celebrity lifestyle coverage plus tech-savvy marketing is disrupting fashion media.

00:08:22 Speaker_05
After its debut in 1994, the magazine doubled its ad revenues to $53 million between 1996 and 1997. Since then, circulation has nearly doubled as well. Vogue still dwarfs newcomer InStyle, as well as legacy glossies Elle and Harper's Bazaar.

00:08:42 Speaker_05
And in 2000, it's one of the earliest fashion magazines to launch a website. Wintour livestreams Chanel's resort collection. Customers are thrilled to be able to pre-order styles the same day.

00:08:55 Speaker_05
It's an early see-now, buy-now moment in the fledgling digital age. Vogue is catching on to the new world of online fashion. But not quite fast enough. It's a balmy night in June 2001 in Beverly Hills.

00:09:16 Speaker_05
The wedding reception of Melrose Place actress Kelly Rutherford to Venezuelan banker Carlos Tarajano is going strong in the sunset ballroom of the Beverly Hills Hotel.

00:09:27 Speaker_05
Huge garlands of white Casablanca lilies decorate the pink and cream colored walls of the oval event space. Nearly a hundred guests sidestep, swing, spin, and sway their hips to the salsa beat across the dance floor.

00:09:42 Speaker_05
The dancers disperse just as waitstaff rolls a cart carrying a four-tiered white wedding cake right into the middle of the room. Rutherford wears a white strapless Carolina Herrera gown with a crystal embroidered bodice and long train.

00:10:02 Speaker_05
She picks up the cake cutter. The groom puts his arm around her and places his hand over hers on the knife. They both freeze with the knife hovering over the cake and smile at an InStyle magazine photographer.

00:10:14 Speaker_05
He captures the scene and they turn back to the cake. They feed each other a forkful of the first slice. The groom wipes icing from Rutherford's cheek. I love you forever, Kelly.

00:10:32 Speaker_05
It's a picture-perfect moment in a picture-perfect wedding, and InStyle is there to cover it for their upcoming Celebrity Wedding Edition. When the issue hits the stands seven months later, Rutherford has already filed for divorce.

00:10:47 Speaker_05
It's happened so many times in the magazine's short history that it's been dubbed the curse of the InStyle wedding. The marriages may not last, but InStyle's stellar sales and success have.

00:11:01 Speaker_05
In 2001, InStyle surpasses Vogue for the first time in ad pages and revenues. Their breezy take on accessible style filters fashion through the lens of pop culture instead of high society and arty layouts.

00:11:16 Speaker_05
InStyle also heaps on a big dollop of celebrity watching. By showing stars in their homes, sorting through their closets and shopping for shoes, InStyle humanizes them, rather than putting them on a pedestal the way Vogue and Harper's Bazaar do.

00:11:32 Speaker_05
And it's the first glossy with fashion pages style like shopping catalogs, complete with toll-free telephone numbers readers can use to access stores directly.

00:11:42 Speaker_05
InStyle's shopping editorial is so popular, it prompts Condé Nast to launch a copycat magazine called Lucky. for nearly everyone else though. The first half of 2001 is a bad year.

00:11:56 Speaker_05
Harper's Bazaar's 622 ad pages barely reach the halfway mark of Vogue's, and newsstand sales are flat. Two years earlier, Harper's Bazaar's star editor-in-chief Liz Tilberis died of ovarian cancer, and the magazine has been floundering ever since.

00:12:17 Speaker_05
Even Vogue finishes the year with ad pages down 30%. It's up to Wintour to transform Vogue or InStyle will make the magazine look about as in Vogue as a powdered wig. Audible's best of 2024 picks are here.

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00:14:50 Speaker_05
Vogue publisher Tom Florio sits at a conference table in Condé Nast headquarters with chairman Cy Newhouse and several top execs. He's come straight from a stint at GQ and looks the part.

00:15:03 Speaker_05
His curly dark hair is styled in a perfectly tussled mop on top of his head. For the past nine months, Florio's been working on a proposal to expand Vogue into online video. Now, he's finally presenting it to the top brass.

00:15:18 Speaker_05
He picks up a clicker to play the next snippet of his presentation.

00:15:22 Speaker_03
I have an appointment with Emily Charlton. Andrea Sachs? Yes, great. Human resources certainly has an odd sense of humor. Follow me.

00:15:37 Speaker_07
Okay, Mo, get ready for bae.

00:15:41 Speaker_06
Betty. Betty.

00:15:42 Speaker_01
Betty. Betty, Betty, Betty.

00:15:44 Speaker_06
This is Project Runway. Of course I'm obsessed.

00:15:47 Speaker_01
Let's do this.

00:15:48 Speaker_06
The search for the next big fashion designer.

00:15:52 Speaker_05
As you can see from that montage I just played, there's a huge appetite for fashion as entertainment right now. As you can see, there are so many popular programs that involve the industry. The movie The Devil Wears Prada, of course.

00:16:06 Speaker_05
Also ABC's Ugly Betty, and then reality shows like Project Runway and America's Next Top Model. The Younger Demographic is streaming clips of these shows on YouTube. All the audience data is in the report I emailed you yesterday.

00:16:21 Speaker_05
This is the perfect time to expand the Vogue brand by, for instance, producing our own video series for the website or creating our YouTube videos. A Condé Nast branding exec jumps in. Tom, is Anna on board with this?

00:16:36 Speaker_05
She doesn't think it'll dilute the brand? And, word to the wise, I wouldn't talk to her about the Devil Wears Prada. She wasn't too thrilled about that. Florio fiddles with his gold tie clip.

00:16:48 Speaker_05
He's unnerved by the gaffe, but most of all he's worried about Cy Newhouse's silence. Yeah, I was careful not to mention that to Anna. She's as worried as the rest of us about InStyle's head start on this kind of catchy fashion first video.

00:17:04 Speaker_05
We've even floated some ideas by her like before and after makeover videos or a fashion icon chat show. Florio's a straight shooter and he knows that Newhouse respects him for it. Best to be direct.

00:17:17 Speaker_05
So, Cy, what do you say about this online video gambit? Newhouse slumps in his leather swivel desk chair, one elbow propped on the chair arm, his chin resting in his palm. He's 78, portly, and wearing an ancient New Yorker sweatshirt.

00:17:35 Speaker_05
With age, he's grown into his detractor's nickname for him. The frog prints. He picks up a paper copy of the meeting agenda from the table, scrunches it up, and tosses it over his shoulder in the vague direction of a waste paper basket. I hate it.

00:17:52 Speaker_05
The blood drains from Florio's ruddy face. He looks like he just took a punch to the gut. Jeez, Cy, really? You hate it? Why?

00:18:03 Speaker_01
Because it has no class, no glamour, no art, and no sophistication. You aren't talking about any of the things that make Vogue Vogue. Isn't that what branding is all about?

00:18:14 Speaker_05
All your idea is about is making money. Newhouse came up in the golden age of magazines and loves them with every fiber of his being, but his aversion to putting profits first. is woefully out of touch with the era of dwindling print revenue.

00:18:31 Speaker_05
If Vogue doesn't leave the dark ages of the printing press and enter the 21st century soon, Upstart in Style will soon clean their Louis Vuitton clock It's February 2008 in Times Square. Anna Wintour sits at her desk in Condé Nast HQ.

00:18:56 Speaker_05
Vases filled with lush bouquets of pink and red roses brighten one corner of her glass-topped desk. The mock-up of the April issue lies in front of her. Two senior editors stand on either side of Wintour. They're all examining the cover photo.

00:19:12 Speaker_05
It's a posed studio shot of the pro basketball phenom for the Cleveland Cavaliers, LeBron James, He's dribbling a basketball. His shoulders are hunched and his teeth bared, his mouth wide open as if in mid-roar.

00:19:27 Speaker_05
He has his arm around supermodel Giselle Bündchen in a slinky strapless green dress. One editor at Wintour's shoulder reaches down and points at LeBron.

00:19:37 Speaker_03
Anna, we cannot go with this shot. It's problematic. We should go with something from the basketball court shoot in Cleveland, where Giselle is cheering him on from the sidelines.

00:19:49 Speaker_05
Wintour sits as still as a statue. She's still sizing up the photo from behind her dark glasses.

00:19:57 Speaker_11
I see passion and drive and personality here. What's the problem?

00:20:01 Speaker_05
The staffers look at each other in amazement behind Wintour's back. It's the first time Vogue is featuring a black man on the cover. Vogue's managing editor takes up the cause.

00:20:13 Speaker_03
Okay, I'm just going to come out and say it. It reeks of King Kong with Fay Wray. Giselle seems like she's off to a cocktail party while LeBron is bellowing like a maniac. And we post him to look like an actual gorilla.

00:20:26 Speaker_03
And I'm not the only one who thinks this.

00:20:29 Speaker_05
Wintour cocks her head, still inspecting the cover.

00:20:33 Speaker_10
That's ridiculous. It's a fabulous shot. This isn't going to go over well.

00:20:38 Speaker_05
It's a gross understatement. The media outrage immediately eclipses James' landmark turn on the cover of Vogue. An ESPN commentator accuses the magazine of reinforcing animalistic stereotypes frequently associated with black athletes.

00:20:56 Speaker_05
But Wintour shrugs off the bad press. She's focused on other, happier news. Younger members of the company's C-suite are taking over more of the aging new house's duties, and they're green-lighting Florio's video proposals.

00:21:12 Speaker_05
Vogue now has its own internet broadband channel, ShopVogue.tv, which features products from the magazine's print ads for sale, and also airs videos of runway shows and original programming like a short makeover show called 60 Seconds to Chic and Behind the Lens, a documentary style series.

00:21:32 Speaker_05
But the 2008 financial crisis sends the company reeling. Condé Nast revenues plunge 30%. Retail sales hit their lowest tally in 35 years. And mere months later, Wintour makes another bad judgment call.

00:21:51 Speaker_05
Media critics pounce when Vogue reports on the 2008 recession in their December issue by assigning a writer to discover the charms of slumming at Walmart and Target.

00:22:02 Speaker_05
Wintour and Vogue are trying too hard and face-planting in an attempt to capture the witty zeitgeist that InStyle seems to effortlessly achieve. InStyle leads all the glossies with an average of more than 150 ad pages per issue.

00:22:19 Speaker_05
2008 is their biggest year ever. The pressure is on at Vogue and all eyes are on the woman British Vogue once called the Venture of our discontent.

00:22:31 Speaker_05
Not only does she have to bring the spotlight back onto her brand, she has to somehow get cash-strapped Americans shopping again. It's a chilly evening in September 2009 in Queens.

00:22:49 Speaker_05
Anna Wintour poses with Gwen Stefani in front of a white logo festoon backdrop on the first floor of Macy's.

00:22:56 Speaker_05
It's the launch of the First Fashions Night Out event, sponsored by Vogue, a city-wide party of 800 stores with free booze, merch, swag, and celebrity appearances. Wintour and Stefani wave at the crowd made up mostly of press and paparazzi.

00:23:12 Speaker_05
A reporter raises his hand to get Wintour's attention.

00:23:16 Speaker_06
Anna, what do you think about the upcoming movie, the September issue?

00:23:20 Speaker_05
Wintour ducks her head and continues waving, her face frozen in the perfect enigmatic red carpet smile. She's wearing a perfectly fitting white and black event t-shirt that shows the New York City skyline.

00:23:33 Speaker_12
Tonight we're focused on fashion's night out. It's our global fashion stimulus package. Happy shopping, everyone.

00:23:41 Speaker_05
Wintour has no interest in talking about the documentary film she originally greenlit, but now finds irksome. It documents the making of Vogue's all-important September issue.

00:23:53 Speaker_05
When she saw the final cut, she told the filmmaker, it seemed to her like a home movie about two old ladies squabbling in a hallway, referring to herself and senior editor Grace Coddington. She hoped it would boost the Vogue brand.

00:24:07 Speaker_05
just as she hopes this event will. But as the night wears on, the free-flowing champagne takes its toll on the crowd. It's 10 p.m. on 5th Avenue.

00:24:22 Speaker_05
A model poses in a Zac Posen dress as the designer himself paints her on a huge canvas in the window of Saks. Groups of drunk fashionistas, teenagers and marauders clog the sidewalks up and down fashion's luxury row.

00:24:36 Speaker_05
Tonight, it looks more like a frat house pub crawl. Inside Bergdorf Goodman, the Olsen twins tend bar in the sportswear department. A young reveler lurches over to their table.

00:24:52 Speaker_01
Hey Ashley, or are you Mary Kate? Give me a kiss, slap a wet one on me, huh?

00:25:00 Speaker_05
Ashley Olsen hands him a glass of Prosecco. She nervously glances behind her to make sure her store's security's close by. In the next apartment, a 15-year-old boy shoplifts as many designer sunglasses as his cargo pants can hold.

00:25:15 Speaker_05
An hour later, a large pack of dozens of revelers ignore the line of people patiently waiting to get into Bergdorf's iconic restaurant. They charge the entrance with such force that the doors come off their hinges.

00:25:29 Speaker_05
The scene in downtown Soho is just as debauched. Fashion's first night out is completely out of hand. The next day, stores look as if they've been looted.

00:25:43 Speaker_05
Wintour aimed at inspiring shoppers to open their wallets, but when managers tally up the night's sales, they realize they barely made a dime. The only product that did move well was Wintour's $30 promotional t-shirt.

00:25:58 Speaker_05
It's becoming clear that Wintour's fame and skill aren't going to turn around her magazines or the country's financial downturn. As the recession deepens, Conde Nast shutters both Men's Vogue and Vogue Living.

00:26:13 Speaker_05
Meanwhile, the rest of the industry focuses like a laser on the shift to digital media. And so far, Vogue doesn't have a business model to accomplish that. If they don't come up with one soon,

00:26:28 Speaker_05
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00:28:37 Speaker_05
It's 2011 in Midtown. Dawn Ostroff sits on a mid-century sofa next to President Bob Sauerberg in his office in Condé Nast HQ. She's 51, with a silky blonde bob and oversized thick-rimmed black glasses.

00:28:52 Speaker_05
Sauerberg has just hired her away from the CW network to create Condé Nast's new entertainment division. Among her biggest hits for the CW were the uber-popular Gossip Girl series and America's Next Top Model.

00:29:06 Speaker_05
Now she's here to make sure she and Sauerberg are on the same page with her first initiatives for Vogue. Ostroff pulls her BlackBerry out of her handbag and turns to her boss.

00:29:17 Speaker_10
Bob, let me pull up my notes from our team's last brainstorm meeting. Vogue is so content-rich that the ideas practically write themselves. It's an endless source of IP that we can repurpose on a number of platforms.

00:29:27 Speaker_10
Feature films, network TV, YouTube, and the latest social media like Instagram.

00:29:33 Speaker_05
Instagram just launched the year before, and all the glossies are still figuring it out." Sauerberg crosses his arms over his chest. Great, but you should realize Anna's very protective of the brand.

00:29:46 Speaker_05
We originally posted Vogue content on our website style.com, but she kept questioning why Vogue was being used to boost it. so we built Vogue.com last year. But now she still has trouble running digital.

00:29:59 Speaker_05
It doesn't come naturally to her to work with less fact-checking and half-hour turnarounds on publishing articles." Ostroff nods sympathetically. But inside, she's quaking. She's thinking on a much higher level than mere website content.

00:30:15 Speaker_05
But she's new to the company, and new to print. She has to meet these people where they live.

00:30:21 Speaker_10
You know, Bob, digital is hard for everybody. It's moving so fast. When I told my teenagers I was leaving CW to develop digital video content, they thought I was nuts. They were like, Mom, what does that even mean?

00:30:32 Speaker_10
But when Instagram came on the scene, I immediately knew it was a game changer. Someday, very soon, people are going to be sharing Vogue photos, videos, and TV shows on their cell phones. We have to start churning out content for that eventuality now.

00:30:45 Speaker_05
Well, I wouldn't call myself an Instagram expert by any means. Ostroff reaches into her handbag and pulls out her iPhone.

00:30:54 Speaker_10
Let's take a tour. It's like Facebook, but with pictures instead of words. And that's really key.

00:30:59 Speaker_05
Ostroff hands her phone to her boss. Sauerberg looks blankly at a photo of an old man. Its caption reads, I love him more than anything. Ostroff points to the photo of the older man.

00:31:12 Speaker_10
That's the singer Ariana Grande's grandfather. She dedicated her first post on Instagram to him. So sweet. But she usually just posts photos of herself and what she's wearing on her next red carpet event or girls night. This is Vogue's competition.

00:31:26 Speaker_10
We have to get our stuff out there and monetize it before the window closes.

00:31:30 Speaker_05
Sauerberg thumbs through Grande's Instagram photos. He's a big picture guy, but the new medium seems so... uncurated. Hmm. Okay. I guess I get it. Now, what's your show idea?

00:31:46 Speaker_10
We have an idea for a show that would be perfect for YouTube. A hip young guy with a camera goes around to celebrities' houses and fires a lightning round of fun, crazy, random questions at fashion people like Sarah Jessica Parker.

00:31:59 Speaker_05
This is something Sauerberg can get behind. Vogue's 73 Questions eventually launches three years later and becomes a viral smash.

00:32:09 Speaker_05
Sauerberg also transitions style.com into an e-commerce site and migrates its editorial content into a new Vogue-branded site, voguerunway.com.

00:32:20 Speaker_05
Conde Nast's digital revenues more than double by 2015, and its online audience swells from 17 to 87 million. But it's still not enough to offset the decline in print revenue.

00:32:34 Speaker_05
And Vogue's destination site, Vogue.com, draws a little more than 1.5 million hits a month, on par with InStyle.com. But Vogue's long-languishing rival, Harper's Bazaar, has finally taken to digital like a fashionista to a sample sale.

00:32:56 Speaker_05
It's a frigid winter evening in 2015 in Chicago, Illinois. A teenager sits at the kitchen table of her family's suburban home. She thumbs through her phone as her mother clears the table. Her half-finished dinner lies untouched on her plate.

00:33:11 Speaker_03
Casey, if you're done, could you please get off that phone and help me wash up?

00:33:15 Speaker_05
Casey rolls her eyes.

00:33:17 Speaker_04
But mom, I'm reading about this cool contest that Harper's Bazaar is doing. You should enter. It's called Fabulous at Every Age."

00:33:23 Speaker_05
Her mom leans over her shoulder, a dirty dish in her hand.

00:33:27 Speaker_04
Are you calling me old? And is this on Facebook? What am I looking at? No, it's not Facebook. This is Instagram. Just look.

00:33:36 Speaker_05
Casey clicks on the highlighted blue link in Harper's caption. Hundreds of images appear in a grid on Casey's screen. All middle-aged women in their favorite outfits, beaming with pride.

00:33:47 Speaker_04
See, you literally could just post a selfie and win a trip to New York City and a spa day and some other stuff. Want me to help you enter?

00:33:55 Speaker_05
Multigenerational contests like this are turbocharging Harper's Bazaar's digital game. The magazine stole a bright young strategist from InStyle to direct their digital.

00:34:06 Speaker_05
She helped launch Bazaar's e-commerce site ShopBazaar.com and is particularly good at leveraging Pinterest and Instagram.

00:34:15 Speaker_05
Harper's Bazaar now offers custom emojis, like a little Birkenstock or Boombox, and partners with advertisers and retail sites like Net-a-Porter. The result is a whopping 46% audience growth over the previous year.

00:34:30 Speaker_05
Harper's Bazaar's audience across all platforms is now more than 8.5 million. They're blowing Vogue out of the water in the coveted demographic of 18- to 34-year-old women. But a longtime contender is still in the running, and it's picking up speed.

00:34:53 Speaker_05
It's October 2015 in Los Angeles. Cosmo's editor-in-chief Joanna Coles and a very pregnant Kim Kardashian flank a four-tier pastel sprinkle cake from the famed bakery Milk Bar. Kris Jenner and Kourtney lurk nearby.

00:35:09 Speaker_05
They're all celebrating the magazine's 50th anniversary party with a slew of A-listers in a restaurant in West Hollywood. Coles is 53, with a white blonde pixie haircut.

00:35:21 Speaker_05
She and Kim lean down in unison and blow out five symbolic candles on the cake's top tier. The Kardashians are out in force because they are also on the cover of Cosmo's current anniversary issue.

00:35:34 Speaker_05
They pose for paparazzi in front of a Cosmo backdrop and mingle with select guests. But the magazine's real action is happening on the perimeter of the room.

00:35:45 Speaker_05
Coles walks over to a Cosmo social media staffer who's streaming a short scene from the party on her iPhone for the magazine's live story on Snapchat.

00:35:54 Speaker_05
Coles puts her hand under the staffer's phone and lifts it a foot higher until the staffer finishes recording.

00:36:00 Speaker_09
Don't forget to shoot from above. We want the best angle for Kim.

00:36:06 Speaker_05
InStyle, along with Vice, BuzzFeed, and other digital media brands, are part of Snapchat's first video service. The brands post daily editions of their articles or live event coverage and also sell ads that run between stories.

00:36:20 Speaker_05
Now, Cosmo averages 3 million viewers a day on this new channel. Up to the minute social media strategy like this is transforming the one-time magazine for the working women into a powerhouse with millennials.

00:36:35 Speaker_05
By 2017, their combined print and online readership adds up to some 32 million people. In contrast, 2017 is a dismal year at Condé Nast.

00:36:47 Speaker_05
The company posts more than $120 million in losses and mourns the death of Cy Newhouse at 89 after a long decline into dementia. But Anna Wintour and Vogue persevere. It's the late afternoon of May 6th, 2024 on Manhattan's Upper East Side.

00:37:11 Speaker_05
TikTok influencer Haley Bailey, aka Haley Khalil, lifts the elaborate floral appliqued long white skirt and train of her Met Gala gown and scurries to the middle of an empty Fifth Avenue.

00:37:23 Speaker_05
The street is roped off for Anna Wintour's big event, scheduled to start in just a few hours. Bailey's 18th century botanical outfit is inspired by Marie Antoinette. And in keeping with the gala's garden of time theme,

00:37:38 Speaker_05
She had to take many small steps because her skirt is tight at the ankles and impedes her stride. Onlookers line the sidewalks behind barricades. Bailey is an e-news host for the pre-gala festivities and celebrity prep.

00:37:51 Speaker_05
A photographer tapes her for her TikTok as she blows kisses to the crowd and strikes a languid pose, one hand resting palm up on her enormous round headdress made entirely of fresh blooms.

00:38:04 Speaker_05
She glides quickly towards him for an extreme close-up and appears to say something, but her words are lost to the noise of the excited crowds.

00:38:13 Speaker_05
Later that night, Anna Wintour welcomes A-listers like Zendaya and director Greta Gerwig, who stopped to pose on the red carpet. But just a few blocks away from the Met, cameras are rolling for a very different reason.

00:38:31 Speaker_05
NYPD officers swarm several pro-Palestinian protesters lying face down on 5th Avenue to stop traffic. They slap cuffs on them and drag them to the sidewalk. 27 protesters end up in jail.

00:38:47 Speaker_05
The activists are targeting the gala as a heartless distraction from the suffering in Gaza. They're also piggybacking off the event's massive publicity to gain exposure for their cause.

00:39:00 Speaker_05
Later that night, Bailey also uses her Met Gala footage to boost her own brand. She lays in an audio clip from Sofia Coppola's film Marie Antoinette as a soundtrack to the footage she taped that afternoon.

00:39:14 Speaker_05
Now it's clear what she said when she shimmied to her photographer for her close-up. You can hear it in the TikTok she posts that night. Bailey's TikTok breaks the internet, but not in the way she'd hoped.

00:39:30 Speaker_05
Commenters immediately pick up on the tone-deafness of the Marie Antoinette reference given the current humanitarian crisis. And the Met Gala is front and center in the online outrage.

00:39:41 Speaker_05
Commenters compare the Met Gala to the Hunger Games book and movie franchise in which outrageously dressed 1%ers enjoy watching starving children compete to the death.

00:39:52 Speaker_05
Other TikTokers splice images of Gala co-chair Zendaya with photos of starving Palestinian children. The outrage grows and inspires a TikTok creator to start a movement.

00:40:04 Speaker_02
It's time for the people to conduct what I want to call a digital guillotine. A digi-teen, if you will. It's time to block all the celebrities, influencers, and wealthy socialites who are not using their resources to help those in dire need.

00:40:20 Speaker_05
Activists publish block lists of celebrities and brands they consider worthy of protesting on social media. Vogue tops the list. And with good reason. The Met Gala is by far one of Conde Nast's biggest cash cows.

00:40:36 Speaker_05
Vogue charges more than a million dollars for spots run during the event and sells advertising space on their website and live blog. But the real payoff is in social media exposure.

00:40:48 Speaker_05
This year's 2.1 billion total video views across all platforms is up 73% from last year. More social mentions than the Super Bowl. All those eyeballs translate into a big win for Vogue. It estimates the media impact value at an astonishing $1.4 billion.

00:41:12 Speaker_05
More than anything else, the Met Gala epitomizes Vogue's strategy to maintain dominance in 2024. Whereas Vogue used to create trends, now it struggles to even follow them.

00:41:25 Speaker_05
Rabid and informed pop culture and fashion stands provide more compelling curation on social platforms like TikTok than what you'll find in the polished pages of legacy print.

00:41:36 Speaker_05
so the venerable Queen of the Runway now focuses on live events like the Met Gala and its new global extravaganza Vogue World to maintain relevance by entertaining with, instead of reporting on, fashion.

00:41:52 Speaker_05
And it's perhaps why Anna Wintour is the last editor-in-chief still standing from the glory days of the glossies. Her title now includes Global Chief Content Officer for Conde Nast. despite its many rivals, challenges and missteps.

00:42:10 Speaker_05
In 2024, Vogue is still considered one of the most influential women's fashion magazines in the world, followed by Elle, InStyle, Teen Vogue, and Cosmopolitan, with Harper's Bazaar bringing up the rear.

00:42:24 Speaker_05
An ironic final showing for Harper's Bazaar, the magazine that came out of the gate before Vogue in a long-ago age of corsets and crinolines and passed on hiring a young Anna Wintour, Because she was far too fashionable.

00:43:07 Speaker_05
From Wondering, this is episode 3 of Vogue, once and forever, for Business Wars.

00:43:13 Speaker_05
A quick note about recreations you've been hearing, in most cases we can't know exactly what was said, those scenes are dramatizations, but they're based on historical research. I'm your host, David Brown. Barbara Bogaive wrote this story.

00:43:27 Speaker_05
Our producers are Emily Frost and Grant Rudder. Sound design by Ryan Potesta. Voice acting by Carrie Kavanaugh, Caroline Kinley, and Tessa Stokes. Fact-checking by Will Tavlin. Our managing producer is Desi Blaylock.

00:43:41 Speaker_05
Our senior managing producer is Ryan Lord. Our senior producers are Karen Lowe and Dave Schilling. Our executive producers are Jenny Lauer-Beckman and Marshall Louis. For Wondering.

00:44:03 Speaker_08
In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn, and it harboured a deep, dark scandal.

00:44:18 Speaker_00
There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reached the age of 10 that was still a virgin. It just happens to all of us.

00:44:25 Speaker_08
I'm journalist Luke Jones, and for almost two years, I've been investigating a shocking story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn.

00:44:34 Speaker_11
When there's nobody watching, nobody going to report it, people will get away with what they can get away with.

00:44:41 Speaker_08
In the Pitcairn trials, I'll be uncovering a story of abuse and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely Pacific island to the brink of extinction. Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery Plus.

00:44:56 Speaker_08
Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.