Vogue Goes Recessionista?

When a magazine features items like a $40 Gap hat, a $50 pair of J. Crew shorts and a $48 Tommy Hilfiger scarf, one might assume that the magazine is Cosmopolitan or Lucky, proudly midrange publications. But in fact, the magazine is the high-fashion bible Vogue, which has gone budget-conscious in its July issue, promising a “Steal of the Month,” and a section with all items under $500.

“Sally Singer, fashion news and features director for the magazine, said that Vogue had included lower-priced items for some time. “We’ve always shown a wide range of price points and lower-priced items,” she said. “As long as Anna Wintour’s been at Vogue, from her first issue, she had jeans on her cover with a Christian Lacroix top. She’s always had a high-low sensibility.”

But take away the Christian Lacroix, and what do you — or anybody — really have? “It was a very deliberate decision,” Ms. Singer said about the cheaper items. “In the past year, I feel a greater need to signpost certain elements we’ve had in the magazine. Maybe we need to make sure the reader can find them more easily.”

Part of the shift was because of the economy, Ms. Singer said, and part of it was that popular designers like Phillip Lim and Alexander Wang were selling clothes at reasonable prices. Chain stores, as well, have stocked increasingly sophisticated designs, she said.

Despite the proliferation of Gap and Nine West items in its pages, Ms. Singer said she was not worried that Vogue would be confused with its price-conscious sisters. “We tend to, when we pull something in to photograph it, have an exclusive,” she said, meaning designers would not let another magazine feature the item until after Vogue’s issue hits the stands.

I’m an Anna Wintour fan, but I’m not sure that I’ve ever really considered her someone with a “high/low sensibility”. Vogue has always been somewhat about the unattainable, but the article does bring up an interesting point: there are more and more fashion forward items being produced at a lower price point as well as more higher end designers producing affordable lines (although whether or not the construction is high quality is another matter altogether). It is conceivable that Vogue is finding more lower end items worth featuring instead of simply reacting to the undeniable economic situation.