Voguettes Downtown

Image courtesy of http://www.designbuild-network.com

Well, dear readers, I imagine that it's been a relatively dull summer for most of you. For starters, my last posting was in April. For that, I'm truly sorry--but you try running America's the world's premier fashion magazine in a day and age when people are constantly trying to photograph and make documentaries about you. It can be exhausting. However, I've never been one to shirk my responsibilities, and this is one that I take quite seriously. Thus, I will just have to distribute some of my other responsibilities elsewhere, such as making it clear to my food/beverage assistant, that it isn't enough for her to just fetch me the coffee; she needs to stand by and put the cup to my mouth so that I can drink my morning beverage without stopping whatever I am in the middle of doing. 

So the news has broken out that Condé Nast is moving from 4 Times Square to 1 World Trade Center. I, for one, am thrilled about this. A new office means new office furnishings for me, and most likely (if I have anything to do with it) a view of the Hudson from my office (not that the Hudson is anything much more than a filthy sliver of water, but over the years, I've learned to take what I can get with these types of things. Architects are very rarely willing to completely overhaul the view from a project, citing things like, "nature" or "permits" as preventing them from being able to). The minions here are pretty excited, too--an office move means a day off, or at least part of a day off, and these bright young things will jump at any opportunity to have time for a sit-down lunch at Bergdorf. 

Most of all, the close proximity to Wall Street has everyone thrilled. Not only will the morning and evening hustle-and-bustle be primarily with men in Brioni suits (as opposed to Midwestern families in sweat suits, armed with disposable cameras), but this means that everyone with a finance boyfriend/husband (read: 75%+ of Vogue) will have him nearby. While I would normally discourage such distractions, this means great things for my budget:

1. The cost of flowers (standard office decor) will go down, as these silly girls will inevitable guilt-trip their beaus about being so close, but never getting to see each other. The men, at their wits' end, will make the standard move of sending flowers. I think we can cancel our account at the Starbright Floral Design. 

2. Productivity will go up because there is literally nowhere for these girls to go shopping all the way downtown when they step out "to grab a coffee." (For you idiots who would have the audacity to suggest this, a true Voguette would never be seen at Century 21. Unless it was for an article about acting poor). Back at 4 Times Square, it was just so easy to make a detour at Saks on the way back from an appointment. But at 1 World Trade Center, my ladies are pretty much stuck with Modell's and Men's Wearhouse. 

3. Town car and cab spending will go down, as we can rely on the cars provided by the banks that employ said finance boyfriends/husbands to give the Vogue ladies a lift. We're all going downtown... they can just drop my girls off on the way. Everyone wins! No one will have to take the subway (see my original posting), and Vogue won't have to pay for the cars. Except mine, of course--that's not going anywhere. Thanks, Goldman!

That's all.

Smells like summer interns...

Image courtesy of http://www.beautychatblog.com

Ah, spring. There is something positively magical about New York City when the weather takes a turn for the better. The sun is shining, the air smells fresher, and hordes of bright-eyed young girls come marching through the lobby of 4 Times Square in hopes of securing a summer internship. 

The more serious-looking ones in their Ann Taylor suits (read: the less attractive ones) stroll in with their portfolios packed with short stories that they are just dying to hand off to a New Yorker editor. I'm not particularly interested in those ones. It's the tall, thin girls with freshly blown-out hair and mediocre educational pedigree that I need at Vogue. For starters, they have above-average looks, know how to move quickly in stilettos, and don't come with that "my Ivy League education makes me above all of this" chip on their shoulders. While I certainly do not discriminate against any Ivy beauties who cross my path, I have found that the ones who are too smart make horrid interns. They try to show off how brilliant they are; how many different authors they can reference; why they should get their own bylines. Sigh. No, dear. What I want you to do is to shut your mouth, smile prettily, and roll that rack of clothing samples down the corridor.

The less brainy ones; those are the ones who make good interns. For starters, they don't have paid Goldman Sachs internships to compare this one to. Frankly, some of them are lucky to even have a desk in an office and a Vogue internship on their resumes. Moreover, they tend to remain so enthralled by the fact that they are working at Vogue, the Holy Grail of fashion publications, that they don't bitch and moan about how tired they are or how menial their projects tend to be (though I will admit the projects are pretty menial). Rather, they spend hours lovingly dusting the shoes in the fashion closet and perpetuating office rumors about how if an intern makes eye contact with me, she will be fired--if she doesn't turn to stone first.

That's all.

iMad for iPad

Photo courtesy of http://chilenomac.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/ipad/

While Vogue's counterparts over at GQ worked themselves into a tizzy about the iPad all weekend, I had the luxury of carrying on with my normal Saturday morning activities. While I practiced my forearm and spent an hour on the massage table, an inferior editorial assistant waited in the madhouse of a line that wrapped around 59th Street and Fifth Avenue. The result? An iPad waiting for me in the foyer of my townhouse upon my arrival home.

I am perfectly aware of all the tech geeks' laments about the iPad: it's not really a computer; it's just a glorified iPhone; tablet computers have existed since the beginning of time. Blah, blah, blah. Here's a quick rundown of why the iPad is a perfect gadget for a Voguette such as myself:

1. It's thin. Almost disturbingly so. In other words, perfection.

2. The retail price is considerably higher for an iPad than for a similar piece of technology. If you're going to get a computer, or some variation of one, you might as well have it make a statement about how much money you have to throw around on luxury items. The same principle applies to shoes--what other purpose do those red Christian Louboutin soles have?

3. Everyone wants one. Doesn't owning a highly-coveted item make you love it that much more? It's kind of like having a job at Vogue. Knowing that a thousand other girls would attack you with a spike heel for access to our fashion closet makes the job that much more glamorous and worth having. Even when you're standing in line for hours to buy me an iPad. 

That's all.

Strike a Pose

Photo courtesy of http://fashionmagdaily.com

Stylelist and Twitter are all abuzz with the news that my daughter, Bee Shaffer, is the latest to jump into the blogger scene. It's pretty exciting, really, except for one small detail… it's not actually Bee. Granted, there are certainly things that my daughter doesn't tell me, such as the fact that she spent most of her college career scampering around in black jeans and scuffed up Converse sneakers. I had assumed that she would heed my advice and put on a lovely printed dress to go to class each day. However, teenagers will be teenagers, and the only way I even found out about this was when I showed up earlier than expected at her dorm and caught her hurriedly stuffing the evidence of her daily uniform into her rather large Prada book bag. Remnants of what she refers to as her "bum look." But I digress.

My point is that while my daughter doesn't tell me everything, I certainly do know her quite well, and there are certain things that just seem off about her alleged blog and Twitter account, and this leads me to believe that there's an imposter behind all of this. Allow me to delineate them:

1. She starts off her blog with an article she wrote for the Daily Telegraph four years ago. One word: why? It's not as though the Telegraph has deleted its archives. And now that we are on the question of why, why in heaven's name would my daughter spend an entire blog post discussing the whole fake vs. real celebrity conundrum? Bee is above this. She does not need to validate herself to anyone, nor does she need to waste her precious time typing out rants to the world about how "…attacking someone just because you're not sure whether the person is the real deal or not is NOT cool at all." The girl seems a bit defensive, in my opinion. And while my daughter has been known to be defensive about wearing suits to her law clerk internship, or that she and Luke are just friends, this doesn't seem to be in line with what she would get riled up about.

2. In the "About" section of the blog, the first line is "Hi I'm Bee Shaffer." I'm pretty sure that a prep school upbringing followed by an Ivy League education would teach you a thing or two about the proper use of a comma.

3. The Beeshaffer317 Twitter profile background is a photo of Bee at last year's Costume Institute gala. Bee's a little deeper than that, readers. She certainly is better and prettier than all of you, but wouldn't pull an egomaniac move like that. If she were to put up a photo of herself as the background, it certainly would not be a paparrazzi shot.

4. Now that we're on the subject of Twitter's Beeshaffer317, she had tweeted a plea for Coachella tickets. Let me make something clear: Bee Shaffer does not beg for tickets to any sort of event. She never has, and she never will, much less on some social networking forum. They are handed to her. If she wanted to go to Coachella, she would have called my mobile phone, asked for them, and then I would have called in one of my assistants to take care of the matter. Furthermore, this tweet was taken down after I called out this fact, which is another idiosyncracy… because if there is one thing Bee Shaffer does not do, it's back down. Spending her formative years at Spence amongst the elite daughters of New York moguls and celebrities--and emerging on top--has taught my girl to have a spine... one that this poser does not exhibit.

That's all.

Gisele, Gisele

Photo courtesy of http://wendylady2.livejournal.com

While I'm still a little bit miffed that Gisele chose to do her grand baby-photo reveal in some no-name Brazilian publication (as opposed to Vogue, of course), I have to say that I have loads of respect for this lady. Not only is she able to deliver a stunning fashion spread or magazine cover time and time again, as well as snag a dashing fellow away from his pregnant girlfriend, she also has her priorities in order.

When Gisele first gave birth to baby Benjamin, she played it cool. "My personal life comes first," was the message she gave us all by choosing a winter in Boston over the Sao Paulo Fashion Week. As we all cooed over her mothering instincts (well, by "we" I mean most people--in case you haven't noticed, Anna Wintour does not coo) and made mental notes of what a nice person she must be, she was slowly getting that killer body back. It was a deftly maneuvered move. No one could say anything bad about her when she was dedicating all of her time to a newborn. However, she was clearly working on those abs, getting her muscles back to their perfectly-toned state, and staging her comeback to the modeling world. She's lost the 30 pounds she put on, and she looks smashing on the cover of Vogue's annual shape issue.

While some people, mostly the fat ones who never lost the baby weight, might argue that it's unnatural for someone to go back to her svelte state so quickly after giving birth, I applaud Gisele. It's nice to know that I can at least depend on someone in this world to stay thin.

That's all.

Hail the Kaiser

Image courtesy of http://www.kitmeout.com

It seems as though the little fashion bloggers are up to their antics again... and this time, Kaiser Karl is in the spotlight. Everyone loves a good piece of gossip, and what better to whisper about than whether or not the house that Coco built will continue onward with Mr. Lagerfeld leading the way? The latest snippets circulating the Internet and leaving the tongues of fashionistas everywhere are about whether or not Alber Elbaz will become Chanel's head designer. While Elbaz is nothing short of a genius, that's a pretty tall order for such a round little man. On top of that, will Lanvin really just fall to the wayside? That would really be quite tragic.

The "facts" that this topic du jour are built upon are shaky at best. Let's do a quick review of what's fueling the fire:
1. Karl did not renew his contract at Chanel last summer.
2. Karl is 76, and therefore must be thinking about retirement.

These are my responses to such faulty reasoning:
1. Karl is a genius to not renew his contract--this allows him to do whatever the hell he wants. He already has Chanel kissing his feet, pandering to his every whim. A contract would only hold him back. What if there was something in the contract that no longer allowed him to hire an assistant whose sole responsibility was to load all of his music onto separate iPods? Goodness, it might actually require him to consolidate all of his music onto one or two devices, and he will stop buying multiple iPods so that he can physically separate his playlists (he takes the "An Apple a day keeps the doctor away" adage very, very seriously... and very literally). Then Apple's sales will drop dramatically, their stock will go down the toilet, and all of this this will fuel all sorts of dramatic rumours on ValleyWag about Steve Jobs and his declining health. Trust me, Karl knows what he is doing. Without a contract, he can demand glaciers for the Chanel runway shows. Why would he permit a legal document to limit his artistic vision? If he wants to shut down the Great Wall of China for a nighttime Fendi show, he does just that, damn it. End of story.

2. While it might make sense to correlate age and retirement for most people, this simply does not apply to Karl. He's a superhuman, and superhuman beings do not meddle with pesky little setbacks such as age. Just take a minute to think: has Karl aged at all in the last decade? No, my friends, the answer is that he has not. I can hardly even picture a time when he didn't have that magnificently white head of hair resting on a fabulously thin frame. I have even heard that he was born with a ponytail and wearing fingerless gloves. You could flash forward twenty-five years, and Karl will look exactly the same as he does now. Retirement is for old people... and it's impossible to get old if you're able to transcend death. Karl, through his fashion genius--and possibly because he's actually an alien--falls into this category. This speculation is pretty much as silly as when rumours about my own retirement were flying around. As though I could possibly be replaced.

That's all.

Attack of the Clones

 

Photo courtesy of http://www.fashionista.com 

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, don't they? Well, imitation took the strangest turn of turns this week in Milan. I had thought that all of the Milan drama was over, but alas... it comes back to haunt us. In the form of t-shirts, sunglasses, and some frightening synthetic hair. 

A gaggle of protesters--if you can even really call them that--descended upon the Piazza Oberdan just before the Gucci show, all clad in t-shirts that read, "I will only stay 3 days." They also wore large sunglasses that did not suit most of their facial structures and wigs that resembled only what I hope my hair will never look like. So... let me get this straight: they are protesting the fact that I elected to stay for a shortened period of time. They "dress up" like me (please shoot me if I ever actually look like that... I know I wore a t-shirt to promote Fashion's Night Out, but it wasn't that horrific, was it?) and they stand around gaping at the press and buyers waiting to get into the show. 

I'm pretty sure that the point of a protest is to drive a point, and to achieve results. I'm going to assume that what Milan wanted was for me to stay for the whole week. But I chose not to. Do they think that having a bunch of pseudo-clones mocking my decisions is going to make me stay the whole time next season? If anything, it just makes this whole ordeal even more ridiculous. Bravissimo, Milan. You've outdone yourselves on a level that none of us could have imagined. You are absurd.

That's all.