Credit where it's due

The Times' Thursday Styles section is usually pretty horrendous, but, as I was flipping through the paper this morning, I came across Cathy Horyn's piece on Anna Wintour and was surprisingly impressed. Writing about Wintour is something of a cottage industry for media reporters -- she's a towering figure in fashion, media, and culture more generally -- but, along with her stature comes a somewhat predictable willingness to genuflect, to rehash familiar details, and to play into the Wintour caricature (who, it should be said, seems to enjoy fueling the caricature herself).

Horyn, who is the fashion critic for the Times, today reports -- and I use that word deliberately, as it's not always an appropriate description of what transpires in Thursday Styles -- on Wintour's role as a power broker within the fashion industry and how she exerts what appears to be a fairly substantial amount of influence over fashion houses, by suggesting who they should hire and helping young designers who she deems worthy. Take, for instance, the comments of François-Henri Pinault, who is, apparently, "the chief executive of PPR, the French luxury-goods group that owns brands like Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and Balenciaga."

"It was quite simple," Mr. Pinault said of the lunch [with Wintour]. "She thought it would be interesting for me to meet Phoebe [Philo, a designer]." He made it clear that PPR had no vacancies and no plans to start new labels. Nonetheless, Ms. Wintour pressed Ms. Philo’s case in a later conversation, and Mr. Pinault said he expects her to do the same this week, when they meet in New York, to discuss the spring Costume Institute gala, of which Balenciaga is a sponsor.

"She’s not too pushy," Mr. Pinault said. "From my point of view, it’s a very positive way of demonstrating her power. She lets you know it’s not a problem if you can’t do something she wants. But she makes you understand that if you could, she would be very supportive with her magazine. She really makes you understand that."

That's actually pretty stunningly unethical, particularly since Vogue is the leading fashion magazine in the country (perhaps the world) and exerts an enormous amount of influence over the industry with its coverage. That the magazine's editor is using that leverage for personal favors and to affect the dynamics of the industry she's supposed to be covering -- well, that should be a serious problem.

UPDATE: Check out Jeff Bercovici's take over at Radar Online. Reading his item, and then perusing the piece once again, I realize that it's a much harsher takedown of Wintour than I first realized. Kudos to Horyn.

UPDATE AGAIN: Ezra writes that my criticism of Wintour is "wrongheaded":

It would be one thing for The New York Times, which seeks to offer detached reportage and analysis of world news, to influence events, to create their own stories. But Vogue? Wintour, assumedly, is not in the fashion world as a dispassionate observer. She has a sharply defined view of how the industry should function, and she has chosen, as her method of amassing and exerting control, an opinionated magazine. That her strategy has worked in, in and of itself, no problem at all. It's just how crusading journalism works. The American Prospect, in its little-read, largely ineffective way, attempts the same thing, viciously attacking trends, ideas, and figures we consider pernicious, and promoting and defending those we judge benevolent. The world would be a better place if we wielded Wintour's level of power.

First, I realize Vogue isn't the Times, so I'm not holding them to that standard. But I think there should probably be limits to favor-trading even for Vogue. Believe it or not, many women trust the judgment of the magazine in large part because they think it has good taste, untainted, one would think, by the personal desires of Wintour to help buddies of hers.

The problem here is causation. If Wintour is trading favors, you have no idea if the world you think she's trying to create with her magazine is the best fashion world, or if a lot of it is simply about repaying favors and helping friends, regardless of whether she thinks the particular item her writers are swooning about is particularly swoon-worthy.

Going further into some of the more problematic passages of Horyn's piece -- which I didn't highlight in my original post -- is instructive. Of particular note is this part of Horyn's piece, which is very delicately written:

[M]any fashion insiders and critics feel that by promoting labels of dubious design merit but with an obvious social or power connection, like Georgina Chapman of Marchesa, whose companion is the producer Harvey Weinstein, she leaves herself open to the complaint that her magazine promotes a kind of a pedantry.

The charge here is that Wintour has been promoting the label -- "of dubious merit" (i.e., it stinks) -- of one of her friend's girlfriends. This isn't crusading journalism. It's hackery. Horyn goes on, even more damningly:

This becomes a danger when she attempts to make a match. The chief executive of a top European house, who recently had a spot to fill, said he was surprised by the names she proposed, characterizing one as a socialite. “The woman had designed maybe 10 dresses in her life,” said the executive, who, like a number of the nearly two dozen people interviewed for this article, requested anonymity because of his relationship with Ms. Wintour.

Admittedly, Horyn's anecdotes aren't all like this, and I think it probably makes sense to put some of what Horyn writes in the category (as Ezra suggests) of what one expects from an opinionated magazine editor who's closely involved in the world her magazine writes about. But of course, anecdotes like this cast doubt on the motivations behind Wintour's other requests, as well.

If we're going to go with the Prospect analogue, I have to believe this blatant favor-trading isn't going on over there, and that it shouldn't be going on. It's one thing if the magazine takes an editorial stance and it's obvious that if a political figure agrees with that stance or otherwise comes around to it, then the magazine is likely to provide more favorable coverage. In that case, the subject is adapting to the already-espoused preferences of the magazine. The key thing there, however, is that there's no quid pro quo necessary. Harold Meyerson doesn't need to go around to politicans and say, "If you do X, the magazine is going to give you favorable coverage."

Now, if fashion designers wanted to attract favorable coverage from Wintour by adapting to her editorial stance on a particular fashion or style, they can do that. It should be a given, for the same reason Meyerson doesn't need to tell politicians that the Prospect will be kinder to them if they're more liberal. Wintour's favor-trading suggests that she's going to provide these designers with coverage quite different from what they'd be receiving if they simply conformed to Vogue's position on ... whatever. The reason for this, at least in the "socialite" situation described in the passages above, seems fairly clear: Wintour is asking them to do something stupid in order to benefit, apparently, only herself and her standing in New York society.

Did Michael Tomasky do anything similar? Is Harold Meyerson currently doing anything similar? Would either of them, as editors of an opinion magazine, think it appropriate to ask a Democratic campaign to hire the child of a friend with the understanding that positive coverage will follow -- simply because, apart from the kid's competence, they like him or his parents? I suspect not.