Vogue has long been derided for being silly and out-of-touch, for persistently printing the annoying ramblings of Plum Sykes and Marina Rust, and for serving as a tedious showcase for $64k gold-plated fur coats.
And for repeating stale ideas, working with the same photographers, stylists, and models every single issue, and publishing shot-by-shot re-enactments of their own editorials and ads. And for publishing shot-by-shot re-enactments of other magazines’ editorials. And for putting the same starlets of narrow appeal on the cover — Sienna Miller, Blake Lively, Charlize Theron, and Keira Knightley all have more covers to their name than the level of public interest each is able to command would seem to dictate.
It’s not just us who have been saying these things. In January of last year, Cathy Horyn wrote:
“Vogue has become stale and predictable, and it has happened in spite of some of the best editors, writers and photographers in the business…What once felt like a jolly skip through Bergdorf now feels like an intravenous feed. To read Vogue in recent years is to wonder about the peculiar fascination for the ‘villa in Tuscany’ story. Ditto staff-member accounts of spa treatments and haircuts.”
So it’s has been astonishing to read over the last few issues of Vogue and experience something genuinely unexpected. First it was a flicker of — could it be? — aesthetic delight, when legendary photographer Peter Lindbergh returned to the Vogue fold after 18 years. Anna Wintour’s overture to the photographer took place in March, and his first story, an 18-page 1950s-set spread starring Natalia Vodianova as liquor-sodden, dissolute parents of twins/possible bankrobbers, was published in the July issue.
It was really good.