When Anna Wintour became editor-in-chief of Vogue in 1988, she faced one monumental decision which would define her editorship: what the first cover should look like. Vogue, long seen as the pinnacle of high-fashion reportage, was becoming stuffy and losing popularity. Enter the 18-year-old Israeli model Michaela Bercu wearing $50 Guess jeans, a $10,000 Christian Lacroix jacket embellished with a jeweled cross and a pearly smile. The move was a watershed moment, a departure from the “haughty grandeur” of passport photo-esque covers, to a new, exciting style which rejected suffocating elitism — the indelible effect Wintour would leave on the magazine’s cultural image. “It was so unlike the studied and elegant close-ups that were typical of Vogue’s covers back then,” she said in a 2012 interview. “This one broke all the rules.”

Now, with Chloe Malle at the helm, this fresh perspective couldn’t be farther away. Gone is the innovation and risk-taking once seen in the golden age of print, its place taken by disappointing vapidity and reused tricks as a result of cost-cutting.

On Nov. 3, the magazine announced that Teen Vogue would be absorbed into its parent company, a change it said “fortifies the evolving Vogue ecosystem.” What it didn’t mention was that the junior magazine would stop publishing and six staffers were laid off. Editor-In-Chief Versha Sharma was essentially pushed out of her role. But Teen Vogue was more than just a subset of the magazine for young girls. It represented an outlet for teenage readers to make sense of the world they were living in, especially during the first Trump administration, and provided the magazine’s small outlet of political reporting since its inception in 2003.

It was at Teen Vogue that readers could understand the implications of overturning Roe v. Wade, read about medical students’ fight for abortion rights in restrictive states and follow the journey of a 19-year-old who traveled to get an abortion. These stories brought a layered depth to Vogue as a publishing entity, while touching on the key issues that affected its readers. Its folding signifies an unfair departure from servicing Vogue’s budding young readership. This also reflects a slow and unspoken concession to the Trump administration, as many other media companies start to dim their critical political coverage to avoid being targeted. Vogue’s NewsGuild-affiliated Condé United union labeled the layoffs as “illegal” after four employees were let go for demanding clarification from HR leadership regarding the sudden changes. Above all, it just feels especially lazy that the magazine isn’t taking the proper measures to fortify its desks and extended publications.

It’s then even more interesting to have seen the recent article “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?” explode in popularity across social media. The piece, which charts the narrative that women are now too “icked out” to date, projects a sense of shame onto those in relationships and asks if women as a collective should “reevaluate our blind allegiance to heterosexuality.” The response online went even further, where comments on a TikTok about the article read “It feels Republican to have a boyfriend” and “having a boyfriend is spiritually Israeli.” The conflation of actual political conflicts with trite gossip and vapid locker room talk illustrates declining standards and the insidious influence of chronically online behavior within the newsroom. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. No longer is Vogue offering impactful reporting and writing to highlight important and timely issues. Instead, it speaks volumes that its most-read articles feed into the same buzzword-using, attention-grabbing and half-baked opinion slop that feels more reminiscent of a tabloid than the premier fashion magazine in the world. 

Acclaimed author Joan Didion’s first essay was published in Vogue in 1961, titled
“Self-respect: Its Source, Its Power.” It was thrown together as the magazine headed to press, as another writer backed out at the last second. However, it’s known as one of the most influential essays the magazine has published. The article, which describes Didion’s willingness to finally accept responsibility for her own life, embodies the call for agency that the boyfriend article itself tried to evoke. Having a boyfriend isn’t embarrassing — but the choice to denigrate and shame yourself for it is. Vogue knows what writing has made it great over the decades, but its newest content caters to the attention span-deficient and clickbait-dominated media landscape that has overtaken even the most influential publications.

For Vogue to succeed and stay true to Wintour’s groundbreaking approach, while also allowing young women to resonate with their work, it must push to embody the timely reporting and strong writing of the past rather than recycle buzzwords from TikTok. Wintour knew Vogue had to be more than just a fashion magazine — but a cultural juggernaut capable of engaging and pushing readers to understand the world around them. Considering federal attacks on media and the fragility of print, Vogue must work to preserve its ubiquitous style, not strip it of substance — before there’s none of its revolutionary nature left at all.

WSN’s Opinion desk strives to publish ideas worth discussing. The views presented in the Opinion desk are solely the views of the writer.

Contact Maggie Turner at [email protected].