On the eve of the Met Gala, can Vogue find its well-heeled footing? | Canada Voices

Are things so bad at Condé Nast that Anna Wintour has sold her soul to the devil? Which is confusing because isn’t she supposed to be the devil – as in the one who wears Prada?

On May 4, the fashion elite will descend on New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (a.k.a. the Met) to slay the red carpet and raise funds for the Anna Wintour Costume Center, which was named after the editor in 2014. Wintour, chief content officer for Condé Nast and global editorial director for Vogue, snared Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, as lead sponsors for the 76th occasion of the Met Gala, and the centre’s latest exhibition. This has caused quite the fuss among fashion people who look down on the Mrs. for her sex-bomb style, and among Bezos haters in general. Wintour defended the move to CNN, remarking that Sánchez Bezos is a “great lover of costume and obviously of fashion.”

One could say that Wintour, who is chair of the gala and a trustee of the museum, is just following the money. Plus, the theme of this year’s exhibition is Costume Art and, “will examine the centrality of the dressed body,” according to a press release.

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That dovetails nicely with Sánchez Bezos’s penchant for emphasizing her curves, one notable example being the body-con flight suit she codesigned with Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia of Monse for her all-girl trip to space last spring. Some photos of Sánchez Bezos with fellow crew members, which included Katy Perry and Gayle King, show her onesie unzipped to display her cleavage.

Wintour has long resisted celebrating style that is overtly sexual. It took years of convincing to put Kim Kardashian on the cover, but her marriage to Kanye West was just too juicy a publicity opportunity to resist. Wintour defended that move, too. “I think if we just remain deeply tasteful and just put deeply tasteful people on the cover it would be a rather boring magazine,” she declared during a talk at the Met in November, 2014. For any readers looking to Vogue as an arbiter of taste, that might have been the moment they decided to search elsewhere.

Wintour’s reluctant acknowledgment of the power of reality TV stars is just one example of her resistance to change. After all, this is the woman who has worn the same hairstyle for more than half a century. Evolution is critical for media leaders who must be able to sniff out societal shifts and tweak their brands to stay relevant. Such moves often spark controversy, something Wintour has always had a suave way of smoothing over. But this might be the time she can’t.

Wintour is getting in bed with the billionaire boys’ club at a moment when resentment toward the ultrarich is peaking. Other tech giants coughing up US$350,000 for a table at the gala include Meta/Instagram, Snapchat, OpenAI and ShopMy. Posters have gone up around New York calling for a boycott with phrases like “The Bezos Met Gala: Brought to you by worker exploitation.” One can almost hear the disenfranchised sharpening the guillotine blades. To some, the timing of an April 24 announcement that the Bezos Earth Fund is giving US$34-million in sustainable fabric research grants comes off as much needed attempt at good publicity.

Cultural institutions have long relied on the rich for support. And today, much of that wealth is concentrated in Silicon Valley. So what’s the biggie? It’s that Wintour’s acts of desperation are starting to pile up. Before The Devil Wears Prada was released in 2006, Wintour did not publicly support the film and neither did the designers who wanted to stay on her good side.

Fast-forward to now, and Wintour is using The Devil Wears Prada 2 as a publicity rocket for herself and for Vogue (mind you, they kind of are one and the same). She shockingly appeared on the cover of the May issue with Meryl Streep, who plays Wintour-esque Miranda Priestly in the film. A video of the pair titled “Do we know each other?” had clocked three million views on Vogue’s YouTube channel at last glance. And Wintour presented an award at the most recent Oscars alongside Anne Hathaway, who plays one of Priestly’s assistants in the films. From the reserved Wintour, such public displays of promotion are coming off as a weird but amusing form of hucksterism.

Wintour is doing her duty by bringing attention to Vogue, but will that translate into readers and, therefore, earnings? Not in a world where influencers rule. Goldman Sachs values the creator economy at US$250-billion today and estimates that figure could roughly double over the next five years. Brands love the creator economy’s deep analytics and new technology, which can predict which influencer and style of content will get them the best conversion to sales. Simply put, audiences connect to people today, not media brands, and that’s where the marketing dollars are flowing.

And so, Wintour will continue to manage the decline of Vogue with whatever it takes: cost-cutting moves such as the layoff of six staffers when Teen Vogue was absorbed into Vogue.com last November, shopping stories that bring in a percentage of dollars from items sold, events like the heavily-sponsored travelling fashion show Vogue World and podcast ads read by editors from the magazine.

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Her successor, Chloe Malle, who has the title of head of editorial content (a signal that Wintour is still guiding the ship), has announced a drop in print frequency from 12 issues a year to eight with more pages and the thicker paper advertisers love because it gives their photos more punch. The strategy is to give print issues more lasting impact, and free up the team to put more time into digital plays. Whether Vogue follows Allure and Glamour, once a print cash cow for the company, by transitioning to digital only remains to be seen.

References to the sinking of the Titanic come up a lot in industry chatter, not just for Vogue but for Condé Nast as a whole. CEO Roger Lynch assured The New York Times that Condé Nast’s overall business was profitable and that 2025 ended with revenue growth.

But this past April, executives announced that the 47-year-old wellness title Self was closing along with the Italian edition of Wired and some international editions of Glamour, joining Gourmet, Modern Bride, Details and Lucky. Unlike the Titanic’s quick demise, this could be a disaster that’s unfolding in slow motion.