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An assistant queuing for her steely editor’s highly specific coffee order, a highly opinionated art director with a taste for eccentric eyeglasses, and a fashion closet stocked like a patisserie of couture confections. Such are the clichés employed by many a director in the portrayal of the glossy world of fashion magazines. But what happens when the script name drops Vogue specifically? Are these outdated and outlandish tropes called upon as well? What do people think actually happens at Vogue, anyway?
Famously, Carrie Bradshaw was commissioned as a freelance writer to cover fall accessories, making several trips to the Vogue offices to meet with her editor. Then there s the unliked-by-no-one Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, which sees a brave and no-nonsense Vogue editor stand up to the mean girls who taunt Romy and Michele’s fashion sensibilities. More recently, this year, Nicole Kidman starred in A Family Affair as a novelist and Vogue contributor who was sent Chanel dresses by Vogue to pad her pitifully low salary. Do these portrayals track? We call upon our highly amused editors (we love to see a Vogue cameo!) to rank their plausibility.
Television
Sex and the City, 2002
Plot: In season four, episode 17 of SATC (brilliantly titled “A Vogue Idea”), Carrie Bradshaw inaugurates her relationship with Vogue as a freelance fashion writer. Newly single, she heads into the office with a brand-new haircut and a wide-eyed enthusiasm that’s suddenly squashed by her exacting editor, Enid, played by Candice Bergen. Her assignment? Fall trends at $4 a word. The editing requires a lot of back and forth with her editor, including a few trips to the Vogue offices, during which she gets “drunk at Vogue!” and raids the Vogue Closet for the “urban shoe myth,” Manolo Blahnik black patent Mary-Janes.
Assessment: SATC has what is hands-down the Vogue editors’ favorite on-screen portrayal of the magazine, in part because of Sarah Jessica Parker, a longtime friend of the magazine. Though there was some truth-stretching ($4 word?!), the cameo was indeed filmed in the (former) Vogue offices, and many staff members feature as background extras.
The critics:
Will Grace, 1998
Plot: Season six, episode two of Will Grace, “Last Ex to Brooklyn,” sees a guest star saunter in: the Birkin-wielding Vogue editor Diane (Mira Sorvino). She plays the ex-girlfriend of Grace’s husband Leo (Harry Connick Jr.), and after a run-in on the subway, she’s invited over for a dinner party. Before the dinner party, Leo attempts to quell his wife’s nerves by belittling his ex (“Her piece on eyebrow shaping won the coveted shallow award.”) Within a minute of meeting, Diane offers Grace (Debra Messing) her Hermès bag as though it was a spare tissue. “Writing for Vogue, they give you tons of swag,” says Diane, chic in all black. By the time the rest of the group turns up, it s revealed that Diane also happened to have had a one-night stand with Will (Eric McCormack)—the only woman he’s ever been with.
Assessment: Will Grace is close to many a Vogue editor’s heart for both its wit and its bold portrayal of queer joy (even more commendable in the late ’90s). The fact that the show added an editor to the mix is the cherry on top—but it’s not all so accurate. While there are certainly perks that come with the job, a Hermès bag is, alas, not one of them. IRL, Diane would have never given her up Birkin so quickly. Plus, we take our eyebrow content seriously.
The critics:
Murder She Wrote, 1987
Plot: In “A Fashionable Way to Die” (season four, episode one), the show travels from the fictional Maine hometown of its heroine Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) to Paris. Jessica is there visiting an old friend, Eva, a designer struggling to finance her next fashion show—a very 1987 lamé and hair-spray-filled affair. Eva is keen on booking the model Lu Waters (Randi Brooks), who has just landed a Vogue cover, but the model’s fee ($10,000) requires Eva to take up with a seedy financier who ultimately ends up dead.
Assessment: While the Vogue mention is fleeting, it comes with murderous overtones! We tend not to cast homicidal cover stars, so this is, of course, a pure work of fiction. But a non-super (capital S) model landing the cover of Vogue in 1987 sounds about right, and Murder She Wrote was nothing if not fully in the zeitgeist.
The critics:
Movies
A Family Affair, 2024
Plot: In this delightful rom-com (one hour and 51 minutes you won’t ever get back—but did you even want them to begin with?), Zac Efron plays Chris Cole, a lonely and out-of-touch film star beloved for an action-packed film franchise that’s as cheesy as a fromagerie. Efron’s self-esteem is at rock bottom, and his hard-working assistant Zara (Joey King) has had enough of his mood swings and outlandish man-child requests. Dreaming of becoming a producer, Zara quits, hoping to shed not only Chris, but the shadow cast by her mother, Brooke Harwood (Nicole Kidman), a successful novelist, and a frequent Vogue contributor. “Vogue does not pay very well,” Brook says of her closet full of Chanel, “but they do give a lot of swag.” Only once Brooke and Chris strike up an unlikely relationship does this stylish mother get the opportunity to wear all her fabulous gifted threads.
Assessment: For a full assessment (41 thoughts on the film), I direct you here. As for a Vogue-specific assessment of this fluffy rom-com, our staff here found it hard to get past the idea that designer swag was a regular part of compensation.
The critics:
Nine, 2009
Plot: First things first. Nine is a musical film (directed by Rob Marshall) based on the stage musical of the same name (which premiered on Broadway in 1982), inspired by Federico Fellini’s celebrated 1963 film 8 ½. In the 2009 Nine, a few songs and characters were introduced, including the flirtatious Stephanie Necrophorus (Kate Hudson), who plays an American Vogue editor on assignment in Rome. Stephanie’s techniques are a little different than her male counterparts; she butters up Guido (Daniel Day-Lewis), the director he’s meant to be profiling: “Every scene is like a postcard; you care as much about the suit as the man wearing it.” She then launches into a musical ode to the sexiness of Guido’s films. “The sleek women in Positano / Guido’s the ultimate uomo Romano,” she sings in a Tina Turner–esque getup. She then lures him to her hotel room, where, in a surprising turn, Guido rebuffs her advances.
Assessment: While we love the idea of editors as free-spirited, mini-skirt-clad sexpots, we tend not to put it all out there, especially when on assignment! Our staff isn’t in the habit of seducing our interview subjects. Plus, we’d like to think we have an appreciation of cinema that would allow us to come up with better questions than: “Could you tell the fashionable women of America who your favorite designer is this year?”
The critics:
Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, 1997
Plot: Do yourself a favor and dive into our deliciously juicy oral history of the making of Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion. (Fans of the film will get the same thrill they did when first watching the zany blondes concoct a bogus backstory of inventing Post Its.) For the uninitiated, this colorful flick follows two women 10 years after graduating from high school who come to the realization that in order to arrive at their reunion with their heads held high (and stick it to the bratty bullies), they need to embellish their lives just a tad. Turning up to the reunion in ludicrously out-of-place frosted metallic mini dresses—Romy (Mira Sorvino) in icy blue and Michele (Lisa Kudrow) in baby pink—the pair come face to face with their high school antagonists. One of them, Lisa (Elaine Hendrix), exited the group and is now an associate fashion editor at Vogue. She has little patience for the mean girl antics of her high school days. When the leader of the A-Group, Christie (Julia Campbell), publicly ridicules Romy and Michele’s outfits, Lisa boldly steps in with a mic-drop line: “Actually, Christie, they have nice lines; a fun, frisky use of color. All in all, I’d have to say they’re really…not bad.”
Assessment: There’s nothing, zilch!, not to like in this film. And we at Vogue would be proud to make Elaine Hendrix an honorary Vogue editor. Identifying and celebrating young talent is what Vogue is all about, and we’re not afraid to say we like something, even if it goes against the grain. Plus, there’s nothing less chic than a bully.
The critics:
