Hockey player/clothes horse Sean Avery got suspended from the NHL after making disparaging comments about his ex-girlfriend, Elisha Cuthbert, and another player. The funny thing? The dude sought out cameras to catch his bashing on tape, which is the equivalent of O.J. calling up The National Enquirer and telling them to meet him at Nicole's house.
Avery approached a group of reporters, asked if a camera was present, then said he wanted to say one thing: "I'm really happy to be back in Calgary; I love Canada," he said. "I just wanted to comment on how it's become like a common thing in the NHL for guys to fall in love with my sloppy seconds. I don't know what that's about. But, enjoy the game tonight."
Since when do they suspend you from talking smack during a hockey game? Well, at least he didn't put his rant on Craigslist…then the repercussions might have been a little worse.
In a positively Devil Wears Prada plot twist, Condé Nast employees are rumor-mongering that Si Newhouse is in gay old Paris right now, talking to French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld about moving over to the You Ess of Aye and bumping down/out Anna Wintour from her fashion mountain.
But why would Si force retirement on his most famous editor in chief?
CONTINUED »
Creative Loafing’s death spiral: More newspapers, less news [Sunday Paper]
See, opening up this article you might think that it will be a blurb about how there's no more time to dick around and wait for genius to strike. If you're going to try to make money in print, you might as well dive in because the industry certainly isn't going to get any better while you feng shui your room.
To which we say: close, but no Freudian cigar.
CONTINUED »
The highly anticipated editors-in-chief luncheon that happens for the Condé Nast staff at the Four Seasons every year has just been…*gasp*…canceled. Mon dieu!
Says a spokesperson, "We are going to forgo it this year. We think it is in keeping with the times." Um, right, but whatever happened to the magazine industry's "Let them eat cake?" Guess it wouldn't look right with the fall of Men's Vogue and the scale backs at Portfolio.
Poor Si! Poor Keith Kelly who is kept in business at the Post writing about high profile/closed door media events like this. And poor anyone who thought they would be able to tell where they stand with the Newhouse clan, which apparently determines the seating arrangements at the Christmas bash.
CONTINUED »
The layoff list from Si Newhouse's company is finally being trickled down to the peons whose jobs are actually being lost. But! Just like at Condé Nast's other victim this week, Men's Vogue, even the higher ups are getting kicked to the curb. Including Ken Wells, Portfolio editor and Pulitzer finalist. Also penner of the recent The Good Pirates of the Forgotten Bayous: Fighting to Save a Way of Life in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina, for which he was thrown a book party by his (now ex) employers earlier this week. Surprise!
No one is escaping the wrath over at Condé Nast's Men's Vogue, which, everyone learned yesterday, is going the way of the dodo. If the dodo was only getting published two times a year as a supplement to Vogue.
Even sadder though, is the fact that no one, not even the head honchos over at the Si Newhouse publication, saw this coming:
At Men's Vogue, most of the 60-person staff is out as of next Friday. That includes Publisher Marc Berger, who only a day ago was seen wining and dining a client at Bottega del Vino, clearly unaware of impending doom. Editor-in-Chief Jay Fielden is being absorbed back into the mothership, Vogue, which is run by editrix Anna Wintour. The shutdown is said to be a big personal embarrassment to her and her bid to expand her empire.
Whoops, is that really good business etiquette Si, to ambush your top talent like that? A little warning would have been nice, so that Berger could have added a couple more cocktails to his expense account before having his ass handed back to him and having to wait on the unemployment line with the rest of his former employees.
Look, nobody here is claiming to be a math genius, but what sense does it make to take a magazine that publishes monthly, and then trim it down by only two issues a year? Which is what Condé Nast, in their recent upheaval today, has decided to do with Portfolio, their business mag that lately hasn't been keeping very good track of business. So now Portfolio will be published 10 months out of the year, so they can continue "readjusting for the economic times.” Gosh, by their October cover, you'd figure the economy was doing just fine.
So what happens to those two other issues? They've been given to Men's Vogue, which recently lost all of their other publishing dates.
Welp, today is just not a good day: Meredith Corporation, which publishes More magazine, is seeing a 44% drop in profits, mostly due to really crappy ad revenue. While they are not planning any layoffs currently (no no, they'll be probably just "transition" some staff), at this point it's just a waiting game to see how long they can hold out before they have to fold the title.
Which does not bode well, because More fit under that category of 40+ year old women consumers that generally have done better during this free-fall than say, Men's Vogue.
Holy shit. In our analysis of what magazines are getting trimmed down to nothing in the upcoming weeks or months, we somehow overlooked entirely Men's Vogue. Because hell, it's Condé Nast, and nothing bad ever happens to those guys, right? Si Newhouse practically invented the upper echelon privileges of town car services, clothing budgets, and expensive dinners for the staff, billed to the company. So there is no way that say, Men's Vogue may be cut down entirely, and every single title under the Condé umbrella will be forced to do staff cuts, is there?
"Style is how you live" is the new slogan for Men's Vogue, the magazine that is careful not to traffic in "fashion," which is too girly, but "style," which is masculine enough for its status-obsessed readership to buy into. Apparently, so are slogans. Somebody please set it to a MIDI tune so we can make it a ringtone, then sell it under a partnership with Kenneth Cole to cure AIDS.
NHL player Sean Avery is famous for a lot of things, mostly hockey-and-clothing-related. Equally well-known is the fact that the self-proclaimed "fashion jock" interned at Vogue this summer and then did a semi-naked photo shoot for the Condé Nast's brother publication. Haha, yes. He did. Because dodging plates being thrown at him by Anna Wintour is the best way to prepare for a lifelong career in sports and sports-related injuries. Of which he's suffered from before.
Always on the ball, New Line Cinema bought the rights to Avery's life story (or at least the parts that involve him acting as a professional bottom for the editrix), and production has begun on the film, which will be a romantic comedy — or "rom-com," in Katherine Heigl speak — of all things. So who should casting directors be looking toward to play both Avery and the love interest he finds in his mirror reflection? CONTINUED »
Walking past the newsstand, we're sure to check in on Men's Vogue each month just to see which masculine metrosexual fella they wrangled into a suit and promised not to make him come off too dandy. (This month, it's Eli Manning.The anti-dandy thing didn't work: "Manning favors conservative Zegna suits for big events — receptions on the White House lawn, ring ceremonies at Tiffany — and prep-school casual at home. On the afternoon he invited me over to his Hoboken apartment, he wore pressed jeans, a crisp tattersall button-down, and brown suede loafers with no socks.")
Which is how we spotted CBS News correspondent and tabloid boldfacer Lara Logan peering back at us from the inside pages. Normally, Logan's empowering tale of returning to the U.S. from a war zone would be an excellent Vogue (proper) story: No more Kevlar, hello pencil skirts! But it's Logan's relationship with a married man, and a CNN star, that make her more appealing to the readers of Men's Vogue, where she is a fantasy: Hot and doesn't mind being around guns.
Except this photo of Logan? Yeah, it seems eerily familiar. CONTINUED »
If it weren't for his proclivity to sleep with women, guys like hockey player Sean Avery might go by the label "gay." Yep, the man loves clothes, and we love stereotypes. Though he's "the most hated man in hockey," he was likable enough for Anna Wintour, who agreed to hire him as a Vogue intern after he wrote in with the request. Though he's earning $2 million with the New York Rangers, this summer he'll be schlepping couture from messengers to the Vogue offices, perhaps even the Men's Vogue offices, though that won't do much for his tendency to style girlfriends.
You can be forgiven should you forget, for a moment, just how dangerous it is to report from inside a war zone while staring at this Men's Vogue snap of ABC News' David Muir. Actually, you can't: Muir is reporting from the Hillary Clinton campaign trail, not Baghdad. But look how adorable he is in John Varvatos!
(Click for larger version)
GOOD LUCK WITH THAT Men's Vogue editor William Li was named the new publisher of Portfolio. Li replaces David Carey, who recently became Fairchild Fashion Group chief, replacing Mitchell Fox. This seems like a big game of musical chairs, and we have a feeling someone's going to end up without a seat. [FishbowlNY]
EMPTY PROMISES If you're a celebrity, and Men's Vogue promises you the cover, do not believe them! They might pull a switch-a-roo on you, giving the cover to a blockbuster movie actor while your suicidal tendencies get pushed to the inside pages. [Gatecrasher]
Men's Vogue was recently applauded for its progressive stance on diversity after its editors had the audacity to put a black person on its cover not once, but twice! (Or possibly even three times!) As a result, rival publication GQ apparently felt compelled to show that they, too, are capable of progressive thinking.
Which perhaps explains why GQ launched a groundbreaking counterattack as part of an endeavor to prove that they are equally as openminded as their more fashionable competitor—at least, in matters pertaining to pedophilia and tastelessness. Exhibit A? This delightful photo spread of 18 year-old (as of August 21) Hayden Panettiere prancing around in her Jon Benet-inspired pink nightie.
Congratulations, GQ. This will certainly introduce the magazine to a whole new demographic. Of pervy, middle-aged Humbert Humberts. [Mollygood]
From Portfolio:
The magazine industry has found an unlikely champion of diversity: Men's Vogue. While other magazines shy away from putting African-Americans on the cover in the belief that they don't sell as well, the new Condé Nast men's magazine has devoted four of its 12 covers so far to black men: Tiger Woods, Barack Obama, Denzel Washington and, in December, Will Smith.
Now if only we could just get their female counterpart to follow suit by putting an adequately nutritioned catwalker on their cover. Or at least a non-Caucasian.
• When your daughter is Kim Kardashian and your son is Brody Jenner, it's kinda hard to pick just one "black sheep" of the family.
• In honor of Dumbledore's coming out (or, more likely, just because) someone with even more free time than us has compiled a highlight reel of Jon Stewart's best same-sex shoutouts.
• Our little sister Stereohyped likes Pina Coladas and getting caught in the rain. Especially while waiting to interview Ciara on the red carpet of her fifth (yep, fifth) "official" birthday soirée.
• Bambi places in the top 25 horror films since, as it turns out, the only thing worse than a cannibalistic Hannibal Lector and a chainsaw rearing Mike Meyers or a psychotic clown is the shooting of a cartoon doe.
With the US Open and Fashion Week both over, what will happen to our favorite imaginary couple, Anna Wintour and Roger Federer?
Page Six doesn’t want the romance to die, and reports that “the comely cougar [Ed: gross] has also feted him with luxe fashions.”
According to an insider, Wintour sends Federer notes that say "This would look great on you." For any other fashion editor, that would be normal, but for Wintour, that's code for "I love you."
Editorial Director
