Celebrity as a Driving Audience for Vogue (Supplemental post #6)

Vogue is one of the most influential magazines in the fashion world. Their covers are the epitome of beauty and chic, and when they show something strange, it is often to endorse a designer’s or other “beauty professionals’” inventions that will soon become a trend. But in April 2014’s edition, the magazine adopted another strategy and stamped on its cover the power couple Kim Kardashian and Kanye West – members of the B side of Hollywood – he’s a rapper and she’s a socialite often despised when it comes to style. 

Singled out as the most talked about couple in the world - and also the most tacky - Kim and Kanye surprised many people by appearing so glamorized on the cover of Vogue. The issue caused a furor on the Internet and even became a meme, with various other celebrities in place of the couple. Many people also lost their respect for the magazine. The actress Sarah Michelle Geller, for example, threatened to cancel her subscription of the magazine and declared her indignation on Twitter. 

In the letter from the editor, Wintour explained her decision. She said that Vogue also represents who defines culture at any given time, which is why Kim and Kanye as a representation of our society’c culture should be in the cover of the magazine. However, there is no doubt that putting them on the cover was a schemed move – entirely Wintour’s idea – with the exact goal of shocking; one of the oldest strategies in the fashion world. The controversial cover got what Wintour expected; the publication sold 500,000 copies, plus the ones received by subscribers – totaling to around 1.2 million copies sold. Therefore, Wintour risked the magazine’s integrity and name to cause shock and perhaps put out there the importance of celebrities in our society nowadays. 

Given that Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine, Kim Kardashian in the cover does not celebrate fashion as art, but rather the mainstream and popular type of fashion. It is already not normal to feature celebrities in the cover of Vogue, only when that celebrity has prestige in the fashion world, but featuring Kim Kardashian is even worse since she is not an inspiration or notable in this industry – AT ALL. Many people might say that she is very influential in the fashion world, however, I think that her fame bought herself into the fashion world making many people confuse her wealth and celebrity status with style.

Kim Kardashian being tacky, per usual

There is a huge disconnect between Vogue’s brand and Kim Kardashian’s brand, the first is chic, prestige, sophisticated and high end while the latter is a representation of mass media, reality television and money badly spent when it comes to fashion. By putting them on the cover, the magazine creates the message that they are fashionable because they are popular, mainstream and everything else that they represent. In a way, it is celebrating their surreal-ness and dysfunction that is seen on Keeping Up With the Kardashians as fashion.

This portrays how celebrities are becoming a driving audience even for platforms that used to avoid it as much as possible. Wintour put them in the cover because they are the #WorldsMostTalkedAboutCouple, which kind of strands away from the whole purpose of her magazine. Before, Wintour’s disgust was such that she banned Kim several times from Met’s gala, considered the Oscars of the fashion world. Only when Kanye went that Kim was given a free pass – as his escort. Why the sudden change of heart then? 

Kimye on the cover of Vogue represent a new era for celebrities. Vogue’s acceptance of celebrities as a driving audience shows that even the purest forms of art cannot be kept intact for the sake of business. Vogue realized that even their audience now has changed, and is very much tuned to the popular and mainstream world, especially the Kardashians’ world. Even though fashion critics may not consider Kim fashionable, and even tacky, the audience sees her and Kanye as trendsetters. Long gone is the time that what was seen in Vogue was solely the most artistic, and unconventional, form of fashion – popularity is clearly becoming the driving force. 

Clearly not anymore...

Furthermore, Hollywood uses stars and celebrities as tools to shape and drive our desires. Celebrities embody the image that we are supposed to chase.Their role in our culture is beyond doubt nowadays. Kim Kardashian has an immense impact in our society, shaping trends and creating new ones. She is a product that is sold to us by reality television creating an interesting relationship between fashion and product. 

Therefore, by putting celebrities in the cover, Vogue allowed them to have the halo effect of image authority and to be the people who authorizes the value of fashion by wearing it. It proves that the rules have changed and Vogue is evolving and adapting to this new reality.