Many New Jersey and New York residents* (more on that later) were at best temporarily displaced by Hurricane Sandy, and at worst still struggling months later after their homes or businesses were completely destroyed. Entire waterside and low lying neighborhoods remain torn apart, months after record high water levels have receded. So months later, a bit of awareness could be helpful in reminding people, like the congressmen who voted against giving federal aid money to hard hit states, that just because the storm’s fallen from the front page, the need hasn’t gone away.

Vogue‘s Fashion for Sandy Relief auction in partnership with the CFDA raised $1.7 million for the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City, so their hearts (and wallets) are mostly in the right place, but the entire concept is not. Sticking a model in luxury clothes with people whose photoshoot hours could have been better utilized restoring utilities (ahem, ConEd) or otherwise helping people cope with the fallout from the storm comes off as not well thought through at best and completely tone deaf at worst.

Nana Gouvea’s post Sandy shoot

Brazilian reality personality Nana Gouvea was the butt of many a joke after her impromptu photo shoot with downed trees in the city. While the photography and models in this case are undoubtedly superior, the sheer ridiculousness of using a natural disaster that left people homeless, hungry and cold as the theme for a photoshoot under the guise of awareness is just as silly for an A-list magazine as it is for a D-list media chaser.

Vogue editor Anna Wintour has first hand experience in being inconvenienced by the storm, as she was forced to temporarily relocate to a luxury hotel on Manhattan’s Upper East Side {NY Post} while her Greenwich Village home was without power. Perhaps bumping into fellow refugees like Carine Roitfeld, Marc Jacobs and Emma Stone didn’t offer an uncomfortable enough or long enough relocation to consider those who don’t have homes to return to; whose favorite photos – not just of models, but of mom, dad, grandparents and family – are gone; those who probably hoped they could recover enough dry, heavy clothes to make it through the cold days that followed the storm, or bundle themselves in enough donated blankets to live without heat at the beginning of winter. While beautiful, it’s doubtful that any of the sleeveless gowns and delicate dresses featured would be up to that task. Maybe the water damaged clothes strewn about in particularly hard hit areas weren’t fashionable enough for Vogue, though surely a story with survivors discussing particularly meaningful pieces that were damaged or gone would have been relevant to a fashion magazine and relevant to the reality of the situation.

Which brings us to one final point: New Jersey.

*Loss is loss, damage is damage and suffering is suffering. That said, often overlooked in fundraisers, relief efforts and even shoots to glamorize those things is New Jersey. While Sandy seems to have succeeded in making more people aware that New York City isn’t just Manhattan (we’re betting the photograph of Chanel Iman and Karlie Kloss with Far Rockaway firefighters is the first time Vogue‘s shot in Queens in… ever), not a single photo op was dedicated to New Jersey. Governor Chris Christie estimates his state suffered $36.8 billion in damage, while New York Governor Andrew Cuomo puts his state’s cleanup bill at $32.8 billion {Huffington Post}. Given it’s less fashionable reputation (not entirely deserved), it might not be as much of a draw as New York City, but the cleanup bill is at least equal to, if not greater than that faced by the city and surrounding New York areas.

Perhaps New Jersey’s electric workers and recovery crews had something else to do when invited to participate in the shoot.

Fashion’s Night Out, the 3-year-old event that generates big buzz for one night prior to fashion week, but not so much in terms of big sales numbers, may be coming to an end. {the Cut/NY Magazine}

As we’ve mentioned numerous times, the bigger and more star-studded the events got, the less people actually seemed to shop. While we did see more retailers offering gifts or gifts with purchase to try to lure shoppers this year, apparently they’ve realized what we’ve been saying for a while: if it doesn’t make dollars, it doesn’t make sense.

Three years in, few people will speak on record about specific numbers to get an idea of just how good, bad or mediocre Fashion’s Night Out may be at a macro level. Retailers rarely miss an opportunity to talk about positive numbers though, so we have to imagine that the silence is more of an attempt not to fall into disfavor with FNO creator and Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour than a sudden shyness around discussing stellar sales results.

Enormous crowds of people are good for retailers if they’re buying things, but in the case of Fashion’s Night Out the result is more akin to a well dressed flash mob moving from free champagne spot to free champagne spot. While Ashley Turen, the owner of a small Lower East Side boutique, said that the night was good for business, unnamed publicists speaking to the Cut noted that the overall cost of events coupled with an extra event to work on right before Fashion Week make it more of a burden than benefit.

That’s to say nothing of the extra work for Vogue. For all of the faults we’ve found and written about concerning the event itself, the effort and amount of work that went into each of the events has been obvious and impressive. Maintaining growth of what’s essentially become a shopping holiday celebrated by thousands of retailers in 17 countries around the world and all 50 states could easily be a full time endeavor in and of itself. Considering that American Vogue pulled in more than $92 million from one issue alone this year (granted, it’s the year’s biggest issue), it’s not difficult to imagine that Fashion’s Night Out could have a low return on investment for Vogue as well.

While we wouldn’t be entirely sad to see the event go, we do hope that the things that did work survive and find their way into more sustainable promotions. Though the event seems to have gone on just a bit longer than needed, Anna Wintour certainly earns a solid E for effort; but now’s as good a time as any to realize that some things just aren’t meant to last all night.

Vogue

Lucky magazine recently launched the Lucky Style Collective, a network that will make a network of fashion and beauty bloggers true partners of the magazine. {NY Times}

In contrast to the Vogue network, which is closer to a consumer panel than actual network, the Lucky Style Collective will see bloggers contributing content to Lucky‘s website and the print edition. Lucky will also share online advertising revenue with the bloggers on a 50/50 split – fairly standard terms for online ad networks.

Considering that network participation offers both exposure and financial benefits, it’s not surprising that the 50 Lucky Style Collective bloggers are generally more influential than those in Vogue’s network. Mrs. O, the blog that tracks Michelle Obama’s style, and Honestly…WTF are both ranked among the top 99 most influential fashion blogs, and many of the others have immediately visible signs of engaged audiences either directly on their blogs or social networks like Twitter and Facebook.

In our look at how fashion magazines would stack up against fashion blogs online, we noted that recently appointed Lucky editor-in-chief Brandon Holley’s online experience (she formerly led Shine, Yahoo’s US women’s site) would likely make a difference in increasing the magazine’s online influence.

As Lucky joins influential print and web publishers like Glamour and Elle in offering blogger opportunities that extend beyond simple association, it looks like that was more than a lucky guess.

Jump for joy! Fashion magazines aren't back to pre-recession levels, but they're definitely no longer on the brink.

Just in case any influencers out there needed a reminder that Vogue can cover the cost of a consumer panel, going by the number of ad pages sold and current ad rates, Vogue‘s September issue alone will account for more than $92 million in revenue. It will have an impressive 584 ad pages – not anywhere near the September 2007 record of 727 ad pages, but more than any other women’s fashion magazine this year.

Glamour, the Conde Nast sister publication which has more online influence than Vogue, has a relatively low 240 pages but will still bring in “more revenue than any issue in its history” thanks to 2-D bar codes that readers can photograph with their phone cameras to “like” advertisers on Facebook. Most other magazines reported year over year increases, but Elle reported a decline, widely believed to be due to the larger than average influx for last year’s anniversary issue. {AdAge}

*Note that for Harper’s Bazaar, the 1-page color ad rate “doesn’t apply” for March and September, indicating that the magazine likely gets more per page in those issues. All revenue estimates are not inclusive of agency fees or repetition discounts which can lower revenue; nor are they inclusive of pull outs, special inserts or multi-channel promotions like the Glamour offering, which can increase revenue.

We just explored how fashion magazines are faring online against fashion blogs (they’re not failing, but the bloggers are doing pretty well on their own). Unsurprisingly, the magazines who are doing it (engaging an audience, that is) as well as bloggers are the ones who’ve been active in bringing bloggers into the fold through partnerships or special site sections.

So when we heard about Vogue‘s 1000-strong “Influencer” network, we thought it was a smart move. Then we read more and wondered if we’d overlooked the benefit to the participating bloggers.

Here’s AdWeek’s summary:

“The Influencer Network is a panel of some 1,000 women deemed to have sway over other women, based on how active they are on social networks like Facebook and Polyvore, a fashion site where people create collages of outfits and share them with other members.

“There are a lot of people who are self-appointed experts,” says Susan Plagemann, vp, publisher of Vogue. “The biggest difference is, weâ€re developing a program of ambassadors who spread the word digitally across a very big network about the access thatâ€s been given because of Vogue.”

Panel members, who arenâ€t compensated, are asked to provide feedback for clients on anything from new products, upcoming fashion collections, and ad creative. Theyâ€re encouraged to talk about the products on their social networks, raising awareness of the products and Vogue itself.” {AdWeek}

Emphasis ours.

So let’s get this straight: bloggers and others who’ve proven* themselves to be influential in building followings on different social media platforms provide free market panel feedback (usually part of qualitative market research, usually paid for) to companies who have enough money to pay Vogue for a $150,000+ ad (the average cost of a one page, color advertisement in the print magazine). Vogue, a magazine that had over $100 million in revenue in one quarter last year, gets to add a premium to ads which cost $150,000+ per page by advising advertisers on how the products or ads will perform online and pushing the products and ads through a network of people who will seed them to help ensure their success. And the bloggers and influencers get… shafted.

While this sounds like an amazing business model for Vogue and their advertisers, it doesn’t sound like anything remotely beneficial to the people participating as currently structured. Which brings us to the * behind the proven portion of the pitch.

Styleite notes that many of the influencers don’t actually seem to have much influence. We know that quantity isn’t everything in social media – an account with 1000 engaged followers/fans can perform as one with 10,000 passive users attached. Needless to say, on the web we’re firm believers that influence isn’t just about which fashion blog has the most traffic. That said, almost none of the bloggers featured have an Alexa ranking below 2 million, or enough traffic to register on any other traffic estimation site (Quantcast, Google AdPlanner, Compete), and one has a grand total of 11 links from other blogs and sites.

We’re not going to call any out by name, because many of the blogs are fairly new so it’s understandable that their traffic, links, social media activity and other signs of influence would be low. There’s no shame in that at all, but it is a stretch to call them influencers at this point. This sounds more like a qualified consumer panel, but the difference is that consumer panels normally get something these ladies don’t: payment for their participation. It’s not anything to retire off of (typically $20-$100 depending on the time involved), but it’s something that reflects the fact that consumer feedback to the type of companies who can pay $150,000 for an ad can afford to pay people for giving them feedback that will help them increase brand awareness and sales. Helping to spread their commercial, promotional messages has a value as well.

You know who is influential in fashion? The Sartorialist. He may rub some people the wrong way with his description of “sturdy” legs and indifference towards personal bloggers, but even there it takes off on social media and causes controversy because he has online influence that’s backed up by the number of people linking to, following and sharing his content. There are 98 other fashion blogs here who are influencing people, and we’re pretty sure that most aren’t in Vogue‘s network.

And though we haven’t asked him, do you know what someone like the Sartorialist would probably say if someone asked him to be an ambassador for a commercial brand with a (minimum) 6-figure ad budget by providing feedback to said brand on ways to improve their $150,000 ad and tell people about it online for free? No.

Granted it’s the power blogs that consistently take the top spots in our ranking of influential fashion blogs; but using the exact same ranking criteria, bloggers are edging out magazines who (often) have larger staffs and larger budgets when it comes to influencing readers online.

Dolce & Gabbanna's 2-year-old front row lineup seems smarter than ever

That’s not to say magazines aren’t influencing people online: each of the magazine websites we used for comparison would rank in the top 99 if pitted against the fashion blogs in our list. Not to mention that although it took them a while, nearly all of the magazines on the list are actively investing in their websites, rather than using them as digital subscription forms. Glamour created their own blogger network; Elle hired the editor of an influential blog to breathe new life into theirs (a move that’s paid off); and though Style.com is now a property of its own, the former online home to Vogue and W was a big part of propelling the reigning influential fashion blog (the Sartorialist) to where it is now. While magazines aren’t exactly the ostriches they once were when it comes to building an online presence, the fact that a single teenager from the Chicago suburbs is influencing nearly as many people as the entire online staff of Teen Vogue can’t be ignored though.

The reason why we spend so much time on an objective ranking of fashion blogs, however, is precisely because there are people who still do ignore bloggers and independent publishers and try to write off the significant audience shift in fashion media as a passing fad. Print isn’t dead – advertisers will keep it alive; but digital is the future, and it’s a future where a multitude of strong individual voices can rival the influence of a more prominent, institutional few. That said, the structure of influential blogs is increasingly similar to that of print publications, and probably not so different from their online departments. While there are more than a few solo acts topping the rankings, increasingly it’s blogs with multiple editors, writers and support staff competing with and pushing the magazines out of the top spots.

This list of magazine sites isn’t as exhaustive as the index of fashion blogs that we rank. You’ll notice that most are for the US editions of international magazines, but in nearly every case the US editions receive more traffic, link and social activity than their international counterparts so we thought they were a good place to start. In our September update, we’ll examine the influence of international magazine websites compared to bloggers in more depth.

Style.com

Score: 84     Rank if included in the top 99: 2

The former home of Vogue and W helped establish the Sartorialist, so perhaps it’s fitting that if included, the Sartorialist is the only blog that would rival (and top) their influence.

GQ.com

Score: 79     Rank if included in the top 99: 3

The men’s print style bible would just barely push men’s online style bible Hypebeast into 4th place.

Glamour.com

Score: 77     Rank if included in the top 99: 5

Style.com certainly has the strongest lead, but Glamour‘s put a respectable effort into building their online presence with a blogger network and dedicated online content. Looking strictly at current magazine websites, Glamour‘s is the most influential women’s style site in the US.

Elle.com

Score: 74      Rank if included in the top 99: 6

Elle is a few points away from Glamour, but the popular magazine has worked with bloggers through the Style Coalition for some time now, and brought in former Fashionista editor Brit Aboutaleb to lead editorial for their online efforts. The Elle blog is one of the few magazine blogs with enough influence to rank in the top 99 independent of the parent website.

Vogue.com

Score: 73     Rank if included in the top 99: 9

Vogue got off to a late start with their website, and there have been a few notable bumps along the way, but they recently received a Webby and Anna Wintour has been vocal about making the website a priority. For the moment though they still can’t beat Stylelist, the super blog formerly led by AOL, now revamped and revitalized by chief executive blog builder Arianna Huffington.

And men’s style blog High Snobiety leads them both.

MarieClaire.com

Score: 71     Rank if included in the top 99: 10

InStyle.com

Score: 70     Rank if included in the top 99: 11

Allure.com

Score: 70     Rank if included in the top 99: 12

Marie Claire is the closest to catching up with Vogue online, but both InStyle and Allure are only marginally ahead of Refinery29, who are blogging their way towards a $20 million valuation.

Seventeen.com

Score: 70     Rank if included in the top 99: 14

TeenVogue.com

Score: 69     Rank if included in the top 99: 15

Readership for teen print publications has been dropping off for a while, and many people blamed the web. While Seventeen and Teen Vogue are doing well online, they’re only slightly ahead of  the Fug Girls, Garance Dore and Tavi, indicating that teens probably weren’t exactly sitting on their hands while waiting for the print publications to get themselves together online.

HarpersBazaar.com

Score: 66     Rank if included in the top 99: 22

Harper’s Bazaar has never had the circulation of Elle or Vogue, but the pronounced focus on building their online audience hasn’t been there in the same way either. Again, we wouldn’t say they’re exactly suffering on the web, but the entire online Harper’s Bazaar team would still be behind the singular efforts of Yvan Rodic’s FaceHunter, Rumi Neely’s Fashion Toast and Alix of the Cherry Blossom Girl.

LuckyMag.com

Score: 65     Rank if included in the top 99: 23

Of all the major fashion magazines, Lucky’s online site is lowest on the list. Sure, readers are visiting for the Lucky deals and different online shopping collaborations, but the site still has a long way to go. Newly installed editor-in-chief Brandon Holley has print experience and led editorial at Shine, Yahoo’s US-targeted women’s site, so hopefully come September a bit more attention to online partnerships and audience building will lend the beleaguered publisher a little more luck.

There have been concerns about stability in the region, how it will affect oil prices, and oh, yeah, all of the Libyan people being killed by mercenaries. Forget all that though, let’s ask the important questions: what does Gaddafi’s wife wear? How does she travel around Tripoli? How chic is life in the Gaddafi family home?

Forget the repression, where did she get that beautiful scarf? Screenshot via Gawker

In what has to be one of the most tone-deaf pieces to come out since Kenneth Cole’s Egyptian fire sale tweets, Vogue posed these questions in a hard-hitting piece that profiled Asma al-Assad, the “glamorous, young, and very chic—the freshest and most magnetic” first lady of Syria.

It glosses over Syria’s “deep and dark” shadow zones to tout its reputation as the safest country in the Middle East. Which ignores the question, safe for who?

According to Human Rights Watch {via Gawker}, President Bashar al-Asad’s decade in power (he inherited the position from his father) hasn’t produced many reforms. Prisons are “filled again with political prisoners, journalists, and human rights activists. In the most recent examples, Syrian criminal courts in the last three weeks separately sentenced two of Syria’s leading human rights lawyers, Haytham al-Maleh, 78, and Muhanad al-Hasani, 42, to three years in jail each for their criticisms of Syria’s human rights record.”

Among other things, let’s put together a few handy bullet points of freedoms that most Syrians don’t enjoy:

• Open access to the internet: Facebook, YouTube and Blogger are banned
• Freedom of assembly: According to Human Rights Watch “Official repression of Kurds increased further after Syrian Kurds held large-scale demonstrations, some of which turned violent, throughout northern Syria in March 2004 to voice long-simmering grievances.”
• An open legal system: “Syria’s security agencies, the feared mukhabarat, detain people without arrest warrants and torture with complete impunity.”

If you’ve been following along with recent events, many of these things were on the list of grievances that inspired popular uprisings and protests in many other countries.

It’s not that we believe the first lady isn’t capable of doing good things through her NGO work – Suzanne Mubarak, former first lady of Egypt campaigned against human trafficking; but if recent history has shown anything it’s that wide scale grievances, particularly those related to human rights, aren’t placated by small balancing acts. Mrs. Mubarak’s campaign against human trafficking is an important one, and probably made a difference in the lives of some people. Unfortunately the Egyptians who forced her husband to step down had more pressing issues of government corruption, repression of humans rights and violence from police.

We haven’t heard about any uprisings in Syria – yet, but somehow, a lifestyle piece highlighting how the other half live in a country where residents face kidnappings, jail and torture under a repressive regime seems so deeply careless given recent events. What’s next? Beauty tips on how to cover up facial bruising from Hannibal Gaddafi’s wife? Luxury living tips from Mrs. Robert Mugabe? The fashion personalities of Kim Jong-Il’s various wives? Cooking tips and recipes from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s wife? We could excuse a print article as a matter of poor timing, given that most magazine content is produced 3 months in advance, but the reason people read websites is because they can catch up to current events a bit quicker. Just an FYI for the Voguettes who may still not “get” the interwebs, and why copying print content over doesn’t always work.

If Vogue wants to be known as the thinking woman’s journal on fashion, let us offer a reminder to give a tad more consideration to the “thinking” part.

We have a few thoughts on this situation. First, the Vogue reps looking to get the pictures taken off the Internet are wasting their time. Gaga has 8 million followers on Twitter who have already seen the cover by now, and no doubt millions of other people around the world got wind of the leak and have searched and found the photos as well. As a reference, in 2010 Lady Gaga made Googleâ€s list of top 10 most searched people in entertainment. {Google Zeitgeist} Thereâ€s just no fighting the power of the Internet to spread news like wild fire – particularly news that involves as huge a pop star as Lady Gaga.

Our second observation is that it was quite unethical for Lady Gaga to leak a cover of such a prestigious magazine, but more importantly, it was genius. Leaks are a fantastic way for celebrities to use social media to their advantage, and what is Vogue honestly going to do about it? Shun Lady Gaga forever? That wonâ€t be much help in keeping Vogue relevant into the future, since a significant challenge for the magazine has been being relatable to the average consumer which is something Gaga, even in all her fashion extravagance and craziness, does very well.

Not to mention that Lady Gaga probably did Vogue a favor. She also leaked via Twitter this week that her new single will be out Friday, February 11^th, a few days earlier than originally planned. Now that fans anxiously waiting the release of Born This Way are aware of Gagaâ€s Vogue cover appearance, many of them may go purchase the magazine as well as the song.

As for the cover itself, Lady Gaga’s bleached out eyebrows, Louise Brooks bob in Gwyneth Paltrow pink and berry-colored lipstick actually remind us (in a good way) of something you might find in a 1910-era magazine, when covers were expressions of illustrators’ creativity. It’s nostalgic, but modern at the same time. We do, however, find it a close second to her 2010 grayed-out Vanity Fair cover in terms of mystique. Which do you prefer?

Fashion magazines: not dead yet

Fashion blogs are undoubtedly part of fashion’s future, and give a platform to everyone from the intelligent young teen to the photographer who sees editorial opportunities on the street. Without worries about publishing costs, newsstand placement, licensing costs and salaries, blogs in every category are leaner operations than magazines. Blogs don’t have legacy costs, but they’re nowhere near print magazines in terms of revenue either.

When it comes to numbers, few individual editors or writers can compete with the most popular bloggers. Mario Testino may be more established, but in terms of sheer numbers, Scott Schuman reaches more people looking for style inspiration on a daily basis. Though they’ve captured respectable fashion audiences, bloggers have yet to capture the advertisers.

Allure, one of the few fashion magazines to show a year over year decline in revenue and ad pages, still sold more than $33 million of advertising in the 3rd quarter. People Style Watch, a relatively new title that focuses on celebrity fashion, brought in $15 million. That’s one quarter, or 3 months. Granted that the 3rd quarter includes September, when fashion magazines often receive the most ads; still, it would be difficult to find a single fashion blog that brings in $15 million in advertising in one year, probably even two or three.

Part of the allure of many fashion blogs is an alternative point of view that’s not tied to how many ad pages a company controls. In an industry where legitimate criticism can result in revoked show invitations and snubs, the outside status of bloggers is seen as more trustworthy. So much so, that the FTC created specific regulations for bloggers that don’t apply to the people who write for print publications. Especially in fashion, where there’s rarely a hard hitting look at business practices and it’s commonplace for editorials to feature many of the same products that appear in paid ads, it may also be what keeps fashion blogs from ever becoming big business.

In fairness, it’s not only bloggers. Style.com, owned by Vogue publisher Conde Nast, is well established and well regarded. For years, it was backed by both Vogue and W magazine, yet even that hasn’t been enough to draw the kind of revenue that the print publications command. Vogue claims a readership of 1.2 million, while Style.com claims 2.3 million. Yet a 1-page color ad has an estimated CPM (cost per thousand) of $125 while the last media kit to include rates has Style.com commanding a $30 CPM – which is actually fairly high for online display advertising. Vogue increased both ad pages and revenue by more than 30% in the 3rd quarter. The raw numbers? $109 million in revenue in 3 months, and over $255 million from January through September. There’s no single fashion site online – including Style.com -  that even comes close.

3rd Quarter Fashion & Women’s Magazine Revenue

Last yearâ€s FNO produced mixed financial results, with some retailers reporting the night was far more successful in terms of energy than from a business perspective. This yearâ€s event was, however, more promising, with 1,000 retailers participating to last years 800 and added pre-event buzz.

So how did retail sales fare this year?

Unfortunately, not much information exists on the topic. Apparently, many retailers did not measure the exact business results, with some admitting they were more concerned with the social aspect. {Vancouver Sun} We’ve reached out to retailers large and small, but are still awaiting responses on questions related to sales for the evening.

Here is what we do know:

-New York City foot traffic increased 50 percent after last yearâ€s event, according to research firm ShopperTrak, and this yearâ€s FNO is estimated by many to have attracted an even larger crowd.

-Seventy-five percent of FNO attendees bought something, according to a survey of 1,300 consumers by NYC & Co. {Vancouver Sun}

-The official site for the event claims only that FNO was a “huge success.”

-Anna Wintour said in a CBS News interview following the event, “We were thrilled. It was already a huge success last year. Last year we were really running a campaign with an unknown candidate. And this year we had the incumbent on our side, so at least we were talking about an event that people knew what it was. They were excited about it and they turned out in droves…If you walked through the streets, as I did, of New York on Friday, everbody was dressed up, they were having fun, but most importantly they were shopping.” {ShoppingBlog}

It is all very vague, and we suppose it may be a bit soon to say whether FNO had a lasting impact on retail sales. We just cannot understand, however, why so little information exists on the economic success of an event whose purpose was to be an economic stimulus. A search for Fashions Night Out of Bloomberg News, for example, yields no results pertaining to the financial outcome of the event.

Perhaps more information will become available in the coming weeks, and if it does we will be sure to update you.