Reasons to Love and Hate Vogue

When I see "smart shopping" with each clothing item costing somewhere between $300 and $3,000 I have to wonder-in whose budget is this smart?

Seriously. Vogue would make no money if the target audience was actually made up of the people who can afford the clothes contained in the pages. That audience would be tiny.

So who does read it? And why? The answer lies in fantasy. Vogue is built on escapism, on seeing how the other half spends.

The pictures are pretty in Vogue, and so are the copious ads, but there's a disconnect between this world and theirs. I like fantasy as much as the next girl, but when a magazine blithely reports on this lifestyle and presents it as though it's common, I find myself getting more and more annoyed as I flip the pages.

When we read fiction sometimes the point is to immerse ourselves in a world of fantasy. We don't need to be told it's fantasy, because of the medium. But magazines are different.

In this case fantasy should be acknowledged as fantastic.

You might be wondering how I came to be so familiar with a publication I dislike.

I called Vogue when I got the first issue.

"There must be some mistake," I said, "I would never order Vogue."

They apologized, and then asked me if I had spent money at a number of different places, including Art.com. I had.

So the heavy magazines kept coming to my door.

The subscription was foisted on me as a result of money I spent at Art.com. I spent the money there because I can't afford actual art from living artists.

Vogue is one of the few magazines whose ad revenue is up. I have to wonder about that. I'm mystified.

Who are the women who buy Vogue? Are they like the helplessly skinny models on the pages, who look as though they and their Manolos could be carried away by a stiff breeze?

Do they spend several thousand dollars on a single pair of shoes that would be considered colorful torture devices in the Middle Ages?

Turns out, their families make about 60,000 a year, according to an MRI study published in '05.

That's not enough to spend two grand or even $950 on a single pair of shoes, even if it's a one person household.

It turns out that all the reasons I hate Vogue are all the reasons other people love it, including advertisers.

If your affordable makeup is place next to an article on gold dipped fur (yes, this was an actual article) then when people go to the mall or the drugstore and see your product, they'll think they got a deal for something luxurious.

Readers look to the pages as an authority of fashion, a barometer to see what will eventually hit Target and the mall.

And seeing that much spent on a shrug sweater doesn't depress them like it does me. Instead, they believe that one day they will be able to buy this sweater and it gives them hope that someone can afford to buy the sweater.

I always picture the designer drunk and starving in Soho because no one will buy the sweater. (Of course if he sells just twenty, he's set for the year!!!)

Perhaps I see a bleaker picture than most people.

But happily I sit and read Real Simple, looking at articles on pantry organization. I will never reorganize my pantry, but I like looking at pictures of organized pantries with pretty plates in them. Maybe I just have a different fantasy set than a Vogue reader.