Men’s Vogue: Just because you’ve got Clooney on the cover doesn’t make it butch

Day two of our super-special Vogue coverage – now the NYT and Cathy Horyn get in on the action, trying to make Men’s Vogue seem butch (editor Jay Fielden is a Texas good ol’ boy, after all). But am I wrong or is Clooney pulling a Doctor Evil with a coy finger cocked by his mouth? And in the interactive graphic online, that hunting scene doesn’t really look butch at all; you almost expect to see Oscar Wilde flounce across it with powdered cheeks. Which by the way will make it a MUCH more fun read, and if it doesn’t take itself too seriously it may just tippy-toe into that golden triangle bounded by women, straight men and the true arbiter of style, gay men. Either way, it’s positioning itself nicely to tap into a more rarefied intellectual appeal with literary offerings from New Yorker-bred Nick Paumgarten, John Seabrook and Michael Spector, plus a fun article on David Chipperfield, everyone’s favorite illusionist. Horyn’s description of the content makes me think of Hemingway out fishing or something, pounding back a bracing scotch. So who knows – because it’s not Esquire, after all, it’s Vogue.

Disclosure: I’ve never been a Vogue reader, one look at my footwear will tell you that. But it will be interesting to see how such a blatantly upscale men’s fashion magazine fares in the market between David Zinczenko’s abs, Ed Needham’s babes, and Ariel Foxman’s baubles — because I remember when Lucky was announced. “A magazine about shopping? That’s basically a catalog. It’ll never work,” I sniffed. So who knows what will be. We’ll see on September 6th.

p.s. That photo with the Times story is COOL. Way to go, photographer Pascal Perich!

Vogue Answers: What Do Men Want? [NYT]

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