Michael Roberts Takes Care of Business in Cathy Horyn’s Vogue Critique

Dear Michael Roberts, Please start a blog. The fashion director of Vanity Fair (and writer, photographer, stylist, and illustrator) was asked to weigh in on the state of American Vogue in Cathy Horyn‘s recent New York Times critique of the magazine. And he delivered in a big way. Horyn saves the quotes from the man Tina Brown once called “the Jean Cocteau of the fashion world” for the article’s big finish, and his sparkling retorts contrast nicely with the careful comments provided by others (“I don’t think it’s a bad-looking magazine,” says critic Vince Aletti, “but it hasn’t changed in quite some time in a significant way”). So, Mr. Roberts, what do you make of the rumors that French Vogue editrix Carine Roitfield will replace Wintour?

…it’s hard to imagine that Ms. Roitfeld would be in line to replace her unless, as he said, someone “has spiked the Kool-Aid.” If such an event were to happen, he said: “There’s a whole financial machine that would come crashing down, I would say. I’d like to see Carine talking to the people from North Beach Leather or St. John knits. It’s all very professional and businesslike at American Vogue.”

But, it’s more than just business acumen that has kept American Vogue at the top of its game for so long. “I’ve never seen anything from Carine that astonishes me the way that I have in American Vogue. I’ve seen kinky, sexy but not astonishing,” said Roberts. “But I did see astonishing in Vogue when Anna published a picture of Nadia Auermann having sex with a swan.”

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