Obviously I'm not the only one who's finding the whole Kimye on Vogue thing annoying. There's lots of hilarious Twitter snarking going on, people are threatening to cancel their subscriptions to Vogue, Anna Wintour even felt compelled to write an Editor's Letter in which she flatly denies that Kanye "begged" her to put Kim on the cover.
Even Kermit and Miss Piggy got into the act:
So why did Wintour do it? Still thinking about that. The short answer, as with People and any other magazine, is "to sell magazines." The cover story of any magazine, from Sports Illustrated to Forbes to O, is carefully chosen to drive newsstand/airport/supermarket sales. So how much does Vogue's target audience, i.e., fashionistas who like to read Vogue but don't already have a subscription, care about Kim Kardashian? Are they interested, or at least are they not-annoyed enough to cough up the cover price and buy the issue? If the goal was simply to create a controversy and generate buzz, Wintour's strategy has succeeded brilliantly, but what counts is the bottom line. Buzz that doesn't generate actual revenue is pretty much worthless. And if the buzz includes a big enough backlash, if newsstand sales tank and some subscribers actually cancel their subscriptions, the stunt will turn out to be a serious negative for Vogue and for Wintour.
You could spend most of the day clicking your way through everything that's being written about this; here are a few of my favorites.
LA Times: Anna Wintour: Rumor Kanye begged" for Kim's Vogue cover isn't true"
Adweek: Anna Wintour Defends "Kimye" Vogue Cover
The Daily Beast: Will Kim and Kanye Kill Vogue?
And, if you must: Vogue has part of the article available online.
Final thought, at least for now: Photoshop. Kim looks pretty artificially enhanced to me. How long before someone comes up with the "unretouched" version of the cover shot?
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