Anna Wintour is desperate for readers. In May, visits to Vogue.com were down 41% from April, according to semrush.com.
Every year, fans of Vogue wait for The September Issue as if they were receiving Moses’s tablets.
It’s the thickest issue ad wise, and should have a cover subject taken by a famous photographer of a scintillating personality or model, styled to the hilt. The cover should also convey the beginning of the fall season.
Alas, the new September issue is a flop, a sad reminder of just how far Vogue has fallen.
The cover subjects are young actors Kaia Gerber and Homer Gere.
The pair star in the unlikable FX TV soap, “The Shards,” made by Ryan Murphy, which began airing this week.
On Rotten Tomatoes, critics give “The Shards” a foul 55%. Audiences are less kind, with a total of 36% on their meter.
I’ve personally fast forwarded through the first couple of episodes. First of all, it’s a bore. Second, it’s a retread. It’s like watching an old series like “Wild Palms.” There’s nothing new about it. “The Shards” is just pretty young things, jabbering about nothing, doing drugs and showing off an excessive Hollywood lifestyle. I doubt the characters — who are subhuman — cast votes, but if they do, it’s for Trump now, Reagan then.
The most insulting part of this is that Gerber and Gere — not exactly theater royalty* — have been thrown together solely for purposes of exploitation. Her mother — Cindy Crawford — was once married to his father, Richard Gere. That’s the publicity hook for the whole series, nothing else, not the plot, writing, or acting.
(*I’m trying to imagine Vogue editorial director Chloe Malle’s Emmy winning mother, Candice Bergen, watching this stuff without a stiff drink!)
Gerber and Gere together on screen equal less than zero, which coincidentally was the first and best selling book by the show’s creator, Brett Easton Ellis some 40 years ago. Ellis has kind of thrown “Less than Zero” into a Cuisinart with his “American Psycho,” and come up with “The Shards.” There’s just a lot of name dropping of high end designer brands, and some occasional violence cloaked in really nice cinematography.
“The Shards” also seems to be FX’s attempt to make a “Euphoria” — albeit the pristine, clean, upscale version. They’ve also got an actor named Igby who looks like “Spider Man” star Tom Holland as much as he can. But if Peter Parker saw this crowd, he’d swing away from them instantly.
What a waste of time for producer Ryan Murphy, no stranger to trash TV with a focus on kitsch. But for Vogue to heave itself into this mire instead of going high, they’ve gone low. Maybe it makes some crazy sense, since Vogue no longer represents the unattainable. It’s just Cosmopolitan, with a nasty attitude.
