Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar Answer to Two Families. Is That Why Fashion Media Feels Frozen?

1 min read

First principles: who owns them

• Condé Nast, publisher of Vogue, GQ and Vanity Fair, is privately owned by Advance Publications, the Newhouse family company (Condé Nast; Advance).
• Hearst, publisher of Harper’s Bazaar, Elle (US) and Esquire, is privately held and controlled by the Hearst family trust (Hearst).

Why private ownership matters

There are no quarterly shareholder calls and no activist investors. Long horizons let them protect a legacy title through bad cycles. They also let them avoid reinventing it.

Team Jupiter or Team Saturn?

Mostly Saturn. Their stated focus is stewarding heritage brands. The magazines that once made supermodels now often follow creators who were discovered somewhere else.

Unpopular opinion: The next Vogue cover star is already famous on a platform neither family owns.

Lillith Magic · Directed by Anthony Perlas. Opinion: the Jupiter/Saturn read below is our editorial judgment of business behavior, not a statement of fact about any person.

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