By Kat Stoeffel 2/22/12 10:29am

off the record

GLAMOUR

Glamour’s Fashion Week Makeover Montage

At first we thought it was an elaborate social experiment. A few days before New York Fashion Week, Condé Nast’s populist women’s magazine, Glamour, announced it had teamed up with hipster depot Opening Ceremony to bring readers an exclusive and stylish offer: a cat sweater—that is, a sweater embroidered with face of a cat—available in black and white, which would retail online for an affordable $99.

Was the joke that the Opening Ceremony imprimatur and Glamour’s platform could convince fashion lemmings like us that cat sweaters are cool? Come next Fashion Week, would we be reading a Glamour tell-all about how it gamed the fashion marketing machine to trick us into spending $99 on a garment most often found in a Midwestern Salvation Army?

Not likely.

It turns out the cat sweater was just one of a slew of unconventional but earnest marketing experiments Condé Nast’s stumbling cash cow debuted at Fashion Week—foremost its redesign. Read More

By Kat Stoeffel 9/13/11 8:33pm

off the record

Ms. Leive and some impressive co-eds.

Glamour Treats Top Co-Eds to a Teachable Moment

Each year, Glamour magazine highlights the accomplishments of ten college women, as a reminder to readers that women’s magazines have not yet managed to irrevocably damage all young women.

Last week, the chosen ones were flown to New York, where they toured Glamour’s offices and the U.N., took in a Broadway show and got L’Oreal Read More

By Kat Stoeffel 9/08/11 11:08am

Press Releases

Jason Wagenheim Named Publisher of Glamour

Jason Wagenheim, publisher of Time Inc’s Entertainment Weekly has jumped to Conde Nast’s Glamour, publishing director Bill Wackermann announced today.

Conde Nast hung out the help wanted sign in May, according to AdWeek, as Mr. Wackermann, who has overseen Glamour since 2004, took on additional duties at W, Bon Appetit and Details.

2011 has been rocky for Glamour so far. Newsstand sales dropped 17 percent in the first four months, according to WWD, but a thick September issue brought in the magazine’s all-time highest revenue. The brand has implemented alternative marketing strategies like snap tags (print advertisements which readers can hover their smart phones over to be taken to Glamour’s Facebook page and special deals from advertisers) and the Glamour-flavored donut.  Read More

By John Koblin 3/03/10 1:32am

Details Answers the Existential Questions

At 9 p.m. on March 1, under a full moon at the hippest bar in town, the Boom Boom Room at the Standard Hotel, Dan Peres and Bill Wackermann embraced. The editor and publisher of Details were celebrating what they were calling its 10th anniversary (even though it wasn’t). The room was packed. There was Read More

By John Koblin 1/29/09 10:49am

Will There Be a Domino Effect at Condé Nast?

On Monday night, at the bar in the Gramercy Park Hotel, Glamour publisher Bill Wackermann and Domino publisher Beth Brenner were having a blast. At one moment they were in deep conversation. The next they were slapping knees and laughing.

This was keenly observed by many Condé Nast publishers and business people in the Read More