Exactly a year after Anna Wintour sprinkled her glossy fashion dust on Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Vogue has decided to switch its gaze from women in New York politics to women in New York tech.
After taking a gander at Silicon Alley’s female founders, investors, and stalwarts, the magazine opted to profile New York City’s social media-savvy chief digital officer (or “head nerd” in 4 Times Square parlance) Rachel Sterne for being “the face of a new era of digital governance.”
The feature, which isn’t available online (Bad, Conde! Stop that!) says, “Sterne is part of a new generation of bright, attractive women who are turning Silicon Alley into less of a boys’ club.” We’d quibble with Vogue‘s notion that women judged on their relative attractiveness makes it less of a boy’s club. But hey, it’s Vogue, which means we get references to Ms. Sterne’s “willowy, six-foot frame” and “striking figure.”
In what we’re pretty sure is NYTM’s first Vogue reference, the magazine quotes former CNET reporter Caroline McCarthy, now stationed at Googleplex East, talking about meeting Ms. Sterne for the first time at the meetup in 2007.
“There I was in jeans and a hoodie, probably with greasy hair, like everybody else,” McCarthy recalls [Ed note: Yup, sounds about right!]. “And when I saw Rachel I thought, What is this incredibly articulate, impeccably dressed gorgeous young woman doing at a start-up pitch event?”
Also name-checked in the profile are Tumblr’s David Karp (Ms. Sterne attended his rooftop “new-media scene” party), Ms. Sterne’s fiancé Max Haot, co-founder and CEO of Livestream–as well as Ms. Sterne’s good friend Soraya Darabi, Fashism co-founders Brooke Moreland and Ashley Granata, Charitini’s Rachel Sklar, and event planner Emily Gannett, all of whom are involved in Change the Ratio.
Vogue‘s feature follows Vanity Fair‘s Sean Parker profile and Glamour‘s recent women in tech piece penned by none other than AllThingsD’s own Kara Swisher.
In Vogue, Ms. Sklar remarked on both Ms. Sterne’s intelligence and poise:
“She’s an intellectual heavyweight who’s as smart as–or smarter than–any guy in the room,” Sklar says. “And she’s ambitious, but she’s also really nice and gracious and poised. She’s a lady.” Half jokingly, she adds, “She’s kind of our Kate Middleton.”
Vogue culls that last British royal bit for the feature’s pull quote, minus the “half-jokingly,” part, naturally.
