Anna Wintour’s announcement 12 days ago that she would be stepping back after 37 years as editor in chief of Vogue sparked a flurry of “end-of-an-era” think pieces.
Most focused on the implications for the magazine itself. Some suggested the multimillion-dollar wedding of Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos, taking place at the same time in Venice, heralded the dawn of a new era of post-Wintour flamboyant excess among the 1 per cent. And others saw the news as final confirmation that the age of the blockbuster glossy magazine was over, and with it the reign of the world’s leading magazine publisher, Condé Nast.
Michael Grynbaum’s new book, Empire of the Elite: Inside Condé Nast, the Media Dynasty That Reshaped America, is published this week. Grynbaum, a media correspondent with the New York Times, has produced a deeply researched history of the company in its imperial phase under proprietor Si Newhouse jnr, tracing its transformation from early 20th-century origins to its peak cultural influence and eventual decline.
In 1959, Samuel Irving Newhouse snr purchased Condé Nast, primarily interested in its prestige
In 1909, Condé Montrose Nast, a New York City-born publisher, bought Vogue, which had been launched in 1892 as a New York weekly journal of society and fashion news. Nast developed the model of “class, not mass”, targeting aspirational, affluent audiences.
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In 1959, Samuel Irving Newhouse snr purchased Condé Nast, primarily interested in its prestige. His son, Newhouse jnr, formally assumed leadership of the magazine empire in 1975. Under his leadership, the company underwent a dramatic reinvention, reviving classic titles and launching cultural juggernauts. Newhouse reinvigorated Vanity Fair, launched Self, integrated Architectural Digest, and acquired the New Yorker.
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He hired editors from backgrounds – British, Jewish, Canadian – outside the traditional starchy Wasp [White Anglo-Saxon Protestant] elites that had dominated the sector. Two English women had a particular impact: Wintour at Vogue and Tina Brown, who declared her mission was to “make the sexy serious and the serious sexy”, at Vanity Fair and then the New Yorker.
They introduced a more dynamic and less stuffy London sensibility, embracing pop culture and celebrity rather than social class.
Newhouse’s lavish spending on editors, writers, photographers and extravagant parties became legendary
Condé Nast began to celebrate “accessible luxury” just as traditional couture was being supplanted by global conglomerates selling the high-end dream to the mid-market masses. The shift was symbolised by Madonna’s landmark Vogue cover (1989), GQ’s 1984 Donald Trump profile, and the New Yorker’s extensive coverage of the OJ Simpson trial (1994).
Newhouse’s lavish spending on editors, writers, photographers and extravagant parties became legendary. Budgets, he said, were “for the unimaginative”. The apotheosis was the Annie Liebowtz photoshoots for Vanity Fair, in which the aristocracy of the celebrity circuit were lit and framed with the reverence and attention to detail of a Renaissance altarpiece.
They didn’t know it at the time, of course, but the 1980s and 1990s would be the final chapter in the story of print media as a vector for immense profits and power. Magazines with hundreds of pages of advertising generated large revenues. Condé Nast was perfectly positioned at the nexus of the celebrity, fashion and luxury worlds.
Vogue became synonymous with high fashion and street-style culture; GQ propelled the metrosexual wave of male spending on grooming products while Vanity Fair and the New Yorker helped accelerate the celebrity-industrial complex.
Condé Nast tapped into status anxiety by offering readers access to elite culture, democratising luxury through its glossy pages. The publisher’s lavish social gatherings, from Vanity Fair’s Oscar soirées to the Met Gala, became glamorous Versailles-level spectacles.
That 1984 GQ spread was a precursor to the Newhouse-owned Random House publishing Trump’s bestselling The Art of the Deal
This is a story of gossip, celebrity and wealth in fin de siecle Manhattan, so inevitably the current US president figures. Newhouse’s closest confidant was Roy Cohn, the reptilian lawyer and fixer who made Trump his protege.
That 1984 GQ spread was a precursor to the Newhouse-owned Random House publishing Trump’s bestselling The Art of the Deal. Despite its dominance, the company signally failed to weather the shifting media landscape of the 21st century. The 2008 recession tainted luxury brands. Social media platforms began challenging traditional taste makers, decentralising cultural authority and undercutting Condé’s gatekeeper status.
While topline circulation figures for the flagship titles have avoided collapse, revenues have halved, the magazines have shrunk and publication frequency has been curtailed in reaction to slumping advert sales.
By the time Newhouse died in 2017, New Yorker editor David Remnick confided that the company was in a state of “dignified panic”. And by the mid-2020s, insiders admitted it “is no longer a magazine company”. In Empire of the Elite, Grynbaum explores the personalities and unspoken etiquette that fortified Condé’s allure: the dress codes, table manners, social fluency.
Much of its power derived from status anxiety: one potential editorial hire felt they lost out after committing the cardinal sin at a lunch interview of using cutlery to eat asparagus.
Grynbaum frames Condé Nast as a case study in how media shapes and monetises class aspirations, tying cultural identity to consumerism
All of this was enforced by editors, like Graydon Carter, Brown’s successor at Vanity Fair, who mostly came from outside traditional elites but relished being part of them. All this was brought to our screens in palatable form in The Devil Wears Prada, a thinly veiled satire on Wintour’s management style (a sequel, with Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway reprising their roles, is reportedly in the works).
Grynbaum frames Condé Nast as a case study in how media shapes and monetises class aspirations, tying cultural identity to consumerism. The company’s rise and fall echo larger stories about the decline of print media and the emergence of conspicuous consumption as a form of entertainment in its own right.
As legacy media recedes, Grynbaum offers a portrait of an empire built on luxe fantasy and creative ambition, brought to life by big personalities and lavish spending. It stands as both an elegy for the age of media’s cultural dominance and a warning about the fragility of centralised power when the world changes.
