Brilliant read from Times about why Vogue is still the most powerful magazine title in fashion. I laughed out loud several times cos of the wicked writing.

Excerpt:

If fashion, as has often been observed, is a religion — and it has the famines, the tablets, the ominous edicts in questionable syntax delivered by someone wearing something floaty and slightly mad — then it needs its Bible, Torah, Koran and Tom Cruise, its Armani-sponsored, Swarovski-studded, pop-up pamplet. Why not one with full-colour illustrations by Mario Testino?

and

Atheists, agnostics and empiricists will argue that this blind allegiance to an outmoded belief system, unsupported by any kind of science, is precisely what’s wrong with organised religion. Strictly speaking, it’s true: the numbers don’t stack up. French Vogue’s circulation, at 133,000 a month, is minuscule compared with that of the fortnightly French Elle. American Vogue, at 1.2 million a month, is outsold by the brasher, even breathier and more celebrity encrusted American InStyle (1.7 million). Italian Vogue sells about seven copies, once you discount all the fashion journalists and buyers who get it on expenses.

But faith works according to mysterious laws, chief among which is that it categorically shouldn’t have to withstand close scrutiny, or where’s the faith bit of the equation? It can’t be reduced to something as simplistic as a set of figures of Man’s own devising, otherwise we’d all be running around saying, “Ooh, have you seen what OK! (circulation: 508,000) has to say about The Balmain Shoulder?” Whereas in reality no one gives a stuff what OK! says about anything.