Anne Hathaway and Mario Testino Star in Great Gatsby, US Vogue Celebration of America's Upper Class

New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn and US Vogue editor Anna Wintour are colliding again, this time because Horn has taken on Wintour’s pet project, New York Fashion Week’s ‘Fashion’s Night Out’:

“I hope it doesn’t go on. I don’t want it to continue (says Horyn) … You know, we’re a nation of shoppers. That’s how people spend their time, shopping online, shopping in stores, acquiring. And I feel like we perpetuate that with Fashion’s Night Out. What are you really celebrating? Not art or great books. You’re celebrating shopping.”

Such sentiments hardly endear Cathy Horyn to her many critics, especially at a time when the American fashion and retail industries want to hear the cash register ringing. We could make Anna Wintour into a patron saint, saying that she’s only trying to jumpstart the American economy. But can she? And is all this materialism actually good for America?

Do Middle American Fashionistas Still Buy the Dream?

It’s overly simplistic to make the discussion about rich and poor, although America is fast becoming a two-tier economic society, with no viable middle class. We have the very rich, the working poor and the disappearing middle.

These Wintour-blessed images celebrate a transfer of American wealth over the last decade, like none we’ve ever seen in America. The vast majority of American economists are seriously worried that we won’t have well-paid workers to buy stuff and grow America’s economy except at a tepid pace.

Anna Wintour’s US Vogue continues to confound us with their ‘obtuse’ — to use Cathy Horyn’s Wintour-targeted adjective — vision of contemporary America. We understand Anna Wintour desire to whip up the shopping troops but does she really believe readers are inspired by this editorial?

From our perch, we digest global media, not only US publications. The explosion of young, artistic, image questioning and culturally rich online media we predicted in our last Anna Wintour essay is happening. God bless her, because Anna Wintour couldn’t make a much more direct visual statement about her belief in American materialism.

As a leader among Smart Sensuality women, I swear that Wintour’s long-term values will not carry the day, even in the luxury market.

I’ve never read Wintour express anything but the very American, late 20th century Modern values point-of-view that we are defined by the clothes on our back. Those of us make $75,000 a year aspire to look like we made $750,000. We charge to our limits, overspend and refuse to read the fine print, in pursuit of this dream.

In Anna Wintour’s world, we are a nation of materialistic wannabes. It’s all very Ralph Lauren, Great Gatsby, you, too, can live this rich life, if only you work hard.

In Praise of Real Philanthropists

To be fair to Anna Wintour, CharityBuzz calls her “an unrivaled icon in the fashion industry and an incredible philanthropist, raising millions for some of the world’s most important social causes through her ingenuity and dedication.”

Wintour’s philanthropic achievements include launching the CFDA/Vogue Fund to encourage and support undiscovered designers, mobilizing T-shirt sales after Sept. 11, 2001 attack to benefit the Twin Towers Fund, raising millions for The Costume Institute through the Met Gala Ball as a trustee for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and acting as a key fundraiser for AIDS charities by holding 7^th on Sale events throughout New York City to raise $10 million.  She has also made social responsibility a priority for Vogue; in 2003, she was instrumental in Vogue’s establishment of beauty salons in war-torn Kabul.  And this year, Wintour auctioned a week-long Vogue internship on charitybuzz to raise an astounding $42,500 for the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights! via CharityBuzz

Are Anna Wintour’s beauty salons still operating in Kabul? No. Looking at the movie trailer, the Americans seem doe-eyed about liberating Kabul and the Afghan women, who desperately need help still. I don’t fault the beauty parlor initiative but I am symbolically haunted by it.

When I look at these new images of Anne Hathaway, lensed by Mario Testino for Vogue US, November 2010 issue, I hear Anna Wintour insisting that Vogue is ‘of the people’ and she appeals to her American audience on a wide scale.

A majority of Americans at every income level believes that this editorial is tasteless at this moment in oru economic history. It reads like Republicans who say that America’s unemployed aren’t serious about getting a job.

Some comments about the Mario Testino photos are that they are beautiful but of a faded, deadened sort. When I saw them, they reminded me of Ralph Lauren brand imagery and photos I’ve used to make the point that America’s fashion patriarchy sometimes reminds me of the robber barons.

America’s Fashion Elite Help Fight Breast Cancer, Ralph Lauren Style

Who am I to criticize Ralph Lauren’s Pink Pony campaign and support for curing breast cancer? This is a dreadful disease affecting one in eight American women during her lifetime. Yet I can’t help feeling that breast cancer has become a rallying cry for ‘living the life’, Ralph Lauren style.

If you are the highest bidder, you and a guest will have the pleasure of lunching with Nacho Figueras, the Argentinian polo icon and face of the Ralph Lauren Black collection, at the U.S. Open at the International Polo Club. More treats await you: three nights at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, spa treatments, a round of golf and a $1000 shopping experience at the Ralph Lauren store at the Breakers.

Anne Wintour is also on the scene, again doing good work for women.

Fashionistas who pony up $10,000 will get a one-on-one meeting with the queen of American fashion, a tour of Vogue’s editorial offices and “access to the magazine’s infamous fashion closet.”

There is so much more that’s part of the Ralph Lauren Pink Pony auction, I can only share a few of the details. You can snag a seat at the Fall 2011 Ralph Lauren fashion show or — better yet — have your dog star in a Ralph Lauren ad. (details via Hannah Elliott at Forbes.com )

More Pink Pony Opulence

There’s also a weekend getaway with three friends at Ralph Lauren’s Jamaican villa. It includes tennis lessons and a yoga session near the Round Hill estate, which has been featured in editorials of House & Garden and Architectural Digest. One bidder will get a private tour of Ralph Lauren private car collection for an estimated donation of $150,000. 

The Pink Pony campaign rallies funds for breast cancer, but it’s as big a branding event for Ralph Lauren as the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show is for America’s biggest lingerie brand.

To consulting clients, I advise that this brand DNA is dated. It rings very hollow in the midst of such misery and present questioning of America’s current economic values at home and abroad.

There’s only one thought that went through my mind when I read the details of the Pink Pony auction, and got aroused by the thought of lunching with Nacho Figueras, after watching the Mario Testino, Vogue US photos of Anne Hathaway for the November 2010 issue.

It’s called ‘They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?’And it’s not pretty.

Images via FGR

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Vogue’s Grace Coddington: A Woman Whose ‘Brand’ Is Positioned for the Future