It's All in the Details

Some distressing news courtesy of Gawker.

My fave cover. ever.

If you're not a Conde Nast devotee like myself, you may not have heard this, but the publisher has recently hired McKinsey consultants to come into the offices and do a drastic overhaul in order to make the magazines more cost-effective. For a long time, the luxury mags at Conde were able to maintain huge budgets partly because the same publishing company had a pretty stable income from newspapers sales. Of course, newspapers at this point are starting to look more and more like cave-paintings: unappealing, outdated, and you can see the same thing online for free.

So now the decades-long media/fashion/celebrity blitz seems to be slowing down in the Conde building, and all the perks of working there are dropping away. The majority of the receptionists have already been laid off, and the McK consultants haven't even given their final report yet. Gawker thinks big-spender Vogue will have it's budget seriously curtailed. Apparently Details is also in a difficult position, since the consultants are looking to eliminate any redundancy, and as Belonsky writes, "Details should be sweating in its Italian boots, because it's basically a younger-looking carbon copy of GQ." I would qualify that. Younger, and slightly gayer.

I interned at Details two years ago, and it was a pretty fantastic experience. I could see how someone could consider the magazine 'redundant', existing as it does in the shadow of GQ, but for my money I'd always buy a Details first. Maybe they should take a few tips from Nylon Guys and tackle the hipster market.