Why Anna Wintour was caught out by the Amazon wedding. Plus: Why are my friends sending me WhatsApps written by ChatGPT?
Change is in the air pals
Unpicking Vogue’s power-dressing problem
What a fortnight it’s been for American Vogue, which unveiled its photo shoot with Amazon bride Lauren Sánchez only the day after its legendary editor-in-chief announced her departure. Was it, people wondered, Anna Wintour’s last stand - her timing an expression, however subtle, of her editorial disquiet?
On balance, probably not. Wintour’s only moving upstairs, not leaving the company. Still, she can’t have been thrilled to see her exit accompanied by quite such criticism:
Of course, the staff at Condé Nast would have guessed the reaction would not necessarily have been positive from every quarter - after all, it was not their first rodeo with the pair, following that hyperrealistic Western shoot in 2023. As it was, any controversy around the bride and groom was briskly skimmed over in the latest copy from interviewer Chloe Malle, tipped to be the new hand at the editorial helm:
Tabloids have breathlessly covered all things bride and wedding, including the extravagant Parisian bachelorette party. The attention has had an edge of judgment, if not outright criticism, and protests have erupted in Venice over Bezos’s wealth and expectations that the event will overwhelm the city (rocket-illustrated signs read “No Space For Bezos”). Yet, “the wedding is extremely intimate,” Sánchez tells me.
Former US Cosmopolitan editor Joanna Coles has also pointed to the fuller shoot’s “subversive” styling – bored-looking maids in the background, toilet rolls visible in the bathroom – as nudging us to look underneath its glitzy surfaces. But, overall, the approach was to focus determinedly on the fashion - much calmer waters than plunging into the politics.
A smiling Sánchez was then released in bridal regalia onto the brand’s socials, with her very own digital cover - read: a photo with the magazine’s masthead shared on its channels. Traditionally, these have been a great way for magazines to cop out from giving talent a print cover that would be on the newsagent stands, keeping them feeling good but well away from that prime, sales-moving space.
But in today’s media landscape, that’s no longer the get-out clause it ever might have been - as many furious commentators made clear.
What had gone wrong? Vogue was only doing what it had done for decades: celebrating power-dressing in its broadest sense, exploring how the rich, connected and influential move through - and up in - the world.
Securing access to fame and power hasn’t always been without risk - long-term staffers may in recent days have been thinking uneasily of Vogue’s flattering 2011 interview with Asma al-Assad, first lady of Syria, for its “Power” issue. A Rose in the Desert, it called her – hitting the newsstands just as her husband’s regime began a brutal crackdown. Within weeks the piece had been scrubbed from the internet.
But, for the most part, it worked very well as a strategy. This recent NYT piece on “The Concorde-and-Caviar Era of Condé Nast, When Magazines Ruled the Earth” joyfully unpicks the lavish spending and society connections on which Condé Nast built its empire. Behind the tales of staff too grand to bother cashing their pay checks and collecting their takeaway orders by company car was the bottom line that, back then, all that largesse paid off.
The company’s namesake, Condé Montrose Nast, was a Gilded Age striver [who] … As America grew more affluent … recognized that class anxiety could be lucratively exploited. As one colleague put it: “He didn’t want a big circulation. He wanted a good one.”
Talking to a small and monied audience who want to feel closer to an even smaller and more monied group can and did work very well as an editorial strategy. Until the digital age arrives - and your audience swells far beyond those paying to read you in print, or even picking your publication up at an airport or salon. Now, your work is being served up on socials to people who may not even have thrown you a follow - which is why Coles suggested this may prove a “tipping point” in media history.
Like that ugly grey carpet underfoot at the Amazon wedding, it can be much easier to not look too closely at what underpins glamour and excess. But the more people watching, the harder it is to ignore everything except the dress on the cover.
Who’s really writing your friends’ texts?
I was catching up with a group WhatsApp when I found it - a nice message, from one friend to another - thoughtful, reassuring, considered, in response to a worry our mutual pal had. But I knew instantly: it certainly wasn’t her voice or tone. It wasn’t her.
Has it happened to you yet? It’s like biting into a bag of nuts and finding a bad one. You’re reading something. It’s holding your interest. Until - what’s that? Something’s off. Hold on, you think… why, I know what this is: it’s AI!
There’s a peculiar cadence to AI-generated copy, similar to the way that LinkedIn bros defined their own ponderously thoughtful style:
Extremely short sentences.
With lots of space - to indicate the weight.
And importance.
Of what they were saying about getting up early.
But AI style’s different. First up, it loves telling you what something isn’t. Then what it is:
It’s not A. It’s B - with bells on.
(Sometimes I think ChatGPT has been gorging itself on M&S marketing copy.)
And then some superlatives, maybe a bit alliterative:
How X.
How Y.
How Z.
The biggest tell of all? Just a tone and cadence that is a little too smooth, mannered, humourless - off. Seriously? It’s hard to prove a negative, but the more you read the more you come across it. And also? You may start to notice a lot of unnecessary questions, just like this. Because ChatGPT loves a question? Yes, it does.
Sprinkle in a load of em dashes — some people aren’t even bothering to extract them as they copy and paste, but these will surely be the easiest and quickest tells for the AI overlords to remove — and your cake is baked. (And just for the record, those are human-made em dashes, to make my point).
Stumbling across it - that WhatsApp comment that struck a dud note, the social media replies that sound oddly chemical, the tide of AI-generated posts for weird Facebook accounts that get thousands of likes - sometimes you just know it’s LLM-generated. You just can’t prove it.
I keep thinking of when, years ago, I went to see a play in the West End that was being touted as possibly written by Shakespeare - the bard’s lost work! But my excitement turned quickly to boredom. Every instantly forgettable line was missing the poetry and magic we know him for. I couldn’t even tell you what the plot was actually about. But I would absolutely bet money that it was from the pen of a poor imitator.
As for that WhatsApp, I didn’t say a word to my friend - it was not really my business if she’d decided in the middle a busy day to get AI assistance to hurry up a soothing message. And technically, I couldn’t be sure anyway. But it’s interesting to realise it won’t just be the workaday writing AI will be tidying up - the reports, memos, legal drafts - but so many aspects of our lives that are already being rewritten.
p.s. Talking of what’s in vogue - have you heard of the term bachelor’s handbag? It’s the new meal on the go - bag a rotisserie chicken, and wander the streets munching your protein straight from the carcass. Healthy but horrifying.
p.p.s. Anna. Tina. Graydon - the triumvirate of editors who ruled the golden age of magazines, and continue to shape the conversation in their different ways. Vanity Fair’s former EIC Graydon Carter has been sharing his views on this very platform with iD, notably (h/t Farrah Storr):
Once an editor, always an editor. So, I thought I’d do a little bit of research at the end of this post. What’s your dream post - short and sweet, or a meaty few thousand? Do you always get to the end of a post or are you a sampler like me? I’d love to know.
Haha the bachelor handbag is a term I've recently come across, but I didn't think men were eating the chicken straight off the bones like that. I thought it was a handbag because they were carrying it home. Either way... I'm on board XD