Print Isn’t Dead, Vogue Is Just Boring

This week, I stopped by Casa Magazines in the West Village because I was on the hunt. I

was looking for the latest edition of Vogue – the Met Gala edition. The magazine printed four

different covers, each with a different co-chair for the Met Gala. Pharrell Williams (the creative

director of Louis Vuitton), A$AP Rocky (the newly-appointed creative director of Ray-Ban),

Coleman Domingo (the best-dressed male actor on the red carpet), and Lewis Hamilton (the

best-dressed driver on the F1 circuit). I had my eye out for the Coleman Domingo cover. The

tiny store was stacked floor to ceiling with glossy titles - Pharell’s cover immediately caught my

eye. Browsing the stack of magazines in the middle of the space, I leaned over the pile of Vogue

and spotted Coleman. I snatched the copy and instinctively flipped it open as the owners chatted

on the phone behind the register.

“Are they different? On the inside, I mean?” my friend who had joined me on this

journey asked.

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

I thumbed through to the latter half of the magazine, looking for the feature article.

Instead of the standard, lengthy profile on the cover star, there were four shorter pieces. “I think

they are the same,” I updated.

I skimmed through the pages and was reminded of the reality of a Vogue magazine in

2025. Ads filled the pages of this “special edition” magazine.

“I think there are maybe two articles in this whole magazine,” I said out loud,

disappointed.

Does Vogue think they can get away with occupying over 50% of their book space with

ads? Well, they do. While recognizing the challenges of producing a print magazine in a digital

era, one can’t deny that content and quality have shifted. The purpose of Vogue in the late 19 th

and early 20 th century was to report and document the social scene of the upper class. At some

point, advertisements became the focal point, and the magazine’s cultural value was diluted.

Sure, the journalism and editorial shoots still exist within the publication, but it’s nowhere near

comparable to Vogue, which is responsible for its reputability today.

When I think back to magazines in their inception, I transport myself to the print archives

of The Saturday Evening Post. I spent a summer back in my hometown as an editorial intern at

The Saturday Evening Post, a 200-year-old magazine with offices just outside downtown

Indianapolis. I remember this summer because it was my first taste of real-world experience in

the publishing space. I was exposed to unique writing styles and witnessed the process of putting

together a publication before its print deadline.

It was my first week at The Post when I was introduced to Jeff – the magazine’s

historian. On my second day in the office, he waved me and the other intern over and told us we

would get a tour of the magazine archives that day. We followed him to the far end of the office,

where he pushed open a door into what felt like another world. The room was dimly lit by a few

warm-toned lights scattered throughout the room. Dozens of bookshelves lined the walls, where

every single edition of The Saturday Evening Post (and the other titles owned by the publisher)

was stored in plastic slips like the plastic garment bags you pick up your dry cleaning.

It was dark, but there was a magic to the space and a curiosity that ached in my stomach.

Starting with the most recent editions, Jeff slowly guided us down each of the aisles as he told us

the history of the publication. He pulled out his favorites and some of the notable covers painted

by the artist Norman Rockwell. He pulled out editions of retired magazines and issues published

during the most infamous moments in the last 200 years - the World Wars, the Watergate

Scandal, etc. Beyond being a reference source for journalists and historians like Jeff, that archive

also shows the intricate history of print magazines.

To understand a fashion magazine like Vogue today, you need to understand the timeline

of magazines. When you look chronologically, it’s easy to pinpoint the ways print has changed.

For one, many early magazines and newspapers would publish short stories or poems in their

magazines. Take, for example, the author Arthur Conan Doyle. He penned the Sherlock Holmes

stories, which were initially published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual and The Strand magazine.

On my tour of The Saturday Evening Post archives, Jeff showed us editions with early stories by

Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and more. This practice has largely

been abandoned except by a couple of publications, like The Saturday Evening Post and The

New Yorker.

Vogue introduced its first photographic cover in 1933. It started its online website in 2010

and introduced a new Vogue app in 2016. It underwent a major design shift in its cover designs,

and its 1989 cover of Madonna marked a significant shift from models to celebrities as cover

stars for the publication. The changes that Vogue has made over the years are innumerable. Each

of these shifts has been evolutionarily in its efforts to stay relevant year after year. However, the

most poignant shift is one that Vogue might have never seen coming: its decline in status. For

years, especially during the hay days of print fashion magazines, American Vogue was

considered the industry leader, with the most subscribers and prestigious fashion journalism roles

being held here. But like many print publications, it has struggled to stay relevant with the

digital-first culture and digital-first competitors racing to be the next big thing.

You can’t ignore the challenges that print fashion magazines collectively face in 2025.

Digitalization poses a unique challenge for magazines in their necessity to adapt to a reader base

that grew up reading articles online. How do you adapt? “You go fully digital.” This is the

answer that many publications have decided is the best solution, as print subscriber numbers

have been on a steady decline. Digital-first publications like The Cut and Business of Fashion do

not consider print magazines as the foundation of their journalism but their digital websites

instead. However, for the first time, The Cut has decided to begin releasing print editions this

year. Why would they do that now if print is considered “dead?”

Walking to class with a friend a few months back, we fleshed out these ideas. To us, we

wouldn’t describe print as dead but as different. It’s evolved in a way that some magazines

haven’t fully picked up on, and I see it evolving in two different ways. If you open up one of The

Cut’s print editions, there is an aura of nostalgia that hits with its revisit to print and the type of

content it includes in its publications. In addition to including feature articles and quick reviews,

they’ve decided to include fun quizzes or gift guides. It feels reminiscent of the late 90s and Y2K

magazines. It’s clear they rely on young readers’ obsessions with Y2K fashion and the nostalgia

of older generations as a driving factor in how they designed their book. This is a recognition of

the trending zeitgeist and honing in on it, which is a marketing strategy that has the potential to

appeal to a significant number of Gen Z and Gen Alpha readers while also appealing to an older

readership base, which would look at this type of magazine in a warm, nostalgic kind of way. It

is brilliantly crafted and a very different strategy from Vogue, which has been largely reluctant to

jump on nostalgia as a significant part of its strategy. They need to be treating their books not as

a means of pushing journalism (because that is just not a viable means anymore) but instead as a

marketing tool.

Now, look at Office Magazine, a print publication founded in 2014 by two creatives from

Denmark. If you situate Vogue and Office Magazine next to each other, it’s night and day. Or,

more accurately, it’s youth culture and old guard. Office Magazine takes risks and is innovative

in styling and creative direction for its bi-annual prints. The magazine challenges the repetitive

nature of prints like Vogue and leans into a subculture to target specific demographics,

effectively making for loyal readers. Office, too, leans into nostalgia by renting vintage pieces

from archives for shoots, and it actively incorporates film photography as a revitalized yet

nostalgic technology.

Print isn’t dead. Vogue is just boring. For years, the fashion industry has leaned on youth

culture and subcultures in order to drive innovation and continued success. It’s time traditional

fashion prints start enacting those same practices if they want to survive.