Vogue US Contributing Editor Julia Reed tells WWD today that Hilary Clinton pulled out of a feature and photospread deal in December not only because her camp felt the magazine was "too feminine" and "too elitist" but because they thought she had already "bagged" the female Democratic vote!
Dismissed
Clinton's Communications director Harold Wolfson told Reed, who is also a contributing editor at Newsweek and writes for the New York Times:
"We thought we were going to be in a bigger dogfight. We don't need you anymore."
and the planned Leibowitz photoshoot at the Clintons' Chappaqua, New York, home was cancelled.
Frosty Riposte
Initial reports claimed Clinton's advisors simply thought Vogue too snobby and girly. Anna Wintour responded with an irate Editor's Letter in the February issue of the magazine:
"The notion that a contemporary woman must look mannish in order to be taken seriously as a seeker of power is frankly dismaying. How has our culture come to this?This is America, not Saudi Arabia [...] Political campaigns that do not recognise this are making a serious misjudgement."
Clearly this was not the only serious misjudgement Clinton campaign made. Wolfson's arrogant dismissal of the most influential fashion magazine in the world is frankly reprehensible.
