Democrats desperate to convince vital swing-voters that theirs is not an effete party of snooty coastal elites might be best advised to steer eyes away from the pages of Vogue.
And, in particular, from a breathless July feature introducing readers to the magazine’s new ‘political correspondent’.
Bob Woodward of Watergate fame, perhaps? CNN anchor Dana Bash? Or maybe veteran political strategist Donna Brazile?
No. Vogue was welcoming Jack Schlossberg, John F. Kennedy’s only grandson and, more important for the fashion Bible, a Gen-Z dreamboat who lights up TikTok just as his grandpa once caused the hearts of so many ’60s women to skip a beat.
Vogue readers were spared any evidence of Schlossberg’s extensive CV in political journalism for the simple reason that he doesn’t have one.
Instead, they were invited to drool over his familiar Kennedy traits – all that patrician New England breeding, private education and chiseled good looks.
Democrats desperate to convince vital swing-voters that theirs is not an effete party of snooty coastal elites might be best advised to steer eyes away from a breathless July feature in Vogue. The mag was welcoming Jack Schlossberg as its new ‘political correspondent’.
Not for Vogue and its latest signing a few photos of him grilling politicians in Congress or scribbling away at a White House press conference.
Its glossy photoshoot pictured Schlossberg pressing his swoonsome facial features onto the screen of a Vogue office photocopier – then lying sprawled on the floor surrounded by a sea of photos of his own face.
It was the perfect narcissistic image for an ageing fashion magazine trying to elbow its way into social-media relevance.
At least the clownish Schlossberg — the 31-year-old son of Caroline Kennedy and artist Edwin Schlossberg, who was educated at a top Manhattan private school followed by Yale and Harvard — didn’t waste time pretending he was going to bring journalistic rigor or political impartiality to his new role.
‘I’m a silly goose — a silly goose who’s trying, just trying, to get the truth out there,’ he declared to Vogue. ‘I still think, at the end of the day, voting for Democrats is going to be the right way to go.’
‘I’m worried,’ he continued. ‘I feel like things will actually go badly in daily life if Trump wins.’
A recent Town & Country magazine profile suggested his friends complain they wished he’d grow up and stop playing the dilettante. But John Bouvier Kennedy Schlossberg shows no sign of listening.
Not a correspondent so much as a comrade of the Democrats – although he’s hardly alone in the US media on that front – he seems determined to plough the same political furrow as the rest of the Kennedys (aside, of course, from his Trump-backing cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who he has dismissed as a ‘prick’).
The Democrats, of course, are the party his family once ruled.
Since his July signing, and with the election looming, Schlossberg has penned just six articles for Vogue.
Short and shockingly banal, they appear to be aimed at a readership more comfortable scrolling through Schlossberg’s TikTok page. Meanwhile, his political musings have provided such incisive observations as ‘remember that federal agencies do amazing things’, ‘Republicans are united behind their nominee’ and ‘no one actually knows what will happen’.
Undeterred, Vogue dutifully ran Schlossberg’s gushing address to the 2024 Democratic National Convention in August and posted a series of pictures to the magazine’s Instagram account showing the young ‘political correspondent’ hobnobbing with leading Dems like Nancy Pelosi and showing off his Kamala Harris friendship bracelets.
Since his signing, Schlossberg has penned just six articles for Vogue. Undeterred, the mag has dutifully posted a series of pictures to its Instagram account showing the young ‘political correspondent’ hobnobbing with leading Dems like Nancy Pelosi.
Anna Wintour (pictured with Michelle Obama in 2014) has long used Vogue as a vehicle for hobby horses and has never made her Democrat sympathies any secret in an industry that is also solidly blue.
Yet it’s difficult to think of a previous election in which she has allowed Vogue to become such a naked cheerleader for the party. (Pictured: Melania and Donald Trump with Wintour in 2005)
Chloe Malle, editor of Vogue.com, admitted that she saw his appointment as an opportunity to motivate the magazine’s readers to vote.
‘We all know the stakes of this election and it is critical to Vogue that we do all we can to get our audience motivated to vote,’ she said — though some will surely wonder whether a magazine so often accused of being style-over-content couldn’t have come up with a less-cliched solution to the challenge of voter turnout than dredging up yet another good-looking member of the Kennedy clan.’
Even the New York Times has suggested that some of Schlossberg’s social media videos, in which he patronizingly imitates ordinary working Americans, have done the Democrats few favors.
In one, he imitates a foul-mouthed Italian American. In another, he impersonates an older Jewish man screaming: ‘Who is going to protect my money?’
The Times said that Schlossberg’s ‘hackneyed stereotypes’ and ‘heavily accented caricatures’ had clearly insulted some people.
If only Vogue and its resident ice queen editor, Anna Wintour, could ‘stick to fashion’, say insiders.
The all-powerful ‘Nuclear Wintour’, as she’s nicknamed, has long used Vogue as a vehicle for hobby horses and has never made her Democrat sympathies any secret in an industry that is also solidly blue.
Yet it’s difficult to think of a previous election in which she has allowed Vogue to become such a naked cheerleader for the party.
After Vogue endorsed Kamala Harris (just two days after Joe Biden announced he was stepping aside in July), Wintour marshalled 16 US-based designers — including Thom Browne, Gabriela Hearst and Willy Chavarria — into a collective called ‘Designers for Democracy’ which created pro-Dem clothing such as a T-shirt declaring that ‘America Is An Idea’.
She also organized a ‘non-partizan’ (though of course it was) ‘Fashion for Our Future’ march through Manhattan during September’s Fashion Week. The surprise guest was Jill Biden.
The other not-so-surprise guest on the recent digital cover for Vogue was Kamala Harris, alongside an inevitable glowing endorsement: ‘The candidate for our times’.
Harris first appeared on the cover of the February 2021 print edition, wearing her trademark Converse sneakers — a decision that sparked angry complaints that the magazine was patronizing a woman of color.
This time round, the editors took no chances, making Kamala look entirely presidential and keeping her footwear out of shot.
The cover proved no less embarrassing, however: it later emerged the photoshoot had taken place on October 7, a day when the rest of the world was marking the anniversary of the Hamas massacre in Israel.
Earlier this year, Wintour was holding private fundraisers for Biden and put his wife Jill on the cover for the third time.
After Vogue endorsed Kamala Harris, she also organized a ‘non-partizan’ (though of course it was) ‘Fashion for Our Future’ march through Manhattan during September’s Fashion Week. The surprise guest was Jill Biden.
Harris first appeared on the cover of the February 2021 print edition, wearing her trademark Converse sneakers – a decision that sparked angry complaints that the magazine was patronizing a woman of color.
Earlier this year, Wintour was holding private fundraisers for Biden and put his wife Jill on the cover for the third time. (Pictured: Wintour with actor Tom Hiddleston and Jill in September).
The August issue — released just days before Biden withdrew the 2024 race — featured a fawning profile of Jill dressed in a £3,900 Ralph Lauren coat-dress and under an imperious (if wildly un-prescient) headline: ‘We will decide our future’.
At the time, Tina Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, noted that an appearance on the Vogue cover is a ‘rite of passage’ for first ladies.
(It isn’t a ‘rite of passage’ for all first ladies, however. Melania Trump — at whose 2005 wedding to Donald, Wintour was a guest — was snubbed while in the White House.)
Another magazine industry veteran, Janice Min, now running Ankler Media, said of Jill Biden cover to the New York Times: ‘It’s not a great look when the President refuses to give news outlets one-on-one interviews but his wife has her third Vogue cover during an election where voters are saying over and over again it is all about the economy.’
Min went on: ‘In an era where trust is in question, and Donald Trump is telling people the system is rigged and people believe him, I have to wonder about the wisdom of speaking through a publication edited by one of Joe Biden’s biggest fund-raisers.’
Such skepticism raises another important question: why Vogue and Wintour allow themselves to be accused of cheapening the brand by appearing to be such desperate toadies for the Democrat cause.
But, with its once-imposing print circulation now in troubling decline, ‘desperation’ — as in desperation to remain relevant — rather sums up the magazine’s behavior of late.
Jack Schlossberg’s most recent election missive for Vogue is a breathless puff piece about the brilliance of Harris’s ‘groundbreaking’ digital campaign after getting – naturally – a briefing from two of its leading lights.
‘Young people will — and always do — play a critical role in electing a president,’ says Schlossberg.
As it happens, it’s a statement that could hardly be less true as most young Americans don’t vote at all.
So, will Team Vogue make the difference this time round? Kamala Harris shouldn’t hold her breath.