Reality check: the real cost of fashion magazines
A copy of fashion bible Vogue magazine sets consumers back $8.50 but according to a US researcher buying the fashion on offer could be closer to $US148,909. Ouch.
New York City journalist Noah Veltman calculated the prices of every product featured on the editorial pages of 10 major US magazines, including Vogue, InStyle, GQ, O the Oprah Magazine and Esquire from June 2014.
Why did he do it? He had a bad bout of fashion envy every time he opened a copy of a glossy magazine and he wanted to find out how much the gear being flogged would actually set him back.
His tally found that the glossies’ editorial content ranged from $US15,000 to $US148,909, but then the Quartz website went ahead and added in all the fashion that was excluded from Veltman’s study and found a further $US250,000 to Vogue’s tally, taking it to $US343, 368.
A quick addition of one page of Marie Claire Australia’s Fast Track style spread in the July 2014 issue came to $4738 (excluding the shoes, jewellery, bag and sunglasses also pictured). If the numbers equate to all Australian fashion magazines, and the average wage amongst full time workers is $72,000, it’s fair to see most people aren’t taking on the advice of the fashionistas.
Here’s Veltman’s findings and below ( in pink) are Quartz’s.
Quartz