There’s a black person on the cover of almost every Conde Nast magazine title I see these days -- when I see magazines these days -- and, while I’m not knocking it, the irony that the media juggernaut’s acknowledgment of ethnic diversity comes barely discernible through whistled death gasps is not lost on many folks, as what was once the cool--kid table in culture, fashion and lifestyle markets is now the hospice ward.
Print media, as we all know, doesn’t have long.
I was hired to work at Conde Nast when the company’s old offices at 350 Madison Avenue were at the center and the height of all things relevant in popular culture, from middle- to high-brow, from mainstream to too-cool-for-school. The 90s were, of course, print magazine media’s equivalent to advertising’s Mad Men era. And on the same street, no less.
This was 1997 and I was fresh out of the University of Michigan. A lifetime of Conde Nast, Hearst, Fairchild and Time Warner paging and a degree from a top school made me feel nothing less than confident about-- if not entitled to -- landing a job at one of these companies, despite hardly ever seeing anyone who looked like me or came from anywhere similar to my working-class, solidly African-Amercan Detroit, Michigan, upbringing profiled in their perfumed-scented pages -- or in the noticeably patrician surnames of so many illustrious bylines.
In fact, quite the opposite. A “nerdy,” alternative-music listening, preppy-then-grunge styled black kid whose favorite contemporary novelists where Bret Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney, I found the fallen aristocrat longreads inVanity Fairas sumptuous as souffle, the lifestyle stories by James Truman and Anka Radakovich so sharp-witted and winkingly hip that I fell asleep many nights imagining my future adulthood as a life portrayed in the pages and party-snaps of early-90s Detailsmagazine. I loved the book reviews in Voguefor being so visceral and smart at the same time; they were so well-written to me that I must have been the only black guy under 25 anywhere near my zip code who had ever heard of, let alone read, a Siri Hustvedt novel. Even the Contributors Pages of these magazines seemed exciting. All these young, Caesar-haircutted bright-young-things photographed in back-lit studios in their minimalist fitted black t-shirts who traveled the world interviewing fashion stars and international jet-setters were, well, to me they were light-years more interesting than any rap star or Hollywood ceiling-breaker on the covers of theEbonyand Jet magazines that were far more popular in my community. I wanted to be one of them. I saw myself in them. They didn’t look like me, of course, but I was absolutely sure they liked New Order albums and considered Donna Tartt’s The Secret Historya masterpiece. So when I was hired as a contract editorial assistant for their archives department at Conde Nast I couldn’t believe my luck. Yet, at the same time, I thought I deserved it. I did the work.
And while I lasted long enough to get another contract (this time forGourmet magazine, in their research library), no amount of applying for full-time work at one of the titles I actually read and wanted to work for was getting the attention of the HR gatekeepers. Yet, somehow I was never
insecure about being the only person of any color -- let alone black --that I noticed in the gilded corridors of 350 Mad (I was, after all, one of only two black guys in a fraternity at the University of Michigan) where I dressed, spoke, read, and dined the part of a hip, smart young New Yorker, or so I certainly tried. After a while, I was starting to wonder what all those stylish young guys I saw going to the floors of GQ, Vanity Fair, The New Yorkerand Voguehad that I didn’t -- besides, well, a lot less pigment and very different hair.
After two years of being slighted, unrenewed, ignored, and even openly snubbed by my peers and superiors, I left. I tried other houses and none hired me. So I waited tables like the rest of the New York dreaming-class until finally someone in advertising let me in and I somehow cultivated a precarious career as a copywriter in an industry not much better in the diversity regard but a little more corporate-regulated.
And now, at the end of print, black lives matter more to both media venues-- magazines and advertising -- than I’ve ever seen.. What a time it would be for me if I weren’t 20 years older and you didn’t need a Caesar haircut or a Roman profile to get on the Contributors Page of Vanity Fairin the late-90s.
When The New York Times published the article “A Reckoning at Conde Nast” (Edmund Lee, June 13, 2020) this summer, I had to catch my breath at the pulled caption under the headline:“It’s hard to be a person of color at this company,’ a staff member said. In response to an uprising, Anna Wintour and the chief executive, Roger Lynch, offered apologies.”
Do I even want to read this?I wondered. I had to brace myself. Like stumbling into the lover who once jilted you all loved-up with their new beau, I didn’t know whether to look away or savor every closely examined nuance. I knew it was going to hurt but I needed to read it.
I’m glad I did. Because of my experience at that company -- or, perhaps, what I hadn’t experienced, hadn’t been allowed to experience, as I took it -- and the closure I came to from the article, I decided that, obviously, publishing needed to change, and I was glad I wasn’t the only one who thought so. Culture media, now overwhelmingly digital, upgraded daily, and unapologetically black culture-influenced, is in the midst of an inclusivity Zeitgeist. It might have been cooler, a little more sleek before, but I still want to be part of it.
When Vanity Fair’s relatively recent Graydon Carter replacement at the top of the masthead, Radhika Jones, of South Asian descent, hired Ta Nehisi Coates to guest-edit the recent September issue this year, of all issues, of all years, I knew this was my moment to strike. Seeing the late Breonna Taylor, as painted by Amy Sherald (whose unforgettable Michelle Obama portrait hangs in the gallery of all of our memories forever), on its cover in these heady times was like having my own private Wakanda moment. Yet, like any newly pioneered frontier, being late to the party is almost as no-fun as being too early. It doesn’t take a lot of mental wrestling in the age of Insta-everything to wonder why this couldn’t have happened 20 years ago.
But it’s happening now and now is all we’ve got. Yes, I’m older. I’m not the bright young thing. Expensed lunches at Sant Ambroeus and Balthazar (I waited tables at both post-Conde) while in the unlined and gravity-defying prime of my early-30s, flanked and known to the moguls and models in my midst, would not in my future memoirs be-- at least not from the perspective of sitting in the booth. But I still want it. Media has always and is still changing, and in order to find my place within its post-print, pro-diversity renaissance I can't hold grudges. I’m hoping for a midlife youth infusion of inspiration, curiosity, and an overall personal renaissance of my own. I’m ready to make my own Contributors Page, if you don’t mind.
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