I recently had the mixed fortune of landing an interview at Vogue, an opportunity that was at once a pipe dream and a nightmare. After sweating through several preliminary screenings with frosty and uninterested assistant editors, I was brought to the Supreme Judge (let’s call her “M”) who would ultimately conclude whether or not I was Vogue caliber.

In short, I learned precious little in this interview that I had not already deduced from The September Issue. I was somewhat ill-prepared and embarrassingly incapable of articulating my thoughts when assailed with snarky comments about my resume and senior thesis. But I was nonetheless amused by some of M’s “demands” for her future assistant — that he or she be “very talented in many ways” (talk about a platitude) and “extraordinarily knowledgeable regarding politics and current events,” so that they would never run the risk of printing “old news.”  This struck me as somewhat odd, considering that Vogue is a monthly publication about fashion. When I mentioned that I read V Magazine, one of Vogue’s competitors, M all but yawned with boredom and claimed she had never heard of it.

And so the realization of a dream devolved into farce, down to my conversation with the mignon who escorted me off the premises (she hoped I would have the chance to “enjoy the beautiful weather we’re having!”). Perhaps the new Vogue assistant will be “talented in many ways,” whatever that means.  If she can stand by the credo that fashion is the paramount virtue of an enriched and sophisticated life, she just might be the next Anna Wintour.

- Lizzie Crocker

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