Vogue readies teens for spending sprees

By Paula Rath
Advertiser Fashion Writer

The first edition is exactly 200 pages and costs $1.50, about half the price of competitors Seventeen, Cosmo Girl and YM.

Editorial direction for the teen version will be overseen by Anna Wintour, grownup Vogue's powerhouse editor. Amy Astley, formerly Vogue's beauty editor, will take the reins on a day-to-day basis as the editor in chief of Teen Vogue.

Teen Vogue positions itself strictly as a magazine for fashion, style and beauty, eschewing romance and relationship advice.

In the February/March 2003 issue, the advertising pages, which number 80 (as compared with Vogue's 200-plus) address acne more than anti-ageing. The dream men featured are the likes of Kieran Culkin rather than Mel Gibson. The micro-mini skirts look, somehow, less "out there" on these pages than on the pages of Vogue.

Yet the point of view and fashion aesthetic are much the same. There are celebrity style profiles, street chic photo spreads, a peek inside the closets of daughters of designers, actresses and politicians, and the ever-popular "Luxe for Less" and "People Are Talking About ... "

Fashion features encompass the twentysomething daughters of 1960s model Twiggy, the college-age great-great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud and teenage daughters of author Danielle Steel.

In the Wall Street Journal, columnist Amy Finnerty said "Vogue will train its fledgling market to focus, without needless sentiment or intellectual curiosity, on what it considers the substantive issues: clothes and cosmetics. In other words, Teen Vogue will be a minor-league training camp for a new generation of high-end consumers. With any luck, they will graduate to major-league Vogue and its obscenely expensive fashions."

The magazine may up the ante when it comes to teen style and spending by placing $450 Christian Louboutin slingbacks, $175 Juicy Couture sweatshirts and $200 Michael Kors peasant blouses on the pages of "her" magazine.