Coddington, with her incredibly cool bright red mane, was the real star of the 2009 documentary The September Issue. But The New York Times report on the creative director’s exit from Vogue delicately implies that the magazine’s leadership has been stagnant for a long time, and is packed with old people. Coddington is 74, editor Anna Wintour is 66, and they’ve both held their titles at Vogue since 1988.
Coddington did not use email or computers. That’s too bad; it could have helped Vogue feel less stale. And it has felt stale for a long time. Its ideas about modern women are dated—though the median reader age is 38, just about every issue contains an article about plastic surgery. Here’s a recent slideshow on horses in Vogue through the years. Coddington is “a great celebrator of the fantasy of fashion,” the Times notes, but that fantasy so often was some form of creepy princess. Maybe sometimes modern women want to fantasize about being something other than a tuberculosis patient in ruffles.
If you want to find fun and new and fresh ideas about fashion, follow the right models and a few teens on Instagram. The pictures are tiny, but the ideas are bigger.