Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.
In a whopper of an article, the Times analyzes the concept of magazines acting like retailers. The culprits: GQ's partnership with Park & Bond, Esquire's push for Cladmen.com, and Vogue's venture with Moda Operandi. So is this just double dipping—making money off of ad sales and commission cuts? Or is it because retailers are trying to be like magazines: "[Esquire EIC David] Granger said that many magazines were making similar moves because retailers were starting to move in on their turf. The new Barneys catalogs, photographed by big names like Juergen Teller, look more like an issue of W, with clothes shown on New York celebrities, and shopping online at Net-a-Porter looks more like flipping through the pages of Harper's Bazaar." [NYT]