Image courtesy of stylefrizz.com.

Remember, remember, the Vogue of September. Ahhh… Likely many of you have read the plethora of clichés surrounding the relationship between September and fashion: “it’s fashion’s January,” “September Vogue is the fashion Bible,” “it’s the start of the new season”… Yes, I ran out after two so the last one is true, but still. Hopefully you’re driftin’ my way.

I look forward to my September issue each year with an anticipation and desire unmerited by any other object (barring my favourite ice cream, which would immediately ignite a similar lust). (And R.J. Cutler’s new documentary, the September Issue, which comprises the newest addition to this list.)

Now, as much as George Orwell and William Strunk, Jr. would kill me for this, I have to ‘fess up: I love it so much largely because it’s long. Yes, good writing is not about length. In fact, it’s often about the opposite, as advocated by the two aforementioned editors. And the less I write in these blog posts, the better they probably are — an issue I struggle with upon each’s writing.

Yet Vogue just gets better with length. As much as its staffers and contents guffaw at girth, the magazine itself benefits from an increase in it. The articles and editorials don’t increase in length enough to feel overextended, and I don’t find the extra advertising pages to water the magazine down since I look at them as small works of art unto themselves. And there’s something beautifully communistic about the whole thing: for the same $5.99 as every other issue, I get way more pages! (I could say they’re overcharging the other 11 months of the year, but I know Vogue wouldn’t do that to me.)

Sure, I love each issue — irrespective of its length — for Vogue’s formidable fashion editorials, and both the photography and modeling showcased therein; as well as for the impeccable auditing of designer collections and global style trends; all on top of my favourite feature: the legitimately well-crafted stories that have little do with fashion, but illustrate the writing talent Vogue is capable of drawing in, and which increase the breadth of its coverage and relevance, furthering my flaming desire to one day live in its pages.

But for now all I can do is stop writing before my feelings of inadequacy overcome me, and supplant them by carrying my issue around with me wherever I go, as if its prolonged attachment to my body somehow increases my own worth. And, while I’m not writing, immerse myself in its pages and, therein, forget all my problems.

Oh-oh-oh,

September Vo-oh-ogue,

How you make my troubles go away

(An ode to September Vogue).
Not my best work, but it is true.