Vanity Fair: It's not just a name, it is a way of life .
This week, Vanity Fair named Radhika Jones as its new editor-in-chief. Which is good news! She is very smart and also a woman of color, and you would both of those would be worth celebrating. However, instead of walking into a welcoming office waiting to greet her with open arms, Jones walked into what appears to have been a high school cafeteria.
WWD observed one of the company’s fashion editors in candid conversation with industry peers remarking not on the context of Jones’ first visit, but rather the outfit she wore.
“She seemed nervous. The outfit was interesting ,” the staffer noted. According to the fashion editor — who omitted Jones’ admirable literary accomplishments from conversation — the incoming editor wore a navy shiftdress strewn with zippers, a garment deemed as “iffy” at best.
Jones’ choice of hosiery proved most offensive, according to the editor. For the occasion, Jones had chosen a pair of tights — not in a neutral black or gray as is common in the halls of Vogue — but rather a pair covered with illustrated, cartoon foxes.
Oh. The horror.
I'm sorry, Condé-Nasties, but those tights sound AWESOME. My bet, actually, is that they are Anthropologie's Fox Trot tights, which I would immediately purchase were they not out of stock.
Even Queen Bee Anna Wintour got in on the glaring action.
The animal caricatures may have also been too much for Vogue editor in chief and Condé Nast artistic director Anna Wintour, who is said to have fixed one of her trademark stoic glares upon Jones’ hosiery throughout the duration of the staff meeting.
I am almost surprised that she did not require Jones to Skype into the meeting from the girl's room.
One fashion editor even wondered if she ought to welcome Jones with a passive aggressive gift basket.
Unnerved by Jones’ choice of legwear — and Wintour’s reaction — the fashion editor proclaimed to her friends: “I’m not sure if I should include a new pair of tights in her welcome basket.”
And why not? Surely, this super brilliant woman does not even know that tights without foxes on them exist. She has definitely gone all 44 years of her life thinking that such tights are her only legwear option. There is probably not even a single Hosiery Options course available at Harvard, where she got her undergrad, or at Columbia, where she got her doctorate in comparative literature. Boy , will she ever be surprised when she discovers that you can, indeed, buy plain black tights. This could be world-changing. I bet she will send that editor the loveliest of fox-themed thank you notes.
Or maybe that editor should just go with an Edible Arrangement.
Radhika Jones, no doubt, is wearing those tights because she does not care what you think. Radhika Jones formerly worked at The New York Times, Time and The Paris Review. We hope she does not give one flying fuck what Anna Wintour thinks because she is too busy being awesome and brilliant to sit around worrying about grown up humans sneering about her tights.
We recommend the upstanding humans at Conde Nast give it a try.
Ditto Baby.
I really want those tights now.