First WWD's Brobdingnagian Jeff Bercovici tipped us to Conde Nast honcho Steve Florio's forthcoming management book-cum-memoir -cum-revenge fantasy. Then David Carr suggested in the Times that Florio had given up on the project. "I would never sacrifice my integrity to write a book," Florio told Carr. "Because of what was said and how it was taken, there will be no book."
Is there anybody Steve Florio likes? WWD's hulking Jeff Bercovici gets a peek at the proposal for the former Conde Nast president and CEO's memoir and management guide, and he passes along Florio's putdowns of everyone from Ron Galotti (who gets his own chapter) to Bonnie Fuller to Mr. Shawn to the GQ sales staff.
Do you remember — oh, you must — the September 2004 Vogue? The one that was terrifying thick and added point-and-click shopping on a special companion Web site? It ran to an awe-inspiring 832 pages — some 190 of which, publisher Tom Florio said then, were ads for new advertisers presumably drawn in buy the shop-online angle. It brought in $60 million in revenue.
A starving source trapped in 4 Times Square reports that Condé Nast will stop at no length to ensure that the average employee BMI is safely below average:
Yesterday, we posed an interesting question sent to us by a reader: Why in the world is their a giant mail carton at Condé Nast with Plum Sykes' name on it? The carton was large enough for an entire magazine staff, yet there's one just for Vogue editor and novelist Sykes. We didn't know the non-libelous answer, so we asked you readers. Obviously, as you're smarter than we are, your responses were very enlightening. After the jump, our favorite explanations for Plum's engorged box.
A cry for help from a confused reader has us thinking it's high time we used the Gawker Community for a good cause, like deciphering the nuances of the Condé Nast underworld. As such, we present the mystery of Plum Sykes' mailbox:
A Conde Nast operative emails:
Conde-Nast-bred chick litterateur, SoHo House fixture, distant descendent of some Duke or another and (at least according to the nickname-loving British tabloids) "pushy socialite, upper-crust novelist, professional posh totty and designer clotheshorse" Victoria "Plum" Sykes famously used her dumping by a former fiance, painter Damien Loeb, as inspiration for her novel Bergdorf Blondes. Now, she's managed to get engaged again. Plum and her husband-to-be, Toby Rowland, son of the late and unfortunately-named Brit entrepreneur "Tiny" Rowland, have set a date for late July and are leaving nothing to chance. The bride-to-be, who famously (and inappropriately) wore brown to her sister Lucy's wedding a few years back, has issued a booklet to instruct American guests what is and isn't considered "good form" at English weddings. In today's Evening Standard, bad-boy novelist Will Self writes,
WWD's "Memo Pad" really cooks this morning with the tale of the napkin thief at Conde Nast.
Somebody at the 'Nast paired their pointy-toe shoes with Bad Idea Jeans today and came up with the brilliant gimmick of passing out free stimulants to children. A Gawker spy reports:
Wouldn't it be funny if the one edgy, non-vicious robot at Vogue, senior fashion editor Camilla Nickerson, left to go to Vogue's main competitor? And wouldn't it be crazy if Anna Wintour went batshit insane with fear over the loss of her coolest employee? We can't imagine what fear looks like on the face of Ms. Wintour, but we're glad to be far from 42nd Street today.
After reportedly blasting three "solid shots" during batting practice at the Newspaper Association of America's field trip to San Francisco's SBC Park, Cond cleanup hitter S.I. Newhouse Jr. spoke with E&P's Greg Mitchell about his prowess in the cage: "The 'clear' is great, but the 'cream' is shit" "I've played some baseball." Funny, he looks so much thinner on his rookie card.
Shots Heard 'Round NAA [Editor & Publisher]
Let's take a minute to study Glamour editor Cindy Leive (who happens to be verrry pregnant — and thus a hormonal DELIGHT to work for right now, we're sure):
From deep within the platinum-glazed walls of the Cond Nast cafeteria, a reader sends word of a possible health crisis:
· Breaking! A reader has reported a cockroach sighting in the Condé Nast cafeteria. The offending insect was "hanging out between the peanuts and the bok choy at the Asian stir fry station." Tasty — but did Graydon and Anna fight over who got to eat it? Or did SI bust in and devour the bug before anyone else got a fair chance?
· Because no train of thought is ever too absurd for socialites, some people seem to think the Times Wedding pages aren't exclusive enough. Oh, har har. And my ass isn't big enough, either. [Veiled Conceit]
· Three potential Supreme Court nominees worthy of your support: J.Lo, Oprah, and Janet Jackson's right breast. [Underneath Their Robes]
· Give this guy money, simply because he's totally sick/brilliant. [Save Toby via]
We're hearing that Matt Ullian, Vanity Fair's editorial promotions associate and the boy-wonder behind the mag's Oscar party, has left the side of Sarah Marks and Graydon's event-planning posse in favor of GQ's greener pastures. Conveniently, Ullian waited until after the Oscar party to make his move, but now that he's found himself swaddled in Jim Nelson's man-love, we have to wonder: What's going on at GQ? Maybe Ullian just needed a change of pace, but this smells a little bigger. The party circuit knows Ullian rather well and his punch-serving skills are revered; GQ might be looking to raise the bar and up their glitz factor. Or, you know, Ullian could just be organizing some GQ-spawn's bar mitzvah.
So many shrub-trimming jokes, so little time.
For those of you at 4 Times Square who were hoping for one of those House & Gardenburger deluxes or some piping hot New Yorker clam chowder, think again. A tipster sent us this memo:
A reader reports of more mysterious innuendo from the treasure trove of Cond Nast crappers:
