No need to beware the ides of March — or any of March, actually.
It was a good month for the top fashion and women’s magazines, with all reporting monthly gains. While that’s always a hopeful sign of good things to come, four of the main fashion books are still down overall for the quarter.
Because the March issues showcase the new spring and summer looks, the month is the second-most important issue month of the year after September.
And the fashion books are often seen as a harbinger of magazine health for the year ahead as advertisers open up their wallets.
Vogue, edited by Anna Wintour, usually dominates March, and it did again this year with 470 ad pages, up 3 percent from a year earlier.
But it was not enough to erase the slow start of the season, when its first quarter tally of 662 ad pages still puts it down by 1.4 percent compared to 2012.
On the other hand, Glamour, where Wintour has been pushing changes on Editor-in-Chief Cindi Leive , had a good March with an 8.2 percent jump in ad pages.
Aside from editorial overhaul, Glamour’s strong showing may also be attributable in part to the arrival of new publisher Connie Anne Phillips, who slipped out of her non-compete at Time Inc.-owned fashion magazine In Style last spring and arrived at Condé Nast only weeks later.
Year-to-date, the magazine is up 12 percent, to 322 pages, in the first quarter. Glamour is not considered a pure fashion book, but it is either the top one or two money maker inside Condé, and its success is crucial to the company.
Its rival and No. 1 money maker at Hearst, Cosmopolitan, was flat at 144 pages, up only a single page from March of last year. Joanna Coles is one of the hottest editors in town of late, but Cosmo is still down slightly for the year.
In the more targeted fashion books, In Style, with Ariel Foxman at the editorial helm, has recorded its fifth consecutive March of ad page growth, with a 2 percent jump, to 367 pages, marking its largest March issue ever.
Karin Tracy, who took over from Phillips as publisher of In Style last spring, did well. Year-to-date, In Style is leading the pack, pulling in 574 ad pages, up 2.3 percent from a year ago first quarter — its best showing in six years.
Elle magazine, still edited by Robbie Myers, is not far behind the pace with 541 total ad pages, marking its biggest March issue ever, although publisher Kevin O’Malley has to be a tad disappointed that its off a bit, down 1.9 percent from the first quarter a year ago.
W, which only does ten issues a year, produced one of the only double digit jumps in March ad pages, up 10 percent to 230. Year to date, it is off 5 percent to 310 based on only two issues in the January-to-March quarter.
Harper’s Bazaar under veteran editor Glenda Bailey racked up its biggest March in history, with 334 ad pages, up 1.3 percent and year to date it publisher Carol Smith, a veteran of Elle and briefly Condé Nast, is running 3.9 percent ahead of last year’s first quarter pace with 469 ad pages. And that was produced with only two issues in the first quarter since it cut back to 10 issues annually in 2012.
Another book with a heavy dose of fashion advertising in its overall mix is Hearst’s Marie Claire, which barely eked out a gain of 0.3 percent in ad pages in March to 209 but is up a nice healthy 6.1 percent year to date to 342.