The gun has been sounded for the final lap in the battle for the ad page crown among the fashionistas, pitting Vogue against InStyle, Elle and Harper’s Bazaar.
Vogue editrix Anna Wintour saw ad pages surge in her Condé Nast-owned magazine with the recently closed September issue. But the strides she made in the crucial month still leave her panting after Ariel Foxman and the Time Inc. title, InStyle, for the full year-to-date lead in the super-competitive category.
That is uncharted territory for Wintour, who has had the title all to herself for the past few years, thanks in large part to her September “kick.”
It was that month’s issue that was the subject of the documentary “The September Issue” about closing the monster issue of 2007, which boasted the all-time record 727 ad pages.
Vogue Publisher Susan Plagemann, who arrived in January from Marie Claire and Hearst, reports her team has sold 532 ad pages for the September issue, a whopping 24.1 percent increase compared to 2009, when the glossy was wrestling with double-digit declines. That amounts to 103 additional pages.
InStyle, one of the few to have a good September a year ago, was up 56 pages and 16 percent with 403 ad pages.
Since January, however, InStyle, Publisher Connie Anne Phillips has sold 1,791 ad pages, up by 306 pages, or 21 percent, from a year earlier. It means that despite the Vogue September surge, it’s not enough to knock InStyle off its throne as the magazines head into the final lap for 2010.
Elle, despite the loss of its chief brand officer and publisher, actually managed to post 57.2 more ad pages in September, pushing its monthly total of 382 pages. But year to date its ad page growth of 10 percent to 1,556 was the slowest of any of the major fashion titles.
At Harper’s Bazaar, edited by Glenda Bailey with Valerie Salembier as publisher, the magazine racked up 31.8 more ad pages this September than a year ago, pushing the total for the month to 302. For the year, the magazine is up 13 percent to 1,158, thanks to a 133 ad page jump compared to the first nine months of last year. kkelly@nypost.com