Last week, Sylvana Soto-Ward was promoted from accessories editor to director of special events at Vogue. But naysayers surfaced even before Sylvana’s appointment was announced. For weeks, Fashion Week Daily has been reporting on gossip about downsizing the Met gala (not to mention, keeping the celebrities out of next year’s ball), which Vogue’s former event planner, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, did a spectacular job of organizing for years. Now poor Sylvana, who has spent the past years taking pictures of baubles, has to make the event just as amazing as it’s always been. But the anonymous sources think Wolkoff was the only one capable of getting the fashion houses to spend thousands on tables and making their celebrity guests look beautiful, all for Anna charity.
“They have put the Met Gala, CFDA, Vogue Fashion Fund and many, many other important events in the hands of a woman who has never done any planning,” an insider said. “Sylvana didn’t even plan her own engagement party — Anna Wintour had the in-house events team produce it for her. They’ve even pushed out Stephanie’s assistant and hired a consultant and some other assistants to operate as the real workhorses and pick up the slack.”
Vogue insists this is all part of any transition that occurs when someone assumes a new position. Planning the Met gala is a whole different bag than being accessories editor, pun intended, but it seems to us that if Sylvana “didn’t even plan her own engagement party” — OMG, let’s freak out — she must be doing something right. Anna wouldn’t waste the in-house events-planning team on her if all she brought to the table was a sufficiently hoity-toity sounding name and amazingly lustrous hair. Maybe these anonymous sources are other Vogue staffers, jealous as all hell of Sylvana because Anna passed them up for the promotion.
PLAN ON GRIPING AT VOGUE [NYP]
Earlier: Meet the Lucky Lady Newly in Charge of the Met Gala
Celebrities Might Be Barred From Next Year’s Met Gala