obviousness

McKinsey Consultants Likely to Advise Condé Nast to Cut Back on Photo Shoots

The New York Observer reports McKinsey consultants are preparing to exit Condé Nast and could submit their final recommendations to Si Newhouse as early as September 16, the second-to-last day of New York Fashion Week. They are likely to recommend that magazines like Gourmet and Bon Appétit publish fewer issues a year. From what the Observer writes, it also sounds like they’re questioning why Details even exists, since it’s basically the same thing as GQ but with cover typeset that looks stuck in the seventies and more space between lines of text inside the magazine.

In The September Issue, Anna Wintour has no problem killing photo shoots that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. But McKinsey consultants will likely recommend Condé Nast not spend that much to begin with.

“There are little ways of cutting,” said one staffer, who drank a bit of the McKinsey Kool-Aid. “You don’t need to send an entire posse to Joshua Tree for a shot in the desert! Who cares! If the photographer is good, and the clothes are good, the models are good, it’s fine — you can shoot downtown.”


We’d argue downtown is not a suitable substitute for a desert landscape, when, say, you want to do something amazing-looking like this, but a lot of that scenery can be Photoshopped nowadays. Maybe they should pay retouchers to do that instead of cleaning up bony kneecaps and elbows.

Yet despite the downsizing, it sounds like Condé Nasties are enjoying their new consulting friends. Because, as one anonymous staffer put it, “They’re kind of hot.” (It’s true — we’ve experienced sexy consultants in a non-work setting.) Also, young and plucky! The Teen Vogue girls are reportedly coming to work in their good outfits on a daily basis. Because you know, it’s not often a flock of straight, wealthy, put-together young men with good salaries hang out at fashion-magazine offices. And Fashion Meets Finance events only occur a few times a year at best.

At Condé Nast, the Last Days of McKinsey [NYO]

McKinsey Consultants Likely to Advise Condé Nast to Cut Back on Photo Shoots