In Other News: Style.com to Become Vogue E-Commerce Site
Launched by Condé Nast in 2001, Style.com has become an indispensable tool for the fashion industry with its unparalleled runway coverage. Originally intended as Vogue‘s corresponding digital property, the site has seemed unsure of itself on a number of occasions, particularly with the launch of vogue.com in 2009, as content on both sides competed. Men.style.com was notably folded into the two separate Details and GQ.coms in 2009 after its launch in 2005, and many have speculated over the future of the original digital sister site. The speculation though, is now over. This morning, in an exclusive report byBusiness of Fashion, confirmed by Bob Sauerberg, president of Condé Nast, Style.com will be re-imagined as a global e-commerce destination under the American Vogue umbrella, and its editorial content will move to a new url, voguerunway.com.
“The move to transition Style.com content under Vogue was foreshadowed by a new reporting structure, announced last November, that saw Style.com editor-in-chief Dirk Standen and publisher Matt Rice report to Vogue publisher Susan Plagemann and Vogue editor-in-chief and Condé Nast artistic director Anna Wintour, respectively,” says Business of Fashion‘s Kate Abnett. “The new shift in strategy will result in some redundancies at Style.com in the U.S., though the company declined to disclose details, saying only that most of the Style.com team will join American Vogue to work on voguerunway.com. In December, Style.com announced that it was suspending publication of its print magazine.”
We speculate that the print magazine may return in a new incarnation a laPorter Magazine, which reportedly ruffled Conde feathers when it was launched last year.