Every January, Vogue selects ten women to represent the best dressed women of the year. Most years these women are socialites, actresses, and bonafide starlets. This year, however, the list skewed younger — and more scholarly. Of the ten, three are college students and five are in their early 20s. According to Condé Nast, Vogue's median reader is 35.5. So, in the past, the magazine has stuck to older, more sophisticated style icons to appeal to their target reader. It has been a rare occasion for young women to grace the pages of Vogue; most of the time, they leave the tweens, teens, and young twenty-somethings to little sister magazine Teen Vogue.
Now that Teen Vogue's competitors are dropping like flies (rest in peace, ELLEgirl and CosmoGirl, which now lives on only digitally) and young women's magazine options are dwindling, Vogue is in a position to swoop in and charm the socks off readers of all ages. Women like to read about women like themselves. Putting Blake Lively front and center on the best dressed list will appeal to everyone who has ever caught an episode of "Gossip Girl," because she's so darn likable (and Gossip Girl fans span as young as 12 and as old as, well, my mom). Never mind that Blake's street style is a depressing departure from Serena's. Commercially, it was a smart move for Vogue.
Read the rest of "Vogue Makes A Smart Play For College Students" at Ypulse.com.
