The Evolution of Teen Vogue: From a Fashion Handbook to an Activism Incubator (Part 1)

A Classic Fashion Handbook

Teen Vogue in Amy Astley’s Era

Yara Shahidi and Rowan Blanchard in a Teen Vogue cover shoot.

Teen Vogue officially started as Vogue’s younger version since 2003. Inherited from Vogue’s name and its fashion trait, Teen vogue was known as the petite sibling of Vogue. With Amy Astley as the editor-in-chief, Teen vogue mainly features fashion, makeup trends, hair styles as well as pop cultures like celebrity interview, music and film reviews and certain social issues. Each magazine can be divide into 6 sections: Fashion, Teen Vogue View, People are Talking About, Features, Beauty & Health and Last Look. According to New York Times report, at that time, Amy described Teen Vogue as a pure fashion magazine that attracted to “an audience of sophisticated young women who wanted to see fashion presented in a way not seen in other magazine”.

Vogue and Teen Vogue

Compare with the adult Vogue, Teen Vogue tried to gain its readership by making the magazine more affordable and attainable. Instead of guiding teenage girls to buy big designers like Gucci and Prada, Teen Vogue introduced many attainable products to its readers; In addition, in order to make the magazine more like an attainable fashion book, models in Teen Vogue are more of those who has a normal body size and appearance, the celebrities being featured in the magazine are under the age of 30; the models on covers and every pages are also from younger generation, most of them are entertainers whom teenagers are familiar with; some of the articles inside Teen Vogue are relevant to students’ campus life; and the tone of the articles are light-hearted, humorous and personal. Teaching young girls how to keep on fashion trend in an affordable way seems like one of its selling points to its readers at this time.

Teen Vogue and its Counterparts

1990-2010 was a period of time when big magazine publishers started to compete in gaining millennial readers. Obviously, Condé Nast was not the only one who thought of feeding this large consumer poll. There were several competitors for Teen Vogue at that time: Cosmo Girl and Teen from Hearst, YM from Gruner + Jahr, Teen People from Time Inc., Elle Girl from Hachette Filipacchi and Bop from Laufer Media. Compare with most of its competitors who sell full-size magazine at a price of nearly $3.00 for monthly subscription and are fascinated with celebrity coverage and relationship advice at that time, Teen Vogue differentiated itself by lowering its price to $1.50 per month, shrinking its print size and mainly focusing on clothing, accessories and beauty stories. We have to admit that under Amy Astley’s rein, Teen Vogue was indeed a professional young women’s fashion handbook.

Teen Vogue in Digital Era

21st century is a challenging era for the magazine industry. The economic downturn from the Great Recession and invention of the internet has no doubt influencing and challenging the former flourishing print industry. In order to survive, Teen Vogue has to keep abreast of the times. In the year of 2009, Teen Vogue started its social media campaign from connecting its print version with digital website to establishing a Teen Vogue social network system. After realizing an incredible increase in its digital subscriptions, Teen Vogue eventually transformed itself from a print magazine to a multimedia platform. However, this is just the beginning of its transformation.