Sigh. Can’t a woman quit in peace already? Those did-she-jump-or-was-she-pushed rumblings are as unavoidable as eating-our-bodyweight-till-we-puke this weekend. Since Carine Roitfeld announced her departure from French Vogue last week, the blogsphere has been abuzz over why and just what the hell will be next for the pioneering, circulation-boosting editrix.

Now, rumours have surfaced that perhaps her exit wasn’t quite so, err, voluntary. LVMH bid daddy, Bernard Arnault apparently winced, “hell no” at last month’s kidz-as-adults shoot considering it to be in “poor taste” and threatening to pull his brands ad’s. Roitfeld has also had to defend and deny accusations lobbied at her regarding doing paid consulting work on the downlow – though we all remember her alleged faux pas at sending Balenciaga to her client Max Mara which earned her team a blacklisting from their shows.

Cowardly anonymous critics has been blabbing to WWD; “She only really published the clothes she liked,” moaned one about her reluctance to shoot advertisers clothes in editorial. Another mused if it was partly her disinterest in the Internet: “One always had the feeling that French Vogue was a bit like a family photo album. The tribal, ultrahip attitude of the magazine perhaps no longer fits with the zeitgeist at a time when fashion is global.”

Whatever motivated Roitfeld’s vacating Conde Nast Tower’s, perhaps we shall never know, such is the spurious, gossip-mongering, rubber-necking nature of the net. In an age where women’s glossies have seemingly merged into the same celeb-bumming, advertiser-gratifying, unambitious tome, French Vogue under Mizz R was a beacon of defiant, dark, artful wonderfulness.

Posted on December 21, 2010 at 7:05:50 by The Real Runway