Given the timing of its release – on the heels of Anna Wintour’s abdication at Vogue and years of public enshabbification – Empire of the Elite, Michael Grynbaum’s new history of the Condé Nast publishing concern, will be read in the context of failure. But it’s actually the story of a grand, century-spanning success. It’s the story of an institutional that as an arbiter of American culture for an almost outrageous length of time.
Between 1909 and when your mom let her Vanity Fair subscription lapse, Condé Nast restructured the upper echelons of American society around a shared fantasy – membership in a club that didn’t really want anyone for a member. Upper Middle spoke to Grynbaum about the power of that fantasy, why it mattered, and why it still does. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Your book makes clear that Condé Nast never just chronicled trends among the elite — that it always shaped them. How did a publishing company come to occupy that role?
At the turn of the 20th century, industrialization had helped a small group of Americans amass great wealth. But these these railroad barons and newspaper moguls weren’t hereditary aristocrats. They didn’t have a clear idea of how they should behave or what they should consume. Vogue started as a society magazine helping this small group figure out what an American upper class should be.
What Condé Nast, who bought Vogue in 1909, understood was the appetite for that kind of content beyond Fifth and Park. There was a upper-middle class forming in cities across the country. It’s telling that his second acquisition was House and Garden – another magazine about expressing status through material goods. They were monetizing social aspiration.
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