EDITOR BROUGHT VOGUE DOWN TO EARTH
Grace Mirabella, who as editor-in-chief transformed Vogue magazine from a glittery, color-splashed paean to the spirit of the 1960s into a more sensible adviser to women entering the workforce in the 1970s and ’80s, died Thursday at her home in Manhattan. She was 92.
Mirabella went on to found Mirabella, a magazine for women as interested in culture and travel as in clothes and interior design. But she made her biggest impact at Vogue. Her years there, from 1971 to 1988, coincided with women’s increasing financial independence. Many women were among the first in their families to work outside the home and were looking for guidance on a range of issues, starting with what to wear to their new jobs.
At the same time, as these women participated in the broader world, their interests widened, too. But Vogue, under its flamboyant editor Diana Vreeland, had entered the ’70s still stuck in the ’60s. The magazine’s circulation was falling, and advertising along with it.
Even so, Vreeland’s firing by Vogue’s publisher, Condé Nast, in 1971 came without warning. The move was so abrupt that Mirabella, Vreeland’s second in command, was notified of her promotion while
on a photo shoot in California.
Where Vreeland was colorful, electric and theatrical, Mirabella was pragmatic and businesslike. Her mandate was to change the character of the magazine, and Vogue quickly took on the values of its new editor, becoming more accessible and down to earth.
Mirabella’s Vogue emphasized the natural in hairstyles, makeup and clothing over artifice — the spare designs of Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein and Giorgio Armani over fashion as fantasy or work of art.
The magazine added sections on the arts, fitness, health and beauty while keeping its emphasis on fashion. Circulation tripled
during Mirabella’s tenure, to more than 1.2 million in 1988 from 400,000 in 1971.
By the mid-1980s, though, the pendulum of fashion had swung again. There was new money and a new interest in the comings and goings of celebrities. Fashion was becoming more about trendiness, and Vogue was not reflecting these sensibilities.
Although it still dominated the world of fashion magazines, Vogue was facing new competition. One of its competitors, American Elle, had become a force almost overnight, with an emphasis on a youthful European approach.
Elle was introduced in September 1985; by the end of the next year, its paid circulation was 861,000. In June 1988, Mirabella was ousted — as abruptly as Vreeland had been before her — and replaced with Anna Wintour, 20 years her junior. Wintour had been creative director at Vogue from 1983 to 1986 before becoming editor of British Vogue and then House & Garden (which was renamed HG in 1988).
A few months later, Mirabella announced that she would launch her own publication. Mirabella magazine, which was backed by Rupert Murdoch, was meant to be about “much more than clothes or interior design,” she wrote in the inaugural issue, dated May 1989. It was to be about style, she said, which “informs every aspect of our lives,” and it would offer serious articles along with fashion and beauty advice.
Marie Grace Mirabella was born on June 10, 1929, in Newark, N.J., the daughter of Anthony Mirabella, a sales manager for a liquor importing company, and Florence (Belfatto) Mirabella, who had emigrated from Italy.
Shortly after graduating from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., in 1950 with a bachelor’s degree in economics, she joined the executive training program at Macy’s. She then briefly worked at Saks Fifth Avenue before taking a job at Vogue in 1952.