Carter’s 25 years as the Editor-in-Chief ofVanity
Fairconcluded in 2017; his departure cast a long shadow over Condé Nast. What
would become of the world’s most sophisticated magazine? How would his successor make their own mark without
changing what many considered to be perfect? Questions abounded, but one person was gearing up for a well-earned
retirement, recuperating in the south of France… at least, that was the plan.
“I actually did want to retire,” Carter tellsThe
Rakefrom his Provençal bolt-hole via a coronavirus-friendly Zoom
call.“I was done. I had been an editor in New York for 32 years. There is a
benefit to being a top editor at somewhere likeVanity Fair, but it does take a toll: it is unrelenting pressure, and I was done with it. I did 25 years
atVanity Fairand I thought there would be
things I would miss, but it turns out I miss none of it.”
The desire for something morelarghissimowas short-lived. In July 2019 he launched his
weekly subscription-based newsletter for “worldly cosmopolitans”,Air
Mail. He says: “We moved here, I had made notes, I was going to write a
memoir. I’m working on a book of drawings that I’ve done of potted histories of imaginary people.” But old habits
die hard, and as much as a state — to paraphrase Mark Birley — of ‘busy relaxation’ beckoned, it wasn’t going to
curtail his routine of scouring the foreign press for stories. It is a ritual of Carter’s that goes back to his time
atSpymagazine (which he started in 1986
and refers to as “likePrivate Eyebut a
crisper design”). The myriad tales in the world’s newspapers always provided fertile soil for the kind of intrigue,
scandal and satire for which Carter became known and feared. In fact, once he’d leftVanity Fairand moved to France, he was frustrated when he
noticed some worthwhile lines not being picked up elsewhere, and so the seeds ofAir Mailwere planted.He
says his thinking was, “I am seeing all these stories that people in New York are not seeing, and possibly I could
put together an international weekly that would give the readers the best stories I have found over the course of
that week”.
The memoir is still not up and running, and other plans have fallen by the wayside in
order to clear a path forAir Mail’s rapid
rise to the top of the digital publishing hierarchy. WithVanity
Fair’s former art director AngelaPanichiand a Chief Technology Officer, JohnTornow, thedesanitisationof the internet’s perfunctory approach to
editorial — some of which Carter describes as looking “like grocery store supplements in the weekend paper” — had
begun.Air Mailis slick and elegant, and
it pays just as much attention to the quality of the design as it does to the writing. “Design matters,” Carter
says, “and will matter ever greater in the years to come on the internet, because so much of it is so
ugly.”
Air Mail’s voice, typeface, format and general
refinement will be familiar to devotees of the Carter-eraVanity
Fair, and a glance at the masthead gives a clue as to why. Carter is a career
collaborator with partners fromSpy, his
New York restaurants and his documentary film business (which recently producedVery Ralph, the Ralph Lauren documentary for HBO), and a
similar approach was applied to the creation ofAir Mail. Alessandra Stanley, the award-winning journalist who worked with Carter during his spell
atTimemagazine, is Co-Editor, and
severalother members of the team worked with Carter in his print days. “The photo
editor is fromVanity Fair, the art
director is fromVanity Fair, the managing
editor is fromVanity Fair, one of the
deputy editors is fromVanity Fair, one of
the deputy editors is fromSpy. My books
editor and co-editor are fromTime,”
Carter says.
His ability to attract old colleagues who have in many cases forged illustrious careers of
their own — Deputy Editor MichaelHainey, for
example, is the former Deputy Editor ofGQand Executive Director of Editorial atEsquire— tells us plenty about Carter’s leadership
skills. He says modestly: “I have no leadership style whatsoever. I am very encouraging, I love to share praise, I
don’t fly off the handle, I am not a screamer, I allow people to make mistakes. I define the assignment, or the
role, or the section to someone, and work with them for a few weeks. Then I pass it off to them and they take
ownership of it.
“I learned that from Si [Newhouse, the Chairman of Condé Nast before his death in 2017],
who was a wonderful person to work for — but he made it feel like you were working with him, not for him, and I try
to do that with my staff. They are my colleagues, not my employees.”
Read the full interview with Graydon Carter in Issue 70 of The Rake - on newsstands now.
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