BA’S FEAST OR FASHION: The parallels of the food and fashion industries have not been lost on Bon Appétit editor in chief Adam Rapoport and vice president and publisher Pamela Drucker Mann. Rapoport, an ex-style editor from GQ, and Drucker Mann, a former associate publisher from Glamour, decided to pump up Bon Appétit’s involvement in the fashion industry when the duo joined forces.
Four years ago, they launched Feast or Fashion, which would become the second-highest revenue-grossing event for the magazine, behind Vegas Uncork’d. (For parent company Condé Nast, Uncork’d remains its biggest money-making event across any title, sources told WWD).
“People asked us: ‘What do food and fashion have to do with each other?’ As an editor you have to go with your gut,” Rapoport said. “People who care about aesthetics and style also care about good food.”
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This year, Bon Appétit will fete its fourth edition of Feast or Fashion, which will begin Thursday with the Hot 10 party at Gotham West Market here in Hell’s Kitchen. It will celebrate the chefs from Bon Appétit’s best new restaurant list that will appear in its September issue. That issue, which carries 94 ad pages, is up 1.34 pages or 1.5 percent over last year, and it is Bon Appétit’s largest September issue in its seven-year history. It also marks a string of ad-page declines over the summer, but more on that later. The second part of Feast or Fashion will take place on Sept. 9 at The Spotted Pig. Chef April Bloomfield will host a dinner in the private room of her eatery for jewelry designer Pamela Love. Love will collaborate with Bloomfield, who has a vegetable-focused cookbook coming out, on a vegetarian menu.
“I’d never met April before,” admitted Love, who said that in recent days, she has “talked a lot” with the chef about the menu, which will likely include mushrooms, hearts of palms and tomatoes, and nod to “the color palette” of her fine jewelry collection.
The last, and most fashion-centric, event will take place on Sept. 11. Bon Appétit will host a luncheon catered by Carlo Mirarchi and Brooks Headley that will take place during Chloë Sevigny’s spring presentation for Opening Ceremony at the High Line Hotel.
“This is the first year we are doing something with an actual show,” said Drucker Mann, who noted that Feast or Fashion has played a key role in bringing in nonendemic advertisers to the magazine. The event is sponsored by non-food-related brands Ford Mustang, Essie, Reveal Calvin Klein, Strivectin and Maybelline New York, as well as industry advertisers, All-Clad, Ferrari-Carano Winery, Liebherr and Mountain Valley Spring Water.
After a down second-half in ad pages, Bon Appétit can use new advertisers. The Media Industry Newsletter said the magazine posted three months of ad-page declines over the summer. July marked its steepest decline of 10.4 percent to 42.9 pages.
For the first half of the year, Bon Appétit’s total paid and verified circulation was 1,518,622, a 0.7 percent dip from the year-ago period, according to the Alliance for Audited Media. Single-copy sales declined 15.8 percent to 73,262.