STEINER EXITS: Danko Steiner, design director at Vogue, is leaving the magazine after four years to pursue photography. Following Steiner’s resignation, editor in chief Anna Wintour tapped Raúl Martinez, founder and chief creative officer of AR New York, a full-scale branding and advertising agency, as creative consultant to Vogue. Martinez will work with the magazine and vogue.com’s art, design and photography and offer input on Vogue’s overall image and brand.
Martinez began his career at Vogue before departing for AR in 1996. Most recently, AR has worked on ad campaigns for Banana Republic, Jimmy Choo and Brioni. “We have always kept in touch,” Martinez told WWD. “I will still have the agency and undoubtedly, the two can coexist. I can’t begin to explain how excited I am to be joining forces with Anna once again.” Martinez will join Vogue the week of Dec. 1 and his work will begin to appear in the pages of the magazine in the spring.
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— Amy Wicks
MORE EXITS: The layoffs have begun at BusinessWeek as staffers learn this week whether they will continue with the magazine once its sale to Bloomberg is complete. According to sources, about 20 staffers were let go in the online and multimedia departments on Wednesday, just a day after Bloomberg named time.com managing editor Josh Tyrangiel its new editor in chief. BusinessWeek employees have had to reapply for their positions and outline their duties to Bloomberg’s top brass and advisers during the transition of ownership from McGraw-Hill to Bloomberg, and are being notified if they will remain at the magazine. Earlier this week, several staffers on the business side were let go. Layoffs are expected to continue through the rest of the week and, according to reports, some estimate about 100 staffers could be let go as a result. Some of those staffers could be placed elsewhere within Bloomberg.
— Stephanie D. Smith
SINGLE LENS: “Do you see all these cool guys from London?” asked J. Crew chief Millard “Mickey” Drexler as he stood outside the company’s SoHo men’s store in New York Tuesday night. “I can’t take it, it’s too scary.” Drexler was kidding, and he finally took the plunge inside to mingle with the team from Monocle, the magazine/Web site/retailer created by Wallpaper founder and Financial Times columnist Tyler Brûlé.
The evening, which was billed as “cocktails, canapés and holiday shopping,” was the brainstorm of J. Crew’s creative director, Jenna Lyons. “Tyler and I met about six months ago and it was one of those things where we just couldn’t stop talking,” she said. “I was a huge fan of his from his Wallpaper days and we realized there were a lot of similarities in what we do and what we find interesting.” It wasn’t long before Lyons also met the guys from Monocle — the handsome staffers who were so intimidating to her boss — one thing led to another, and now the team will grace the pages of the spring issue of the J. Crew catalogue. The catalogue, which will be an evolution of the company’s popular Real Guys campaign, is slated to hit homes in March. “We’re shooting the boys from Monocle in their office in London on Friday,” Lyons said, “but we also thought it would be good to have a party here and introduce them to our customers and their clients. It’s a fun way to connect the dots.”
— Jean E. Palmieri
BAGEL AND SCHMEAR: Taubman Centers has an appetizing strategy for pumping up its retail tenants on Black Friday: feed and massage them. The developer is having bagels, cream cheese and bottled water delivered to the majority of the stores in the 21 shopping centers it manages across the country, and dispatching masseurs and masseuses from local spas to loosen up everybody’s neck and shoulders. “We want our retailers to be at peak performance,” said Karen MacDonald, Taubman’s director of communications. Deliveries from Starbucks, Tim Horton, TooJay’s Gourmet Deli and other food specialty tenants that Taubman works with will begin as early as 5 a.m. It’s all part of Taubman’s relatively new initiative called “Year of the Merchant,” geared to support the retailers with extra signs, radio advertising, online and other marketing angles.
— D.M.