Anna's New Power... A Glam Recruit... Elle in Your Closet

CURATING YOUR CLOSET: For fashionistas thumbing their nose at a looming recession, Elle today will provide 26 ways to spend any spare cash burning a hole in their pockets. Elle.com will introduce Fall A to Zee, a guide to fall must-haves chosen by the magazine’s creative director Joe Zee. The site will live on through Nov. 10 and feature 26 trends (long-hair fur, knee-length dresses, cool Britannia) and related products. Visitors to the site will be able to click through to buy certain items featured, as well as take advantage of exclusive offers on selected products in a special “Zee” section. There, one product will be chosen each week of the11-week program from sponsors including Cole Haan, Banana Republic, Kate Spade, Yves Saint Laurent, Gucci, Oscar de la Renta, Diesel and Furla.

The program gives readers an outlet on elle.com to click and buy fall’s best gets, and it also helped the title boost its September ad business 7 percent over September 2007 at a time when most fashion magazines were unable to best last year’s performance. Elle offered advertisers in the September issue inclusion in the A to Zee program for free. In all, 98 advertisers participated, and not only are their products included in the edit, their most recent advertisements are located on the right side of the page and can be viewed as a flip book.

Elle also partnered with Us Weekly to feature A to Zee in a four-page edit spread in today’s issue. While the trends remain the same, Us Weekly fashion director Sasha Charnin Morrison edited the products to include more examples, including how celebrities are wearing the trends. It’s rare for two magazines to share content in such a manner, but Morrison said that she and Zee, who “used to hang out together as junior editors in Europe for collections” shared the same interests. “Joe and I are pretty much pop junkies and are obsessed with a lot of the same things regarding fashion, celebrity, style and accessories.”

— S.D.S.

EXPANDING RESUME: Glam Media has hired former In Style executive editor Martha McCully as “a strategic adviser for fashion and style editorial,” adding another item to the list of post-In Style activities for McCully. She’s also a judge on HGTV’s “Design Star,” appears on HSN as on-air expert for Coty’s Lancaster brand and has been freelancing for Elle Decor and the new Wall Street Journal magazine, WSJ. McCully, who worked on the Web 1.0 venture Gloss.com (and later on instyle.com) said the online fashion and beauty world has come a long way since her first stint there. “Women are going online for information about fashion and beauty — the numbers are hard to argue with,” she said. “Have we found the right mix of how to show beauty and luxury and all the things we love online? I think there’s still a ways to go.” Glam has not yet named a replacement for Susan Cernek, who was fashion editor there until moving to glamour.com in July. McCully said she’ll be attending fashion week events with Glam Media chief executive Samir Arora.

— Irin Carmon

WHERE WOULD GRAYDON BE ON VOGUE’S?: Anna Wintour has finally made it — in the eyes of Vanity Fair at least. Though the Vogue editor in chief has appeared on her fair share of media power lists, it took her 14 years to climb onto The New Establishment: The Vanity Fair 100 list, published in the October issue. Wintour landed at number 64, behind Rupert Murdoch (number two); Google’s Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt (three); Ralph Lauren (15); Oprah Winfrey (43), and Diane Sawyer and husband, Mike Nichols (50). But she was ahead of Donatella Versace (75), Marc Jacobs (78), John Galliano (83), The Weinstein Co.’s Harvey and Bob Weinstein (who fell from number 41 on last year’s list to number 87) and Arianna Huffington (90). It seems Wintour and her power bretheren — including Giorgio Armani (48), François-Henri Pinault (17), Diane von Furstenberg and Barry Diller (18) — could be joined by a number of new influential faces in fashion next year. Marchesa duo Georgina Chapman and Keren Craig, Alice + Olivia founder Stacey Bendet Eisner and husband Eric Eisner, Zac Posen and Oliver Theyskens are all on the title’s list of the Next Establishment.

— Stephanie D. Smith