Assessment: Will & Grace is close to many a Vogue editors’ heart for its wit but also its bold portrayal of queer joy (even more commendable in the late ’90s). The fact that the show added an editor to the mix is the cherry on top. But, of course, it’s not all so accurate. While there are certainly perks that come with the job, alas, a Hermès bag is not one of them. IRL, Diane would have never given her up Birkin so quickly. Plus, we take our eyebrow content seriously.
The critics:
“The Vogue-related episode of Will & Grace contains an (admittedly funny) throwaway line about how Vogue editors don’t eat, and for birthdays we just ‘put a candle in the middle of a Lifesaver and then argue about who gets the smallest piece.’ Again, LOL, but nothing could be further from my Vogue experience. Trust me, if you’ve ever sent food to our office, it got immediately and ravenously eaten, especially if it was a cake.” –Emma Specter
“Being a Vogue employee, I am still waiting for my free gifted Hermès Birkin.”–Christian Allaire
“Mira Sorvino appears twice in this list of on-screen Vogue cameos (here in addition to Romy and Michele), and it’s really hard for me to say which one I enjoyed more.” –Lilah Ramzi
©Universal Television / Courtesy: Everett Collection
Murder She Wrote, 1987
Plot: In “A Fashionable Way to Die” (season four, episode one), the show travels from the fictional Maine hometown of its heroine Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) to Paris. Jessica is there visiting an old friend, Eva, a designer struggling to finance her next fashion show—a very 1987 lamé and hair-spray-filled affair. Eva is keen on booking the model Lu Waters (Randi Brooks), who has just landed a Vogue cover, but the model’s fee ($10,000) requires Eva to take up with a seedy financier who ultimately ends up dead.
Assessment: While the Vogue mention is fleeting, it comes with murderous overtones! We tend not to cast homicidal cover stars, so this is, of course, a pure work of fiction. But a non-super (capital S) model landing the cover of Vogue in 1987 sounds about right, and Murder She Wrote was nothing but not fully in the zeitgeist.
