Vanity Fair's feature writing

It sometimes feels embarrassing to me to have a subscription to "Vanity Fair", with its incomparable number of pages of fashion ads for the really wealthy, people maybe with money to burn and perhaps a questionable purpose in life, or so it seems to me.  I choke on it, but really like the magazine.

While "The New Yorker" has no challenger from this perspective as a combination of  feature writing, opinion, news, enlightened criticism of books and films, and published fiction, "Vanity Fair" has some feature writing in every issue that is worth the minimal price to have a home subscription for these weighty tomes of ads.  Finding the good stuff can be a challenge as the magazine does not seem to be diligent about page numbers, and the ones that are there need a magnifying glass to be seen, is that an age thing.  That, in a sense, must be by design to force a reader to comb through and see all of the advertisements while looking for some of the best feature writing available in any magazine.

The writers that they attract must indicate that they pay well.  Generally speaking each issue will have two or three relatively serious feature articles that are well written and worth every penny for the subscription, and several more that are focused on their advertising client base but, despite that, are well written as well, and interesting despite their subject.  Money porn about fashion, royalty, affairs, and real estate for the wealthy or aspirational or just curious I guess, and I must admit that I am not above reading parts of it.

I was catching up on these features in the last two month's issues this morning to clear the mess around my reading chair and make the recyclable bin many times heavier than usual.  That is the genesis of this short comment.