The New Vogue

The Internet woke up to a new Vogue.com this morning, and we can all exhale now. The fashion bible looks just as good on the World Wide Web as it does in print. Long live, Anna! Yay, binders full of supermodels!

At first glance, the made-over site radiates the same sophistication and monochrome polish that I have associated with Vogue since I was a little girl. Like the publication that inspired it, the revamped site makes me ache a little. I want it all.

Photographs are tightly shot. Gigi Hadid shimmers. Video footage is witty and thoughtful and intimate: Daniel Radcliffe is intelligent and human. Blake Lively is telegenic sunshine. Even the bylines charm me: Sophie Schulte-Hillen, Abby Aguirre, Wendell Winton. Alliteration — it’s in for fall.

It’s no surprise that Wintour and her warriors have insisted on this glossy finish for the site. Vogue is aspirational and Vogue.com should be, too.

On these pages, seven-figure handbags do not have to justify themselves. The inimitable TNT need not apologize for her Bavarian expeditions. The omnipresent touch of luxury is a relief, in a way. On Vogue.com, reality is relative. Here, not even Schiaparelli pink registers shock.

But while its architects pledged that the platform would mimic and extend and amplify the tone of the magazine, I think they had a savvier goal in mind. Like the more symmetrical cousin of someone you once knew or the French au pair who minded your friends down the street, the site seems known and impossibly exotic at once.

The new Vogue.com is not the magazine. It’s a blog.

It scrolls like a blog and navigates like a blog and sounds like a blog. Filtered photos of contributors flank slideshows and listicles; numbered posts range from “10 Beauty Products Every Model Has in Her Cabinet” to “28 Afropunk Hair Portraits by Artist Awol Erizku.” The site is inviting and friendly. It is a hybrid of Who What Wear and Vanity Fair and it works. It even partners like a blog. “For the Relaunch of Vogue.com, Dustin Yellin Reimagines Our Logo,” reads a prominent headline. Part one of one in collaboration with art.

To me, it feels genuine and immediate — adjectives that translate into clicks and shares and tweets on the web. And thank goodness. The only thing Vogue cannot afford is to act as if it is above online traffic.

Earlier this week, Anna Wintour vowed that the site would articulate “the authority and the vision of the print magazine.” Sally Singer promised “a new Vogue under the auspices of Vogue.” I think at least one of them has delivered. It is a New Vogue. The print version will continue its iconic heritage, and as for the change-to-blog — it’s about time.

(Now what do you think?)