On a Tuesday morning in early October, Stellene Volandes, the editor in chief of Town & Country, sat around a conference table on the 19th floor in the Hearst Tower with three senior editors. They were intensely debating cover lines for the print magazine’s philanthropy issuebitbet, coming out in November with multiple cover subjects, including the actress Mariska Hargitay and the former football player Michael Strahan.
With coffees, laptops, and notepads and pens on hand, they debated which words would strike a balanced tone (“It’s November, so it’s going to be somber, but we need a little candy in there also”);which would be appropriate (“Can we use the word hissy fit? Beef? Cat fight?”); and which would translate well online (“What is going to make someone click?”)
Haggling over cover lines is a time-honored tradition at Town & Country — and a reminder that, in this digital age, the power of print still matters to Ms. Volandes, 53. “We had this story once with the headline, ‘Ham I am,’ and I remember walking around the office being like, ‘Should it be ham, comma, I am?,’ or ‘Ham, period, I am?,’ or wait, ‘Should there be an exclamation point?’” she said, laughing.
Some brainstorming sessions have led to cover lines that summed up the times. The April 2021 magazine issue, for example, had “Remember Fun?” bannered on the cover, a signal that the country was finally emerging from the somber cocoon of the pandemic. More recently, the September 2024 issue looked back on the history of social climbing in New York City and featured a “dinner party,” where uptown debutantes mingled with downtown hipsters (think Oscar Nñ with Nicky Hilton, Adam Rhodes with Susan Gutfreund, Jenny Dembrow with Mohammed Fayaz.) “What’s more T & C than a dinner party?” said Ms. Volandes. “You expect us to know how to throw a really good one. But the guest list in that shoot? That might surprise you. And good. We want it to. But we also want you to really hope you get invited the next time we throw one.”
Erik Maza, the magazine’s executive style director, who joined Town & Country in 2018, said that coming up with those kinds of surprises are one of Ms. Volandes’s main skills. “For an editor to subtly transform people’s idea of what a magazine might mean takes a lot of guts, but it also takes a canny understanding of who our readers are and how they are willing to evolve and learn,” he said. “I think she has calibrated the magazine’s evolution successfully.”
Fern Mallis, the creator of New York Fashion Week and a longtime observer of the New York media scene, said the strategy is working. “I think Stellene has taken a traditional Town & Country attitude and made it young and contemporary, but hasn’t abandoned the blue bloods and royals,” she said. “I have to say it’s probably the one magazine I read.”
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