Stanley Mieses commentary - Magazines for Millionaires

Even in this widespread economic boom time, the rich remain different from you and me-they're even more wealthy! The number of millionaires in the United States is increasing at roughly 20 times the rate of population growth. What was once a cool million is now a mere million.

But the millionaire-next-door is a concept marketers of luxury goods are embracing with all of their souls and media savvy, especially in advance of the holiday season, and in print the rich niche is flourishing. The Robb Report, the magalogue of extravagant living, is fat enough this month to hold open the doors at Tiffany's. Quest magazine, which began as a high-society inflected advertorial for exclusively priced residences in New York, is now distributed nationally and is thick with ads for posh goods of all sorts, as is the 25-year old Avenue magazine, whose name implies Fifth or Park avenues and all the disposable income those addresses conjure up. Quest, best known for its annual Ultimate Dinner Guest List, focuses this month on New York's 32 billionaires, represented on the cover by a barefoot and smiling Ralph Lauren, attired in his signature controlled casual, while Avenue, with its monthly Social Diary, party pictures and features on the gentry past and present, remains true to its roots as a Very Rich People magazine.

Then there's the Ivy League Magazine Network, wherein superannuated Seven Sisters and Seven-Figure Men keep track of each other; in recent times all nine of its alumni publications have grown plump with ads for merchandise most of us can only dream of stealing. And in same year that saw the journal of noblesse oblige, American Benefactor magazine, go under, Millionaire Magazine has become a monthly, supported by the platinum-linked millionaire.com website.
All this irrational exuberance has pumped fresh life into the blueblood of publications for the wealthy, Town & Country, which the Hearst Corporation acquired in 1925, around the time of F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous utterance. Town & Country's November and December issues were the largest issues back to back in 15 years with more than 200 advertising pages in each issue and the magazine marked its fifth consecutive year of ad increases, a rate in keeping with the growth of the American mogul class.

The magazine is accessorized with editorial that deftly blends the tastes of the newly minted millionaires with that of the old upper crust. They still maintain the snootiest bridal registry and publish an annual Directory of Top Cosmetic Surgeons, but no class-conscious 'Cherry Orchard'-like class conflict is played out on the pages of Town & Country: The party pictures still feature the world's thinnest doyennes and social-register swells but now they're pictured with entertainers and designers and entrepreneurs, all of them united by charity balls. The effect is demystifying but sort of democratizing, too, in the sense that the media is discovering that the rich are not only different from you and me but from each other, too.

And yes, Billionaire Magazine and Billionaire.com have already been trademarked.