Could You Have Landed a Job at Vogue in the 90s?

22/32 some of which were flukes I reckon. If I ever work at Vogue it'll be as the janitor

That was fun, OP! I got 28/32. Apparently... I'm hired!

30/32!!

27/32! I'm hired! Probably just barely hired, but hired nonetheless!

32/32 but I did quite a bit of educated guessing.

Anna would still hate me anyways

23/32, ouch! I need more cultural seasoning.

32/32 It was pretty easy

30/32. Condé Nast was a client early in my career in the early 90s.

27/32 like r4

32/32. I'm not American, but I am old enough to remember the 90s well, so the only one I wasn't sure of was the Cuban hairdresser v whatever the other vaguely Hispanic option was. A lot of the references that weren't novels or films have nevertheless appeared in several. An awful lot of them were about modernist era works, which I found odd for the 90s. And there were no questions about Princess Diana, the most photographed woman in the world! What were they thinking??

The only impediment to my hiring is that, although I was slim by normal standards, I was about twice the size allowable to walk through the door of Conde Nast in the era of Kate Moss and I wasn't looking to lose any weight.

32 out of 32.

I've no knowledge of Barbara Streisand, show tunes, Broadway musicals, popular entertainers is next to nothing, but writers, directors, any name connected to art, NYLon-ers, very rich people, and the scandalous is not half bad, evidently.

I would have answered all of Wintour's questions correctly only to see a slightly forced upturn of her mouth as she dismissed me from the interview and wrote a single, dismissive word written atop my resume.

Vogue would not have been the place for me.

I don't know how long I would've been able to work in the Vogue offices before I called Anna Wintour a cunt.

Waiting for the Squid Game/Saw version…

That was too easy 32/32.

26/32 - it should have been 28/32.

I agree it was pretty easy to do as well as I did. I don't know much about designers or architecture.

I wouldn’t be able to complete a 2020s version but I was reading Vanity Fair back then so it was easy.

Read the list of names/places at the end, the full list, and I recognized all but a handful.

Absolutely would not be getting hired at Vogue though.

28/32

I really flubbed the literature section - you've either have read those or you haven't. Doesn't mean I'm not reasonably well-read.

29/32, and apparently hired along with the rest of you.

I’m already looking forward to all the office pot luck lunches and the Friday afternoon drinkie-poohs with the rest of you bitches from the steno pool.

Oh, I was 32/32 in case that wasn’t obvious

32/32, and i wasn't even trying that hard. Back in the day I was obsessed with "the beautiful people," and read/watched everything i could to become conversant in that area. But that was a looooooooong time ago and I thought I'd forgotten too much, but it's still stuck in my brain.

I like how they have a list made by straight interns and the article sends you to the “fashion closet” for passing the test.

Simon Doonan did one of these in a book: “If your creative frame of reference is so narrow that it does not include Jackie Kennedy, and her legendary, chic but uptight, posh-lady personal style, then it is safe to assume that it also does not include Serge Gainsbourg, blaxploitation movies, Clarice Cliff pottery, Mina, Madame Yevonde, Madame Gres, Francois’s Hardy, the fetish photography of Elmer Batters, Rita Hayworth, Jeff Koons, the art of the Viennese Secession, Alber Elbaz, Irving Penn, Shirley Stoler, Leonora Carrington, Ava Gardner, Isadora Duncan, Damien Hirst, Bjorn Winblad, Carine Roitfeld, Wanda Jackson, Nosferatu, Joni, Martin Margiela, Liberty prints, Cristobal Balenciaga, Alexander Girard, Noguchi, Rei Kawakubo, The Shangri-Las, Brigid Berlin’s tittie paintings, Zandra Rhodes, Debussy, Dusty Springfield, Biba, Otto Dix, Big Mama Thornton, Bonnie Cashin, Carmen Miranda, Gilbert & George, Christian Lacroix sweetie, Bettie Page, George Platt Lynes, Jackie Mason, Robert Rauschenberg, Kate Bush, David Bowie, the sinister whimsy of Florine Stettheimer, and” huge gasp “the brutalism of Edward Durrell Stone. In other words, my dear, your creative frame of reference does not exist.”

Anna would make the perfect wife for Putin.

R23, Anna Wintour would mop the floor with Vladimir Putin.

28. How old are the perfect scorers?

There’s nothing too special about the time or place of these questions. I’m 60 and many of the people long predate me, but I still know who they are.

Knowledge is power.

Yeah but who still knows about Evan Dando. Eddie Vedder is on there? Forgotten political references. It is a dated list in many ways.

Of course it’s dated —it’s over 25 years old.

You’d be on Jeopardy: why are we getting answers about old people?

The Virgin Megastore did a (less cultured) test like this when I worked there in the 90s, with questions about books, movies and music. One of the questions was “what is an 8-track?”

And we'd all be making $18,000 a year. Lucky us!!!

We’d be hired to work at A&F, in the back room.

27/32

Yes. In any decade and still, actually!!!

26/32

27/32.

I got 30/32

I got hired, but I don't think I'll keep the job long. AbFab reruns will only get you so far in the fashion world...

Evan Dando was hawt!

Oh, wow R22, my middle sister was OBSESSED with Rei Kawakubo in the late 70s-mid 80s.

I haven't run across that name in DECADES.

no.

she liked royalty and stick thin types

32/32 And Anna offerred me a job in 1992. I turned her down to work at the SEC, of all places. And I hated that job.

R40, how did you come to have a such widely-divergent job opportunities as Vogue and the SEC? What did you end up doing at the SEC?

I investigated insider trading. But I soon discovered it was a very corrupt agency. I got widely-divergent jobs because I had fancy degrees and after my BA had worked for New York VIPs who all knew each other. Anna had already helped me get an internship in fashion show production when I was in school. Bill Blass got me that interview with Anna. CK and possibly DK then said nice things about me to her after my internship. Back in those days a couple ivy degrees and good words from VIPS could get you in to any door. And I was someone who could think on his feet and problem solve. So word gets around. I knew a lot about fashion, art and finance, and worked in all three domains. In the 80s I worked on WS and then big time philanthropy and then I went back to school to study art and film and fashion. I wanted a bit more insight into the dirty business so I couldn't resist the SEC offer. When the financial crisis arrived I understood why. I also worked a year at Lehman Brothers! Nest of vipers. The greed is insane.

both in finance and philanthropy and in fashion too - such as this quiz - you have to be a bit of a polyglot. So for example I knew how to research anything. SO thats how I got the such offers. Think of Tess in Working Girl - what she was doing - triangulating news from wide sources - was very much a skill and that part of the story was realistic.

Trask... Radio. Trask... Radio. "You read W?" "Well, you never know where the next big idea might pop up." "If you can call dim sum a big idea." or something like that,.

Thank you, R42/R43.

22/32... We'll keep your resume on file.

28/32. I wonder what my job position would be and how much it would pay.

[quote] I wonder what my job position would be and how much it would pay.

Given your, um, generous proportions, R47, I would say this: