Beleaguered Marie Claire editor-in-chief Joanna Coles looked none too pleased this afternoon at the Vera Wang show, where she was seated in the second row.
The rest of the EIC sorority—Anna Wintour, Robbie Myers, Cindi Leive, Linda Wells, Brandon Holley, Amy Astley—were firmly planted in ringside seats for the artful collection (inspired by "Bolshevik workers, the Romanov court, and the simple beauty and dignity of the Russian peasant"). But Coles was relegated to a seat behind alpha-Hearstie Glenda Bailey, the EIC of Harper's Bazaar.
In December, the Times reported that the top spot at Marie Claire is not without its perks, as Coles saw it: "We were in Page Six today, and my BlackBerry hasn't stopped buzzing ... And the coat is Viktor & Rolf." Unfortunately, the editor's chair didn't score her an A-1-1 seat assignment and the attendant fawning from WWD stringers.
To her credit, Coles and her ready-to-be-photographed fur pelt didn't resort to seat swiping, and she stayed put even when rank-and-file fact-checkers and freelance "stylists" began to fill in the remaining front-row spots.
That said, this Radar correspondent barely saw it all unfolding from a "borrowed" fifth-row seat. It's brutal out there, kids.