“Corruption chic” is in. That’s according to The Conservateur, a new “D.C.-based fashion-and-lifestyle platform” from some of conservative fashion’s elite, who, upset over Vogue snubbing Melania Trump, are now throwing in their political views with a cute new pair of shoes—or ankle monitors—in their own attempt at creating content.
Michael Schaffer, a senior editor at Politico whose “Capital City” column runs weekly in Politico magazine, tells hosts Will Sommer and Kelly Weill in this episode of The Daily Beast’s Fever Dreams podcast that while he doesn’t think Anna Wintour is losing a lot of sleep, the “MAGA answer to Vogue” has landed, and it’s already making headlines.
“It fits with the sort of conservative self mythology of ‘We are oppressed, we are marginalized, we are treated unfairly,’” Schaffer says of The Conservateur, created by Trump White House alum Jayme Chandler Franklin and pal Isabelle Redfield.
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“In the case of these folks behind The Conservateur it’s like, ‘Oh, Melania Trump was never given a cover of Vogue even though she’s so beautiful and the fashion industry is hopelessly woke.’”
“I think there’s a thing on the right because again the right has become in a lot of ways in our country a kind of subculture. The idea is we’re creating a separate reality because we are so terribly, terribly, terribly mistreated in the other reality.”
Schaffer offers an explanation for the popularity of such content: “There seems to be much more of a worship for traditional forms of authentic validation.”
“I’m sad to say that magazine covers don’t quite have the impact that they once did in our culture. But among folks who think it was so unfair that Melania was excluded from Vogue, they are still sort of held up as this like amazing thing.”
However Schaffer does give The Conservateur kudos: “I will say it… it’s pretty nicely done. The design is tasteful and it’s not a complete joke, even if the fashion is probably not people that you are gonna be hanging out with.”
In this week’s “Fresh Hell” segment, the hosts discuss the right’s reaction to and misreporting on the emerging trend of colorful fentanyl pills dubbed rainbow fentanyl.
Republicans have managed to wedge this into an anti-Democrat talking point, Weill says, while discrediting House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy in a Fox News appearance who claimed that a school official died after seizing fentanyl from a child and touching it.
“They’re saying, ‘Where does fentanyl come from? Mexico. So because of the open border and Joe Biden, your child is going to eat fentanyl thinking that they are a pack of Skittles.’
“It’s a rehash of the same panics we’ve seen about razors and apples since we were kids. But this one has a really kind of tortured political bent to it.”
Listen, and subscribe, to Fever Dreams on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.
