• Advertising Age, Monday, July 20, 2009 10:11 PM

September is a critical month for fashion magazines, almost as big as Christmas for retailers. For instance, Vogue booked 673.89 ad pages in last year's September issue, 23% of its haul for the full year. While the recession is expected to make a significant dent in those figures, there's a heartening chance that September's ad page declines since last year won't be as awful as magazines' last big test for fashion: the March issues.

This year's March issues, of course, suffered from comparisons against the ad-heavy copies published in spring 2008. This year's September issues only have to go up against the issues from last fall, which suffered because the downturn was entering full force by then. "The percentage declines in September will be much better than March, when advertisers didn't have as good a handle on the economy," says a fashion marketer. "A lot of first-half money that got put aside is going to come back into print."

Among the early indicators: Ad pages at Elle have fallen 21% from September 2008, to 326.7 pages from 413.5. Time Inc.'s Essence says it is estimating 105 ad pages in September, down 16.1% from last year.

Read the whole story at Advertising Age »