• by Larry Dobrow , July 7, 2003

For a magazine that only publishes four times a year, The New York Times' Sunday Fashion of the Times supplement has commanded a lot of attention in advertising circles.

Part of it, obviously, is the limited schedule. After all, it's not hard for fashionistas to justify four ads per year, regardless of the strength or weakness of the economy. But Fashion of the Times seems to have clout that transcends its semi-regular status.

Unlike just about every other high-end fashion publication, Fashion of the Times is opinionated; a favorable FOT write-up or spread tends to have significantly more credibility than a comparable piece in a competing fashion book. Similarly, the publication has a 60-year history of reporting on fashion trends, meaning that it is less prone to hyperbolic pronouncements about "the next big thing."

"We have a very diverse audience, but it's also very loyal," says Jyll Holzman, the Times' senior vice president of advertising. "You've got people in the [fashion] industry and people out of it, and the different audiences read us very differently."

Clearly advertisers have noticed. The upcoming 60th anniversary issue of Fashion of the Times, set to arrive on August 17, is already chock full of A-list designers, from Armani to Yves St. Laurent. Throw in a handful of automotive, liquor and home furnishing companies, and Fashion of the Times has an advertiser mix that would be coveted by nearly any high-end publication.

"Advertisers are interested in reaching the Times audience - I don't think that's anything new," Holzman says.

Holzman is somewhat cagey when talking about Fashion of the Times, not unlike a mother bird protecting her nest. She declines to answer questions about the fashion category as a whole and the future of the publication, outside of the expected quips about hoping for an economic rebound sooner rather than later.

When it comes to discussing New York Times Magazine readers, however, Holzman has more than a few tasty demographic morsels at the ready. A 2002 study revealed that 85 percent of the mag's readers possess a college degree and 48 percent have a post-graduate degree. Its readers are also highly affluent: 56 percent boast a household income of more than $100,000 and the average household income is $162,000. Sure, the NYT Mag reader may be a bit older than, say, the average Cosmopolitan devotee (44 is the average age), but Holzman notes that "fully two-thirds of our readers took action from the advertising in the last 12 months, and they spend one hour, 42 minutes reading the magazine."

As for the future of the Fashion of the Times, Holzman isn't talking: "Of course we have a few ideas, but I'm not going to tell you," she laughs. One gets the impression that she'd like to add a few more automotive advertisers and maybe some additional fragrances, but overall the magazine seems poised to continue its legacy of success for years to come. "Each issue has beaten the performance of the year prior," Holzman says. "You can't ask for more than that."