SKIRTING THE ISSUES

By BARBARA RUDOLPH/NEW YORK

The tango begins with each fashion season, in the showrooms of Seventh Avenue or SoHo. Magazine editors -- powerful tastemakers with impeccable taste -- survey the racks of samples from the designer's newest line. They make their choices -- the Calvin Kleins for the summer spread; the Gianni Versaces for the feature on The New Glamour. Then a jacket catches the editor's eye. She pulls it from the racks, fingers the rich fabric, tries it on, feels that familiar adrenaline rush.

"This is fabulous," she says. "If you like, we'll send it to you," responds the designer.

"I advise the designer not to send a bill," says publicist Kevin Krier, who has worked for some of fashion's biggest names. Sometimes, a top fashion publicist confirms, "there is an unspoken agreement that an editor will order something wholesale and then never see a bill."

A former fashion-magazine editor wistfully recalls the loot that poured into her office during the Christmas season. "We got lovely things," she says. "Lots of stuff. Leather bags, champagne, a traveling pouch, scarves, cashmere sweaters. A truck had to come to my house twice to deliver it all." This woman figures that within a month she pulled in some 200 gifts. Retail value: around $25,000.

When upstart Tse Cashmere opened a Madison Avenue boutique in November, some 250 members of the fashion press showed up to pay their respects to a prospective new advertiser. The editors gossiped, sipped their drinks and looked each other up and down in that New York fashion-business way. A good time was had by all. When they left, most of them carried a small memento from Tse: a $160 cashmere sweater, one per partygoer.

Who can say no to such offers?

No hard, cold cash changes hands in these transactions, but they are nevertheless transactions. It may be true, as fashion critic Michael Gross says, that "fashion journalism is an oxymoron.'' Still, a basic assumption is made by readers of these service magazines-namely, that the editorial judgments reflected in their pages are not made by people accustomed to receiving gratuities from designers. But here's how it really works: "It's very important to the designers to have editors wear their clothes," explains retailing consultant Vicky Ross in a classic bit of understatement. It cuts the other way too: the fashion magazines need to keep the designers happy -- which they do by featuring the designers' work in splashy editorial spreads. In a good month, the designers will reciprocate with advertising pages.

There has always been an intimacy between powerful editors and their favorite powerful designers: legendary Vogue editor in chief Diana Vreeland with Hubert de Givenchy and Halston, the quid with the quo. But the magazine recession of the early 1990s, which intensified the scramble for ad pages everywhere, made the cozy relationships even cozier. During that period, design companies amassed even more advertising clout. The economic pressure has eased lately-for instance, ad pages through May are up 16% for Elle and 9% for Glamour over last year. Still, the compromises remain.

In addition, subtle new forms of influence peddling have become standard operating procedure. A magazine art director owns a design agency on the side and helps create ad campaigns for his magazine's advertisers. Some fashion editors quietly moonlight as free-lance stylists for the designers whose shows they are meant to be covering as journalists, earning up to $3,000 for a day's work. What lands in Vogue or Harper's Bazaar or Elle or any of the half a dozen key magazines, may be the finest clothing, the hippest new bag or belt or jacket; it may also be the goods peddled by the editor's friend or most important advertiser or sometime employer. "Something has shifted," says Holly Brubach, style editor of the New York Times Magazine. "Instead of the friendships being kept separate from work, these friendships have been brought into the professional arena. You see it in the pages of the magazines."

Other editors are quick to dismiss this as a nonstory. "I've known Calvin Klein since 1979," says Harper's Bazaar editor in chief Elizabeth Tilberis. "I've known Karl Lagerfeld since 1968. I've known Gianni Versace since 1974. You've grown up with these people, and they'll always be friends. But it absolutely does not affect your editorial judgment or their placement of ads." And how meaningful is one little Chanel outfit presented gratuit to someone who doesn't pay for her clothes anyway? "I have a very generous clothing allowance," says Vogue's editor in chief Anna Wintour. "But if a designer gives me something, I absolutely have no problem with that. It's something I use my judgment about. It's not going to influence what you put in your pages. It's a fuss about nothing."

It is certainly true that many of the perks simply come with the territory. Among members of the press, including those at this publication, few can say they have never attended a free movie screening, received a free book or CD that they had no intention of reviewing, or purchased discounted designer clothes at invitation-only "sample sales." The difference is the way the fashion press has come to take its often valuable spoils for granted, sometimes in spite of employers' explicit rules. "When I go to the shows in Paris and Milan, the number of shopping bags coming in is unbelievable," notes Brubach, who says she accepts no free or discounted clothes, in accordance with Times policy. "You don't need to be a private detective when everyone shows up the next day in an anorak with a lining that says chanel, chanel, chanel. You can figure out that this was the present this season."

Harper's Bazaar has no explicit policy about whether its employees may receive free clothes. Conda Nast, which publishes Vogue, Mademoiselle, GQ and other glossy mags, prohibits its employees from accepting "expensive" gifts, but no dollar amount is specified. Such vague guidelines are easily gotten around by junior staff members with no clothing allowance. "You can always borrow as much as you want," explains a magazine insider. Meaning: the designer still gets to receive the editor's imprimatur, while the editor still gets to look terrific on a shoestring budget.

Sometimes the borrowing is for keeps. Manufacturers ship piles of clothing to the magazines for their photo shoots. When the garment bags are returned, they are sometimes considerably lighter. "There would be a certain amount of evaporation,'' recalls Michael Borden, a former Mademoiselle style director.

That's the little stuff. Increasingly, the big deals are cut between publishers and advertisers. Ed Filipowski, a managing director at Keeble Cavaco & Duka, one of the top fashion-publicity firms in New York City, says the "lines between advertising and editorial are blurring." What, after all, are friends for? As at many fashion magazines, the advertising department of Vogue produces a "wish list" for its editorial staff. Vogue publisher Ronald Galotti translates: "It means, 'When everything else is equal, please use my client [in a fashion spread].' I'm not going to say that editors pay no attention. They are smart people. But there is a huge difference between that and collusion."

Still, the designers know their power. "It's very common to hear 'Ralph [Lauren] had 25 pages. We had just 15,'" says an employee for a major designer. And the designer or the public relations agent turns up the heat. "First you complain to the editor," explains a publicist. "As a last resort, you go to the publishing side. You say, 'I just want you to know that our client is not getting the coverage he should be getting. We thought you'd want to know this before something happens.'" The publicist adds, "Today you know this call will be heard. A few years ago, it was not so well received." Vogue's Galotti acknowledges that "the fashion business is soft. Clients ask for as much as they can get. How much you give them is up to the individual magazine."

Escada represents the classic case of a savvy and rich advertiser whose clout can be measured in magazine pages. Between 1992 and 1994, the manufacturer's advertising budget jumped from $3.7 million to $5.2 million, partly to help trumpet the launch of Escada Sport, a new line. At the same time, the number of Escada's appearances in the fashion pages of national publications and Women's Wear Daily tripled, from about 30 to 90. A company spokeswoman points out that Escada did not always receive its best editorial coverage in publications where it most heavily advertised. Still, Escada clearly got something for its $5.2 million. "No one's going to say, 'Give me an ad, and I'll give you two credits,'" says an insider. "But if you're holding out a $3 million ad budget, it would not be surprising if there were an explicit or implicit understanding that editorial credits would be forthcoming."

Some of the newer business arrangements are especially troubling. At Harper's Bazaar, creative director Fabien Baron is also the owner of Baron & Baron, a design agency whose clients include Calvin Klein and Hugo Boss. Though his role at Bazaar is an influential one, Baron is technically a freelancer. This allows him to take on outside work, and his well-known arrangement raises few eyebrows. "I have no problem with this," says his boss, Tilberis. "Why is it a problem? Fabien Baron has nothing to do with placing ads or choosing the clothes that go in the magazine."

Why is it a problem? Mirabella's former artistic director, Sam Shahid, doubled as the owner of an advertising and design agency, Shahid & Co. Valentino, Gucci and Anne Klein were some of its clients. "Mirabella had no problem with my running a business," says Shahid. "They liked it-because I had connections to important advertisers." Says June Weir, who has worked as fashion editor of Women's Wear Daily and executive fashion editor of Bazaar: "I think it's a definite conflict of interest when someone owns a business and is also on staff."

Art directors are not the only ones to work both sides of the fence. A-list fashion editors sometimes work as stylists for a runway show or an advertising campaign. The jobs pay between $2,500 and $3,000 a day. "This is a bad phenomenon, and it's been happening a lot," says Patrick McCarthy, executive editor of Women's Wear Daily, which prohibits the practice. "It pollutes your editorial pages. How can you expect an editor to cover a designer objectively if that editor is also getting a paycheck from him?"

At Conda Nast, only contributors may accept outside assignments. Andra Leon Talley, who was creative director at Vogue, did styling for Versace and John Galliano. He says he was never paid for this work. Brana Wolf, a contributor at Vogue, has worked for Calvin Klein. Though she is not on staff, she exerts an influence: her name appeared on at least one major fashion story in 11 of the past 12 issues. At Harper's Bazaar, fashion director Tonne Goodman, who has worked for Calvin Klein, still does occasional styling for her old boss.

None of this is to say that the Karl Lagerfelds or Donna Karans of this world have not deservedly transformed the way we view, and wear, clothing. Many designers become editors' darlings simply because quality will win out and because anointing new talent is an important part of a fashion magazine's job. Vogue, for example, championed the work of designer John Galliano. Marc Jacobs, Anna Sui and Todd Oldham are among the current crop whose work would be celebrated even if they bought no ads at all.

But many young designers struggle to get their work seen by the more junior fashion editors. "You take them out to lunch. You call them until they come," says Rachel Danes, a partner with her husband Robert Danes, who designs elegant evening dresses. "P.R. people tell us that you have to send free clothes. But they're not paying for it. I own half of this business, and I have to answer to my accountant."

As for the millions of readers, they may be getting what they want-fantasy images of beautiful clothes draped on beautiful people-and that, month after month, is what they get. No matter if the clothes are designed by a friend of the editor's; an Armani suit is still an Armani suit. Readers probably do not expect to find stories about a designer's overseas sweatshops or imperfect personal life-and they rarely do. What would happen if the fashion editors took the initiative and cleaned up their act, much the way Conda Nast Traveler rewrote the rules for travel magazines in 1987 by refusing to allow its writers to accept free trips? Would the editorial content change dramatically? Would a new batch of designers suddenly crop up in the pages of Vogue? Probably not. But until this stubborn culture of big and small favors is dispensed with, readers will never have a chance to see what a difference that would make.