Vogue’s famously thick September issue is slimming down this year. The magazine’s publisher, Conde Nast, said Vogue will have 631 pages of advertising—more than any other American fashion or lifestyle magazine, but down 4.5% from last year.
Ad pages aren’t a perfect measure of a magazine’s health, but September issues are typically used to gauge how American lifestyle publications rank. Vogue, the perennial leader, peaked with 727 ad pages in 2007, before the recession. It recovered since, hitting 665 pages last year, Vogue’s third-highest tally ever.
Here’s a look at September ad page tallies in a range of magazines:
Second-place InStyle is published by Time Inc., which was recently spun out from Time Warner as a separate publishing company. Elle, in third place, is published by Hearst.
Conde Nast announced yesterday the departure of its longtime editorial director, Thomas Wallace. The move was seen as a consolidation of power for Anna Wintour, the famous editor of Vogue who was also recently named creative director of the entire company.
Correction (6:08pm ET): Vogue’s September 2013 issue had 665 advertising pages, its third-highest tally. A previous version of this story said the issue had 655 ad pages and, relying on an incorrect report, called it Vogue’s second-best year. The statistics and link have been corrected.