Press: The Dynamic Duo at Conde Nast

On paper, they seem almost interchangeable. Young, attractive products of privileged British households, both are working mothers of small children and second wives to older, distinguished husbands. More important, Editors Tina Brown of Vanity Fair and Anna Wintour of House & Garden are journalistic prodigies boldly imposing their visions on two venerable American magazines in the same publishing empire. Recruited by Newspaper Scion S.I. Newhouse, proprietor of the eleven Conde Nast magazines, Brown and Wintour are rising stars who may one day equal such Conde Nast legends as Diana Vreeland, formerly of Vogue, and Ruth Whitney of Glamour.

Up close, however, the two could not be more different. Willowy, auburn- haired Wintour, 38, is cool and withdrawn; Brown, 34, a shorter, shapely blond, is brassy and outgoing. Their editing styles are as distinct as their looks. Brown is verbal, literary, with a knack for matching writer to subject, while Wintour is a visual creature, renowned for her eye for style.

After Wintour arrived at House & Garden last fall, rumors of a Dynasty-style cat fight with Brown began to circulate. Although Wintour did snatch Fashion Writer Andre Leon Talley away from Vanity Fair, the two women say they are friends, not rivals. Still, the talk grew louder earlier this year, when Wintour's controversial makeover of House & Garden (which she renamed HG) hit the newsstands. Aghast at a number of similarities to Vanity Fair -- particularly the emphasis on celebrities -- one wag dubbed HG "Vanity Fair with chairs."

That Vanity Fair, one of the most celebrated avant-garde magazines of the 1920s, would once again be a trendsetter was exactly what Newhouse and Conde Nast Editorial Director Alexander Liberman hoped when they revived the long- defunct magazine in 1983. But after one of the most heralded debuts in recent publishing history, the new magazine collapsed under the weight of its own pretension. Eleven months and two editors later, Newhouse and Liberman hired Brown, an Oxford graduate whose spunky editing had turned around the British satirical monthly Tatler.

Brown learned to adapt her light, irreverent British sensibility to the New World. "Americans want real information, substance, something solid," she observes. The result was what she calls an "intellectual cabaret" -- a saucy, literate celebrity magazine featuring profiles of Hollywood stars, aristocrats and parvenus, ballasted with some weightier and newsier pieces. Her philosophy of journalism as voyeurism seems to have worked. Since her arrival, circulation has ballooned from 259,753 to 595,844, and advertising pages have more than tripled.