What, exactly, is McKinsey's strategy for cutting costs at Conde Nast? Having parsed today's worthless anecdotal evidence, we now know: Let Vogue do whatever she likes, and make the poor meek New Yorker staffers suffer to make up for it.

The McKinsey consultants are zeroing in on Vogue as one of their early targets for "restructuring" and whatnot. We imagine that means that they went in, ready to do their cost-cutting, and were frozen by fear when they stared into Anna Wintour's black pools of eternity (eyes). Now she is proceeding to spend just as much money as ever—Keith Kelly says her normal European tour of fashion shows is a go.

Wintour's European entourage, which is usually about 10 people including her creative director, fashion director, several top stylists, European market editor, beauty editor and Publisher Tom Florio, is estimated to cost the company close to $250,000 in travel expenses.

Something's gotta go, to pay for the $30 pommes frites at The Ritz in Pair-ee. That "something" is...whatever they can take away from the New Yorker, which hasn't had a staff member who could kick a McKinsey consultant's ass since AJ Liebling left. David Remnick's magazine has lost its coffee stirrers.

Luckily the fundamental scientific principles governing the motion of heated molecules and liquid dynamics tell us that milk will mix itself into coffee without being stirred by an outside force. Well done, McKinsey.
[Pic: Getty]