Bryan Tipton

They caught me when I was vulnerable.

I had just returned from Chicago, still enraptured from a river tour of the city’s buildings, and an ascension to the 94th floor of the John Hancock Center.

And in my mailbox, it awaited me. A subscription offer to Architectural Digest.

I have an affinity for architecture. While the subjects I enjoy in art are many and varied, my two loves are the human figure and buildings.

I filled out the subscription card and put it in the mail.

Perhaps I was naïve, but I expected a magazine entitled, Architectural Digest, to actually contain information about architecture. It doesn’t. Instead it’s four hundred pages of gaudy jewelry ads and photos of leather couches.

And finally, a year into my subscription, I actually received “The Architecture Issue” of Architectural Digest. How does this work? How do you publish one issue a year based on your namesake? You don't see Popular Science coming out with its yearly "Science Issue" or Playboy putting out its special "Naked Chick Issue." Every issue is "Naked Chick Issue."

Architectural Digest... please take note.