Jezebel
-
Devil Wears OBE
Vogue chieftan Anna Wintour has received an Order of the British Empire, the prestigious order of chivalry, for "services to British journalism and fashion in America." The Nuclear Wintour's services have included, in addition to helming the Conde Nast fashion behemoth, championing a number of British designers, sporting a severe bob, and inspiring The Devil Wears Prada. Quoth she: "It's a great honour, many of my American colleagues are not quite sure what it is." Was that a neg? [Telegraph]
-
Women's Interest
Nylon may be safe, but according to a breakdown of ad page performance that mediabistro.com just posted (from WWD), things are scary indeed in the world of fashion magazines. In the third quarter, the industry saw a 10% decline as categories like pharmaceutical and beauty slashed their ad budgets. Some of the hardest hit are Vanity Fair (down 15.3% since last year - approximately 84 ad pages), W, Glamour and Essence, with even stalwarts like Vogue dangerously diminished (9.6%.) Bucking the trend is Elle, which, Stylista notwithstanding, had an increase in ad sales. Fingers and toes crossed for everyone — we may mock the ladymags, but we hate to see people lose jobs. [mediabistro]
-
MagHag
Fall usually means heavy, whopping copies of the major ladymags. Last year, the September issue of Vogue had 725 pages of ads, reports the Wall Street Journal. This year? 674. The ad pages for Cosmopolitan and W are also down. Notes WSJ: "At prices that can climb to $120,000 for one full-page ad, every missing page hits the magazines hard." Says Valerie Salembier, publisher of Harper's Bazaar: "Everyone is facing 2009 cautiously. I'm nervous, and I think all magazine publishers in our field feel the same way, whether they admit it or not." Are we witnessing the end of an era? [WSJ]
-
(Lad) MagHag
British Lad Mags: Root Of All Ills Or Symptom Of The Bigger, Sexist Picture?
Michael Grove, the shadow education secretary and a prominent Conservative in England, gave a speech today at a meeting organized by the think tank IPPR condemning lad mags (like Nuts, Zoo, and Maxim) for promoting "instant-hit hedonism" and presenting women as "permanently, lasciviously, uncomplicatedly available." The result, according to Grove, is that the magazines promote a deterioration of responsibility in young men towards women, leaving British communities with apparently the worst social situation that could ever occur: single-parent families. Yes, lad mags may present a sexist image of women, but is focusing on the importance of "male responsibility" towards women reinforcing sexist and misogynist attitudes towards women or destroying them? (A poll on the website of the Guardian reveals that, as of this morning, 54% of respondents think that lad mags do not "make men feckless".) More » -
photo shop of horrors
French (Photo Retouchers) Don't Let Famous Women Get Fat
Remember the horror of that almost-unrecognizable atrocity at left? Turns out we can blame Pascal Dangin for that. Dangin, you see, is what writer Lauren Collins, in this week's issue of the New Yorker, calls "the premier retoucher of fashion photographs", a onetime hairdresser who so believes in reincarnation (symbolic, not metaphysical) that, when he moved from France to the U.S in 1989, he chose the first very flight out of Charles de Gaulle airport on the very first day of the new year.
Many women are transformed by Dangin's computer stylus, which sits in a basement laboratory at "Box", his four-story, Manhattan Photoshop fortress: In addition to Drew, there is the trophy wife with the "flat" face and "short" legs; the shoulder blade found "in a recent project at W"; the cast of the Sopranos; Prada models; "a famous actress in her late twenties"; a "crunchy"-faced model; "another well known actress"; "an actress with a movie coming out this spring"; Kate Moss; models Liya Kebede and Raquel Zimmerman; Madonna. And then there is model Christy Turlington, who, Collins explains, "needs the least help". More »
-
ad libs
What Do You Think Of Fashion Magazine Advertisements?
Today, fashion-blog-behemoth Coutorture linked to TheRunwayScoop, which has a little item on what one writer thinks makes a good fashion ad. She mentions a Nina Ricci fragrance ad (pictured) that made her stop and pay attention. "There's something magical and dreamy-like about this ad. It tells a story," she writes.Fashion ads, or any type of marketing for that matter, should evoke emotion from the customer. That's how you capture attention. That is what makes women stop turning the pages of a fashion magazine — at least for me it works.
More » -
-
expensive shit (fight)
Shameless September Ladymags: 'Lucky' Vs. 'Glamour'
Every August, the September issues of the major women's magazines hit newsstands, and every August, media watchers ooh and aah over these magazines' total page counts, cover girls, weights, thicknesses, and yes, number of cosmetic samples. And we shake our heads. But don't people buy magazines for the editorial content? Hahahahaha, seriously though: There is enough grossly overpriced crap covered in the "journalism" part of these pages to outfit the Chinese military. Which brings us to our inaugural Expensive Shit: September Issues Edition. In "honor" of this annual tradition of examining the major women's magazines we decided to put Interns Maria and Cheryl to work adding up all of the priced merchandise in each magazine in order to determine which of the titles is full of the most shit. In this installment, Intern Cheryl compares the apparel, accessories, beauty products and other assorted tchochkes in Lucky & Glamour magazines. After the jump, a breakdown of the two magazines' net 'worth'. More »
- 1
1-7 of 7 for "fashion magazines"
