What A-List Faces Sold The Most Magazines In 2011?
Latest2011 is already over in magazine-land, where January ’12 issues are filling up newsstand shelves. This allows us to ask, and answer, the hard questions, like: did people buy a catastrophic number of magazines with Kim Kardashian‘s face on them this year, or just a distressingly high one? And what’s the deal with Sarah Jessica Parker, anyway? SJP proved a reliable cover subject on Elle, Vogue, and Marie Claire, earning each magazine its second- or third-bestseller of the year. Kim Kardashian had Glamour and Cosmopolitan‘s bestsellers, but on the front of Harper’s Bazaar, Self, and Lucky, Kim’s face elicited only average sales. Women’s Wear Daily reports that “a source said that her January 2012 Glamour cover with sisters Khloé and Kourtney is on track to fall below 400,000 sales — a really poor performance.” Peering into the American id by way of magazine-buying habits has its interesting findings: people like Mark Sanchez more than they do Derek Jeter. They don’t like Reese Witherspoon, but they do like Gwyneth Paltrow — just not on the cover of Bon Appetit. Heidi Klum did well, and so did Mila Kunis, who delivered 15% above-average sales for W and 10% above-average for Cosmopolitan. But people hate Justin Timberlake on a cover: with Mila, he had the fourth-best Elle of the year, but alone, he was Esquire‘s worst seller. Also unwanted on magazine covers in 2011: Justin Bieber. Nobody bought Bieber’s Vanity Fair — it was the third-worst selling issue not only of the year, but of editor Graydon Carter’s entire tenure — and his Rolling Stone sold 5% below average. Maybe all of those Beliebers who buy up multiple copies of his albums should show a little love to their local newsagent? And Lady Gaga had both the third-best and the third-worst Harper’s Bazaar issues of the year (May being best and October being worst). Either people were all like, ‘Wait, we just got a Harper’s Bazaar with this lady’s face on it, what gives?’ or they prefer Gaga with makeup and weird facial prosthetics. (Her October cover was au naturel.) [WWD]
A little girl was trampled at a mall in Indianapolis after doors opened on the release of a new Air Jordan shoe. A shoe. Just a fucking shoe. [Styleite]
Kimora Lee Simmons is Photoshopped to the familiar standard of “perfection” for her new cover of Harper’s Bazaar Singapore. [DS]
Anna Dello Russo uploaded this video of her dancing with a man dressed as Santa Claus, for your holiday viewing pleasure. [YouTube]
Benetton is donating this sculpture of a dove to the city of Tripoli as part of its new Unhate ad campaign. The dove is made of spent bullet and shell casings. So Libyans spend eight months fighting for their freedom from dictatorship, and all they get for their trouble is to be the background of a fucking Benetton ad. [WWD]
- GQ has named Jared Leto the Worst-Dressed Man In The World. Sounds pretty bad in title case, doesn’t it? The magazine says “the essence of the Leto Complex” is that he is “s man who can afford an Alexander McQueen suit-conceivably a very nice one — but opts for Ugg slippers and a couture Snuggie.” That and a black mesh wifebeater. [GQ]
- A fire this weekend tore through and destroyed the home of fashion advertising executive Madonna Badger. Her parents, Lomer and Pauline Johnson, and her three daughters, Lily, Grace, and Sarah, were all killed. Badger and a friend named Michael Borcina survived the blaze. Lomer Johnson worked as a department-store Santa Claus, most recently at the Saks Fifth Avenue flagship in Manhattan. Badger art-directed Calvin Klein‘s famous campaigns with Mark Wahlberg and Kate Moss. The cause of the fire has been described as “fireplace related” by investigators, and the Stamford, Connecticut, police and fire departments have scheduled a press conference for 5 p.m. today. [NYTimes, WWD]
- Marie Claire editor and Project Runway judge Nina Garcia announced that she’s joining online trunk-sale retailer Moda Operandi as a consultant. [@NinaGarcia]
- Model Chrissy Teigen and singer John Legend got engaged over the holidays. Teigen deadpanned, “he went to Jared.” Also, here is a fish they caught, cooked, and ate in the Maldives. [@ChrissyTeigen, So Delushious]
- Australians hate shopping, and they hold poor customer service responsible. 44% of respondents to an Australian survey say that rude and/or pushy retail staff have undermined their shopping experiences, and 22% say they often encounter sales assistants who are lazy. Strangely, no mention was made of goods that are “priced such that they remain inaccessible to the undesirable.” [WWD]
- Sears announced it will close 100-120 Sears and K-mart stores it regards as underperforming. In the first two months of this quarter, same-store sales at the chain have fallen by 4.4% year-on-year, which is pretty dismal. Another thing Sears could save money on would be those asinine fucking sponsored Tweets it keeps spamming everyone’s feeds with. [WWD]
- The Hollywood Reporter mentioned the efforts of a TV producer named Scott Sternberg to shop a Casey Anthony interview for $750,000 were coming to nought — but it ran a photo of Band of Outsiders founder Scott Sternberg by mistake. [P6]
- We were intending to read this story on the New York opening of a Canadian tearoom chain, but the lede stopped us cold: “Tea does not have a terribly sexy reputation in America, where it tends to be the beverage of choice for the fussy or the British or the mothball-scented elderly.” Excuse me? Excuse me? What a load of cold, spent leaves. Tea is not “fussy” — it’s a hell of a lot easier to make a good cup of tea than a good cup of coffee. Tea isn’t the privileged domain of the few, it’s a good, honest, easy-drinking beverage that hydrates and enlivens. And as for the Canadian who “couldn’t find good tea anywhere” in New York: Stop being purposefully obtuse and go to fucking Fairway. They sell more varieties of looseleaf than you could blend and give insipid, punning, twee little names to (“All the Raj,” “The Skinny”) in a lifetime. Hmm. Now we need a cup of tea. [WWD]
- British-based lingerie chain La Senza has filed to enter bankruptcy protection in the U.K. La Senza is owned by Lion Capital, the private-equity firm best known on this side of the pond for its heavy investment in American Apparel and skeevy corporate parties. [WWD]