Glossed Over

Lowest Common Denominator: Vogue, January

75: Number of “hot tips for 2008” promised on the cover

13: Number of photos of “plus-size” models appearing on a pull-out calendar inside the issue

Bucketloads: Amount GlaxoSmithKline must have paid for the calendar, which is an advertisement for weight-loss supplement Alli

Infinite: The disappointment that, other than the Shape Issue, this is the only time we’ll ever see models who even approximate average sizes in Vogue (And let’s be honest—it’s not as if the token appearance of two plus-size models in last year’s issue constitutes a valid attempt to portray a more diverse range of body types.)

$200,000: Amount given to the first-place winner for the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, as explained by Anna Wintour

Endless: Measure of our wonder at the workings of  André Leon Talley’s mind, hence our decision to post his quote from the “Contributors” page despite the fact that no actual numbers are involved.  (Except, you know, dollars.)

What is your New Year’s fashion resolution?

“To order custom Charvet pique tennis shorts and silk kneesocks the color of clotted cream and Manolo Blahnik white suede brogues, for spectator sports at the U.S. Open.”

1: First-person essay about abortion, Lori Campbell’s “Private Lives”

1: Irksome photo accompanying the piece.  In it, the author poses with her daughter in the street, while wearing high-end clothes and towering heels.  Predictably, she is thin, white, and attractive.  Would Vogue have published this essay if its author weren’t so camera-ready? (Remind us some time to talk about this more.  The trend of photographing authors and magazine staffers—ahem, Lucky—only lends credence to the idea that you have to be conventionally beautiful to partake of fashion and/or work at a magazine.)

77 and 78: Pages on which this perception is furthered. Matilde Borromeo, the youngest daughter of an aristrocratic Italian family, is described by William Norwich as

...so chicly comported that you just assumed their first baby steps had to have been taken on the deck of some great yacht...Someone asked if she might linger in New York; surely a fashion house or magazine would be happy to employ her.

$250: Price of a pair of Stuart Weitzman heels that Ivanka Trump deems “not wildly expensive”

3: Number of weeks elapsed between model Natalia Vodianova giving birth and appearing in seven runway shows

0: Relevance this fact has to the story in which it appears, “Peerless”

10: Number of women on Vogue’s best-dressed list

5: Number of women on the list who are current or former models (Kathryn Neale, Astrid Munoz, Georgina Chapman, Kelly Wearstler, and Agyness Deyn)

$165: Price of a fedora worn by Kate Hudson’s four-year-old son, Ryder, in “Sunny Side Up!”

Lowest Common Denominator: InStyle, January

2: Number of pages devoted to Kate Hudson (“Her 10 best, ever!”)

4: Additional photos of Kate Hudson throughout the issue (pages 78, 112, 115, 149)

7, not counting writer Johanna Schneller: People who gush over Katie Holmes in “What Katie Wants” (The illustrious Kate Cruise Fan Club counts the following luminaries as members: Sherry Lansing, Giambattista Valli,  Diane Keaton, Giorgio Armani, Victoria Beckham, Callie Khouri, and Christopher Bailey of Burberry.)

29: Percentage of paragraphs in “What Katie Wants” in which Katie gushes about Tom Cruise or “being a wife”

Way, way too much: Amount Katie is trying to make her marriage appear sound

1: Ludicrous statement about femininity in “Figure Flattery.”  The collarbone is, according to InStyle, “arguably one of the most feminine parts of a woman’s body.” Wait, are they really claiming certain parts of a woman’s body are more feminine than others?  No word on which parts are, like, unacceptably gender-neutral.

1: Animal whose fur is suggested as a “problem solver” for upper arms in the same article (That’d be the rabbit, and there’s a shrug and a capelet crafted of its pelt.)

$54.80: Average price of the “positively affordable” items in “Deals & Steals,” which is—surprise!—actually affordable

3: Photos of Jennifer Garner in the same magenta Zac Posen dress (pages 75, 76, and 110). We love us some Sydney Bristow, and it’s a gorgeous dress, but three times?

1: Number of animate objects listed in “Designer Lust List” (Jenni Kayne says a French bulldog is a must-have.  Dogs, yes!  But pups as fashion accessories?   God, no.)

10: Steps involved in a “simple…approach to getting it right in the new year and beyond,” per “Beauty 2008: Your Master Plan”

Absolutely none: Amount of interest we have in developing a “master plan” involving a “signature scent”  and hair accessories.  Like we have nothing better to do?

42: Percent of ad pages in this issue which tout cosmetics, skincare, and haircare products

26: Words we read in the Vanessa Williams story.  They were: “Can a native New Yorker like Vanessa Williams find true bliss—and a really good soy chai latte—way out West?  You bet your sweet Buddha.”

Approximately a billion: Number of times we’ve seen the story about a New Yorker moving to L.A.  Doesn’t anyone east of the Mississippi realize that we do, in fact, have bagels on the West Coast?

Infinitely: Degree to which we were bored with this issue

Advertising in Allure: Shirtless Shilling

Spotted in the October issue of Allure: four fragrance ads featuring nearly naked women.  Because everyone knows that wearing perfume means you don’t have to wear a shirt!  (But just in case, better cover up those breasts with whatever object is lying around!  Like that pile of flower petals!)

    

As repugnant (and lazy!) as we find the extraneous use of nudity to sell things, we dislike the Marc Jacobs and Mariah Carey ads even more.  Is the model in the Daisy ad unconscious?  Dead?  Or, you know, just asleep in the grass in her underwear?  Totally normal!  And the Mariah Carey ad—she’s mostly underwater, and her perfume promises an “ethereal presence.”  Thanks, but we’d rather be corporeal than ephemeral.

    

We just read the truly thought-provoking book Can't Buy My Love by Jean Kilbourne, which explores advertising and its insidious effects on women, and we can't stop thinking about it (and, yes, questioning everything we see).  However, there was one ad featuring a topless woman that we wholeheartedly endorse.

America Ferrera on Glamour Cover: Digitally Created Déjà Vu

Here’s Ugly Betty star America Ferrera, painstakingly Photoshopped and sporting Versace on the cover of the October issue of Glamour.  That’s quite a juxtaposition of Ferrera's computer-slimmed figure with the headline “1st Annual Figure Flattery Issue!”  Well, whose figure wouldn’t be flattered by a digital diet? 

Also, we could swear we’ve seen that dress before.

Oh, that’s because we have!  Here’s Jessica Simpson wearing the same dress in a different hue (and with slightly different straps) from the August cover of Bazaar.

Our verdict?  We prefer the purple.  Also, we prefer that if a magazine is going to tell us how to “dress [our] body better,” that magazine might want to demonstrate by dressing an actual body for the cover.  Just a thought!

Lesser Celebs, Lessons Imparted In Life & Style Weekly

We don’t normally read Life & Style Weekly—for reasons that should be fairly obvious—but when a few pages from the new issue popped up in our inbox, we couldn’t resist taking a look.  Check out the caption on this photograph of Heidi Montag (from The Hills, which we do watch, for reasons that should be fairly obvious) modeling an Ashley Paige swimsuit at Miami’s Fashion Week.

Good thing she got that boob job!

Really, why is it a good thing?  The suit would have stayed up on its own, so...is it good because without the implants she could never have modeled? (Doubtful, considering the size of the average runway model, not to mention that this modeling gig is more likely the result of MTV’s cameras than Heidi’s merits.)  Because without fake breasts she would never have been considered attractive? (Nah, we think she looked better before the surgery.) We’re stumped. 

If her new shape makes her feel confident and  happy, great—but why is a magazine promoting breast implants?  There’s just no reason for a magazine to say it’s a “good thing” in a foreboding tone, as if some horrible fate awaited her otherwise, as if all women should be expected to have bountiful breasts, as if only big-breasted women are beautiful.

That may be the most blatant promotion of plastic surgery we’ve ever seen in print.  Still, in Heidi’s case, it probably is a genuinely good thing.  See, without the surgery (and the engagement—why do we know this?), she might not be getting any attention whatsoever.  Looks like the surgery helped her elude the unspeakably terrible fate of anonymity...for now, anyway.

Allure Defends Nicole Richie With a Drug Reference

We found this amusing bit in Allure’s “Bottoms Up!” by Rory Evans, July.  Evans mentions gossip blogs, but we are quite sure we’re not reading the same ones.  These two sentences of hers actually made us laugh out loud.

If an actress gets too bony-assed, the paparazzi turn on her and so does public opinion.  (Could anyone imagine blogging smack about Audrey Hepburn the way they do about Nicole Richie?)

Because, you know, there isn’t a single gossip-worthy detail about Nicole Richie other than her weight.  But that surely unintentional reference to “smack”?  Genius!