Glossed Over

Fashion-Related Food Insanity, Part 328,543 • “Summer Fitness-ology,” the Daily Mini’s ode to insane diets in the Summer issue, provides a shockingly comprehensive list of ill-conceived ways to lose weight: starvation, “reducing soap,” amphetamines. The worst? Well, there’s the “Whizz Diet,” which allows weight watchers to feast on 750 calories a day of milk mixed with lemon juice. And then there’s designer Hedi Slimane’s bizarre baby-food regimen. Weird though it may be, there’s no denying that a diet consisting of tiny jars of pureed carrots has kept his figure boyishly slim. (Literally.) So women aren’t the only ones starving themselves to slip into skinny jeans, but is this progress?

Fashion Mini Celebrates Ten-Year-Old Taste

You know, it’s pretty much par for the course that a magazine has the power to make us feel bad about ourselves.  Between the impossibly skinny models, their never-seen-the-sun skin, and our apparently inadequate earning power, reading a magazine can sometimes turn into a real battle with our self-esteem.  Last night, we were reading the October issue of Marie Claire, feeling pretty good about our bank balance—until we saw that a $295 Tory Burch dress listed as a “steal.”  Suddenly, our mood darkened.  A dress that costs a good deal more than our car payment?  Oh, sure, what a fantastic way to spend our hard-earned dollars!   But was the magazine’s perspective skewed, or are we simply not bringing home enough cash to finance a fashionable life?

Fortunately for our sense of self-worth, the page also suggested a $34.95 H&M dress.  (And we aren’t really in the midst of a magazine-induced personal crisis…yet.)  Still, we have to wonder who Marie Claire thinks is reading their magazine when such disparate price points are both considered bargains, but we’re digressing.

We’ve been reading fashion mags for the better part of our life (really!), which means we’ve absorbed plenty of stories about men, clothes, and money that don’t even approach our reality.  Still, we hadn’t yet read anything that made us feel like we were inadequate in our youth.  Until tonight, that is!  Who even knew that poor self-esteem could be retroactive?  Well, it’s totally possible!  How?  Well, the September Fashion Mini crowns actress Camilla Belle one of their fifty most stylish luminaries.  Then, horrifyingly, the issue confronts us with a detailed account of actress Camilla Belle’s preferences as a ten-year-old—taking us all the way back to 1997. 

Although that was the year we turned twenty-one, Belle’s means—not to mention her taste—were already well beyond our reach.  Reading her style picks, it becomes rather clear that some of us (and we do mean us) will never quite catch up with the magazine world’s favorite tastemakers.  Behind the jump, we compare our picks with Camilla’s, circa 1997.  Looks like we can blame our lack of Louboutins on our childhood!

Fashion Mini: New Name, Same Subpar Content

When we bought the Fashion Mini (previously the Daily Mini) at our favorite newsstand yesterday, we were rather disappointed in its lack of heft.  88 pages?  The average issue of InStyle has more than 88 pages in perfume ads alone! But once we sat down to read it, we were relieved that the magazine is so short.  This thing is like MySpace (tons of candids, super self-conscious, wretched design) without video clips.  The Fashion Mini is flat out annoying, and not only because they use the word “chiceratti”—though that certainly is a factor.  

Normally, when we read a magazine, we make a list of things that stand out to us, so we can write about them later.  Sometimes these lists have just one or two items.  And sometimes…well, here’s our list from a cursory read of the May issue (and we’re not even going to talk about the aggressively hideous cover in an attempt to block it from our memory):

1.  The magazine frequently uses a design element that is supposed to replicate the effect of a torn page.  (See the left side of the cover.)  Which would make total sense if, you know, we ever deliberately ripped the corners and the middles of every other page of an issue.

2.  The magazine is liberally sprinkled with the outdated suffix “-ette,” as in “chicette” and “Voguette.”  Is this 1986?

3. Ten pages—more than a tenth of the total magazine—is devoted to a feature on the Hamptons.  Sadly, this may have been the least troublesome part of the issue, if only because a good chunk of it is comprised of actual facts. 

4.  The magazine is woefully addicted to extraneous capitalization and punctuation, as in this example from page 31. 

Are YOU ready for Summer?

The Hamptons!

The Diet!

The Jet-Setting!

The Aggravation of Reading About People With Summer Homes!

5. The spread pushing some garment called the Skimi, which doesn’t even appear to cover the model’s buttocks, and yet can allegedly be worn WITHOUT PANTS TO GO DANCING.  Oh, and the model?  Not a model at all.  She’s the “first-ever Miss Mini,” Olivia Palermo, recently of the Socialite Rank scandal.

6.  Miss Mini.

7. Or what about this quote from Tom Ford?

I can’t be in a store during opening hours anymore because people want me to sign things and take pictures with them with their cell phones.

You’d think that he’d have the grace to not complain about that, considering that the people who’d want to take a picture with him are probably the ones reading this magazine.

8. And what about the quiz about the magazine’s contents on the final page, introduced with this phrase:

Because testing you is loving you.

This magazine is testing us, all right.  But we are definitely not feeling the love.