Glossed Over

Un-Lucky Break for Kim France: She's Out, Holley's In

It was announced this morning that Brandon Holley will replace Kim France as the editor-in-chief at Lucky. France is leaving Conde Nast altogether, according to a press release posted at Business Insider. Holley is currently editor of Yahoo!'s Shine and formerly was the top editor at Jane and ELLEgirl.

Jane's demise was attributed in part to its failure to attract high-end advertisers, a condition aggravated by the magazine's editorial focus on smaller designers and mass-market brands. As much as Lucky has veered toward pricey merchandise in recent years, it's still no Vogue.

Under its new leadership, will Lucky become even more inaccessible in order to meet this challenge? Why is France leaving? And can she take Jean Godfrey-June with her? Hey, internet, we need answers! (In the meantime, speculation is welcome.)

A Sticky Situation in Lucky's September Issue

In its patriotic mission to stimulate the economy, Lucky does everything it can to make shopping easier for the few, the proud, the misanthropes who detest malls, and the between-sizes Americans prone to fitting-room meltdowns. With the stickers marked “YES!” and “MAYBE?” in every issue, vicarious shopping has never been easier! 

This month, instead of tearing out the stickers to annotate a publication with actual paragraphs (like, say, a book), I actually affixed them to the magazine's comparatively noteworthy pages. And in my mission to help you avoid “reading” Lucky, here's what I culled from the September issue:

YES! I may need the entirety of Anna Sui’s Gossip Girl-inspired collection for Target, now that I’ve seen the two-page ad near the front of this issue. Unchecked spending on stuff I don’t need makes me a good American, right?

YES! Just as expected, Kim France’s “Editor’s Letter” does acknowledge the crummy financial climate, but adds that “against all odds,” the magazine’s fashion editors found plenty of great stuff for fall. Such sacrifice!

YES! Lucky continues its slaughter of the English language on page 94, trotting out the non-word “splurgier.” Are there fuses in my brain? Because I think one just blew.

MAYBE? It is totally acceptable to shop at outlets. If you’re in Italy and buying stuff at the Prada outlet, that is. (page 108)

YES! There exists an article of clothing called “zoot pants,” and Lucky’s “Style Spy” expects you to wear them for fall.

YES! Lucky’s editors may suffer from long-term memory loss, since they’ve managed to load up “The Smart Shopping Sourcebook” with heaps of accessories and clothes under $100, but can’t seem to remember those stylish bargains long enough to insert many of them in other features.

YES! According to “Accessories Report,” eyeglasses are in for fall. Great! I hate when glasses are out and I have to go around squinting. Suffer for fashion, right? (Or, you know, wear them and look like I don’t care about my appearance at all.)

MAYBE? Ed Hardy’s new perfume, which, according to the ad in this issue, is a “vintage tattoo inspired fragrance,” could be less appealing. But probably not.

YES! Cosmetics are the sure path to happiness and fulfillment! According to “Beauty Spy,” hot pink blush will make you “instantly feel 5,000 times prettier.” The latest anti-wrinkle potions are “kind of miraculous.” A saffron lip stain is “unexpectedly gorgeous”—for $65, it had better be. A new Maybelline lipstick is “perfect,” and a handful of acne products work with “stunning efficiency.” Yay!

MAYBE? Despite the wisdom so altruistically dispensed on page 214, most readers probably don’t need detailed instructions on shampooing.

YES! It is possible to “Love Your Hair,” as page 224 exuberantly instructs. It doesn’t require a shift in perspective—just a heap of drugstore products, a $140 flat iron, and a $34 shampoo. Easy!

MAYBE? We shouldn’t take beauty editors’ advice as gospel, since in “Skin Regimens of Beauty Editors,” one confesses that she hates washing her face at night and another never takes off her eye makeup before bed. As all of us who’ve been indoctrinated by a lifetime of women’s mags know, not washing up before sleeping is a cardinal sin.

MAYBE? I might have actually used the stickers to mark various pages of the “Lucky Fall Shoe Guide.” I’ll never tell.

YES! As noted in “40s Modern,” the right clothes can make me “magpie-cool.” Whatever that means.

YES! A $415 leopard-print blouse can be worn for work, weekend, and evening, according to “Fall’s Most Versatile Pieces.” Good thing, too, because at that price, it’d be the only blouse I own.

MAYBE? An $1195 Emporio Armani jacket and $630 Bruno Frisoni pumps, as seen on pages 280 and 281, aren’t the best exemplars of the “punk rock” or “collegiate” style the spread is supposed to embody. But then, neither is posing those “punk rock” models in front of a nightclub advertising a show presented by Radio Disney. Oops!

YES! Now that I’ve read the entire issue, I do want to purchase a new wardrobe! Lucky, you’ve successfully completed your mission.

Lucky Now Loaded with Less Expensive Stuff You Still Don't Need

I have a double standard when it comes to the clothes in magazines: I’m way more offended by a $300 bracelet than I am by a $25,000 ball gown. See, ball gowns exist purely to remind me how plebeian I am. They have nothing to do with real life (or, at least, my life), and I will never have cause to buy one, so I want to ogle only the grandest, most ostentatious gowns in magazines. But when Bazaar recommends I “stock up” on a $325 Chanel bracelet as if that’s a sound way to build an investment portfolio, I’m bugged. Either their math is way off, or I’m going about it all wrong by paying rent before buying baubles.

That’s why Lucky bothers me so much. For a magazine that’s ostensibly about shopping, there's little in its pages that I—or any other trust fund-deprived mortal—could actually purchase. So my curiosity was piqued when Lucky editor-in-chief Kim France mentioned money-related matters in September’s “Editor’s Letter.”

We’ve been quite busy here at Lucky HQ lately, creating new pages…Deal Hunting, in which we present, for your delectation, clothing and accessories that fall into the budget no-shock zone.

“Delectation”? Well, that may be an overstatement. But if you need a magazine to point you to the mall, then these two pages will do the trick! Chains like American Eagle Outfitters, Gap, J. Crew, and H&M are all represented here. Their suggestion of a $49 Nautica rugby shirt is almost insultingly unimaginative, but it’s hard to quibble too much when the most expensive piece featured is a $145 trench coat.

Anyway, not all hope is lost for those of us who enjoy spending money on luxuries like, say, health insurance and groceries. “Style Spy” offers two work-appropriate bags under $100. “My Foolproof Outfit” deviates from its usual high-spending ways, featuring a Manhattan financial adviser whose priciest choice is a $305 Cynthia Steffe dress. And the “Lucky Girl” keeps it almost real, too, selecting a $188 cashmere cardigan, a $15 necklace, and a $166 embroidered canvas bag.

But is this apparent decline in prices merely confirmation bias or an actual shift in Lucky’s editorial?

That’s a question only a spreadsheet can solve! I compared three fashion stories from the August issue with this month’s to find the average price per item.

“My Foolproof Outfit”

August average: $670.11

September average: $181.44

“Lucky Girl”

August average: $220.83

September average: $152.43

August’s “The Lucky How to Wear Your Denim Guide” and September’s “The Lucky Fall Trend Special”

August average: $262.87

September average: $532.45

So not much has actually changed, except perhaps the magazine’s realization that not all of us are willing to trade a kidney for a shearling coat. But that acknowledgment is a step in the right direction, even if does raise a host of questions. Is fashion by its very nature exclusive? Can a wool blazer from the Gap be considered fashion? Am I the only person who doesn’t share Lucky’s penchant for ludicrously expensive scarves? (Check out the $725 animal-print Vuitton on page 326. Ouch.)

I don’t know, and I’m not sure Lucky does either. But I welcome an increased emphasis on accessible apparel in magazines. I won’t ever need a ball gown, but I’d still like to look like I might.

Lucky Admits Defeat, Lets Readers Write the Captions

We’re concerned about the mental welfare of the staff of Lucky, and not just because of that strange belt they stuck on poor Rachel Bilson on the March cover. No, apparently the entire masthead is suffering from a rare but serious illness known as “caption dementia,” which is not quite the same as thinking the editors are demented after reading their captions. (Besides, for us the sensation is usually more akin to rage.)

Kim France has the details in the “Editor’s Letter.”

It is always unusually fun for us to put together our March issue, one of the most fashion-packed of the year. But it is also our unique torture because loads of fashion means loads of text!

“Loads of text,” relatively speaking, of course. This issue does have more words than the Anthropologie catalog!

And for those of us involved in the writing and editing of this text, that leads to something known to us as caption dementia, and—while it has not yet appeared in any of the diagnostic manuals—the condition is very, very real indeed.

Oh, we’re convinced.

It sets in after one has struggled with a new way to describe that 16th peep-toe slingback in the shoe guide without repeating any other adjectives already in the shoe guide or employing any of the words I’ve banned (“yummy” or “delicious” for anything that’s not food, for example).

But “sturdying” (page 200) is okay as a descriptor.

She goes on to chronicle how dedicated the Lucky staffers are. They wake up in the middle of the night, dreaming about captions. They go out in public and practice writing captions about the women who walk by. Basically, they suffer an awful lot for their “art.”

And now they want the rest of us to suffer!

So anyway, we’ve got a challenge for you: Take a stroll in our vampy, clean-lined, retro-ish-but-smartly-updated shoes. We’re giving away a $1,000 gift certificate to Barneys New York Co-op to the soul who can bring the freshest language to four pages of our shoe guide.

Ooh! Contest-y!

Lucky’s website has the complete details. There’s also a full list of the words banned from the magazine, most of which we actually agree with. Perhaps we lack imagination, but we can’t imagine using “kooky”  to describe a pair of shoes that anyone would want to buy— and what is the point of Lucky if not to entice women to spend? Here’s the list:

adorable

bling

fashionista

fave

fierce

flair

funky

groovy

indulgence

kooky

run, don't walk

shopaholic

the final word in

whimsical

food references used to describe a nonfood item (as in "a delicious shade of pink")

Entrants must fill in captions on four pages of the shoe guide, and the deadline for submissions is March 3. We’re already dreaming about adding -y  to nouns and -ish to adjectives!

Glossed Over Book Club: Jean Godfrey-June's Free Gift with Purchase, The Merciful End

So, this Jean Godfrey-June book ?  It goes on for an awful long time about lunches.  Sometimes companies serve lavish midday meals at fancy restaurants in order to garner good press!  Real shocker there.  And there are about forty-seven explanations of why she hates having her picture taken.  And then there are a billion pages—approximately—describing various levels of intrigue she faced during her tenure at Elle, which might have been interesting, except that every player is saddled with a cumbersome code name like “Above the Fray.”  The French execs at the magazine try to use European photo shoots in the American edition, and Above the Fray tussles with Eminence Grise and the Playboy and the Fashionista, and, well, there’s a reason we don’t watch daytime soap operas.

We can barely get through the one page she pens in Lucky, so it was clearly expecting too much that we’d be entertained all the way through a 271-page book that consists entirely of poorly organized personal anecdotes and impossible-to-execute beauty tips.  (We tried that concealer stripe, by the way.  No dice.)

All we really wanted out of this book was dirt about Lucky and/or Kim France. And now that we've read every single page, some of them twice because they were so incomprehensible, we’ve compiled a list, based mostly on the book’s final chapter, of the details we gleaned.  We hope that these small morsels of information will be enough to prevent all of you from undertaking the onerous task of reading Free Gift with Purchase.

1. Jean’s office at the magazine is “private-but-not-exactly-private.”  We don’t know what that means either!  Apparently, Jean is so confident in her descriptive abilities that she doesn’t feel the need to expound on this.

2. Speaking of nebulous descriptions:

If Kim uses the word perfect to describe someone, it’s not a good sign.  “She’s overperfect!” Kim once said of an impeccable, extremely fashiony [agh!] staff member, who, incidentally, ejected herself early on.  (There are plenty of superhot gals at Lucky, don’t get me wrong, by perfect I mean that smug, overly groomed, tucked-and-folded-scarf thing that some pretty girls feel enhances their attractiveness.)

3. In a departure from the magazine world’s status quo, the fashion department is “not mean.”  What a ringing endorsement!

4. Kim France has banned the use of certain words in the magazine, which explains why they feel the need to make up new ones!

…we ripped through “bohemian” in the first year; “glamorous” and “amazing” are currently on the endangered list.  “Fashionista” has been banned from the start.

5. Flattery will get you everywhere at Lucky.

Kim is smart smart smart and beautiful and successful (I know, it’s kissing up to the boss, but it’s true)...

6. We believe this claim is a blatant lie:

My test for any piece of writing I’m involved with is known around the office as the “Say this aloud to your smartest friend” test.  Would the friend look at you as if you were crazy?  Don’t write it that way, then.

Really?  Really?  Either Jean doesn’t know anyone who’s very smart, or her friends have a high tolerance for insanity.

7. Finally, Jean once attempted to wear a pair of mold-encrusted shoes to party.  Which, presumably, is why she’s writing about makeup and not about fashion.

Next up in the Glossed Over book club? Falling Out of Fashion, written by Jane Pratt’s former assistant Karen Yampolsky, is the almost-true tale of the editor-in-chief of Sassy and Jane magazines.  We don’t want to give too much away, but we can tell you this much: editorial wunderkind Jill White has an absolutely stellar assistant! 

Lucky: The Magazine About Shopping, Style, and Jean Godfrey-June

You know what we miss?  The days when Kim France could be reliably counted on for a self-indulgent editor’s letter.  Let’s be clear: we think her reigned-in notes are a huge improvement.  And we hope that means she’s happier with her life now that she doesn’t feel the need to spew personal details in every issue of Lucky.  But, honestly?  She was incredibly entertaining—albeit incredibly infuriating—back then.

Fortunately, Jean Godfrey-June has stepped into the role of resident staffer who shares life details for no apparent reason, and there's the added bonus for us that Godfrey-June rarely makes any sense!  At least France’s tangents were marginally related to the topic at hand.  Godfrey-June’s pieces, on the other hand, are often so random that we wonder whether anyone even edits her copy.  What, does she phone it in directly to the printer from the back of a speeding cab?

There’s an autobiographical tidbit in the October “Editor’s Letter,” in which France asks other staffers to share personal recollections about fragrance.  The editor-in-chief doesn’t even share her own story, which is amazing, because the old Kim France never bothered to ask about other people.  But here’s Godfrey-June’s answer:

In true Northern California late-‘70s style, my mother had a bottle of Zen by Shiseido, which I think all her cool, bohemian friends also wore—they had lives, and the Zen spoke to me of having a life.  It still smells really sexy to me.

Ah, yes, having a life.  Way to aim high, young Jean!  The concept—associating a scent with certain people—is sound, so it wasn’t until we got to “The Beauty Closet” that we began to suspect she had inhaled a bit too much of the Shiseido potion in her youth. 

For starters, she writes:

What would happen if you cracked open a Magic 8-ball? is my daughter’s favorite question.  Some old stale water, perhaps a bit of food coloring, and a many-sided piece of plastic emblazoned with “yes,” “most likely,” and “reply hazy, try again” is what you’d get, is my typical answer.

Which is level-headed and reasonable and everything…it just has absolutely nothing to do with anything else in the column.  Is it really such a stretch to fill the page?  She continues with a story about taking her kids to a press conference, which at least has the potential to be charming.  The key word here is potential.

Through some rather glamorous extenuating circumstances, [her “working-mom thing”] most recently broke down in Paris…

Glamorous circumstances!  What could those be?  Maybe she’s saving the story for a column in 2008, because she never explains why she was forced to drag her children to a cosmetics-industry press conference.   

At this point, we hoped (against hope, it turned out) the kids’ involvement would at least yield some adorable anecdote.  The quote below, however, is as close as the story veers to cute.

…my exceptionally short, unaccredited-journalist sidekicks were riveted.  Even the antiaging portion, which involved charts about cellular regeneration, was popular: “I loved that whole human-body part!” reminisced my five-year-old later, his eyes shining.

Yeah, yeah, the kid’s gonna grow up to be a doctor.  So what about the Magic 8-ball?

When [the Lancome Destiny Cube] appeared, however, the peanut gallery (myself included) went crazy.  While it’s not an 8-ball—

“Not an 8-ball.”  Uh, doesn’t that render the intro totally irrelevant? Unless...hmm...the cube and the 8-ball are both made of black plastic.  And they both have stuff inside.  So they’re, like, practically the same thing! 

it wears its mystery on the outside, with chic words like “coquette” and “jalouse” stamped on its facets, interspersed with moons and stars and secret symbols—when you crack it open, you get both a darkish-bright and a sparkly-translucent lip gloss, the palest pink and the faintest green eyeshadows, both so wearable as to entice a non-eyeshadow holdout.

If we managed to follow that extraordinarily long sentence correctly (and we think we did), we learned these three things:

1. It is possible for a substance to be both “darkish” and “bright” at the same time.

2. There are, apparently, people in the world who identify as “non-eyeshadow holdouts,” or shadow wearers have a name for those who abstain.  Either way, it’s weird.

And, perhaps most importantly,

3. Even if you connect two items that have only the vaguest resemblance, tell a story that fails to be interesting, and nullify your own premise, all in the name of a pricey product, you can still have a successful career in beauty writing.  Even a truly magic 8-ball couldn’t have predicted that.

Surprise! Lucky Staff Actually Competent

We can’t believe we’re about to say this: we just read the April issue of Lucky, and we found very little to bitch about.

Yep, we’re shocked too.

Let’s start with the cover: We preferred the halcyon days (you know, 2002) when anonymous models graced Lucky’s cover, but it’s hard to argue with Parker Posey, especially when—get this—she’s not actually promoting anything.  (Except herself, apparently, but that’s good enough for us.  We loathed Superman Returns.)

So we flipped to the “Editor’s Letter,” which, for obvious reasons, is always the first thing we read.  We’re all about the schadenfreude!  But for the third consecutive month, Kim France mentions herself only in a not-too-personal, shopping-related context.

I never thought there was such a thing as a straw bag I’d seriously consider splurging on, much less carrying to work, or that a bright blue patent leather bag existed that I’d ever even consider thinking of as “me.”

We can handle that kind of revelation.  Further proof of some kind of transformation (or that someone else is actually writing these things):  she actually praises staffer Noria Morales—a far cry from her harsh treatment of Jean Godfrey-June—and leads with a thoughtful-enough discussion about whether this month’s New Orleans shopping guide is insensitive. 

Then there’s the language:  though dicey confabs like “vintagey,” “fashiony,” and “drapey” do squeak through, this issue is largely lacking the cloying language we’ve railed against.  We aren’t in love with “plant-y” or “organic-phile,” but at least we understand what they mean, which is a vast improvement over “just statement-y enough.”  We’re still puzzling over that one.

No, we haven’t completely abandoned our standards—we didn’t appreciate everything about this issue.  For instance: 

•  Was it really necessary to use “gleamy” five different times?  (See for yourself: pages 76, 129, 233, and 267, and “gleamiest” on 240.) 

•  If they’re going to feature real women so prominently (see “Real-Life Sunscreen Prescriptions,” “Real Ways to Wear Dresses,” “Four Girls, One Wrap Skirt,” “Lucky Girl”), couldn’t they find at least one who doesn’t closely approximate a professional model?  Seriously, Kim: put a size-12 woman in one of these reader-oriented features.

•  Jean Godfrey-June bores us.

•  And another story about layering?  Yawn.  Plus we’re feeling a bit of cognitive dissonance about a model wearing four layers above the waist with bare legs.  Put some tights on!   

Still, we’re nitpicking.  And even if Kim and company never top this issue, we won’t really mind.  The only thing we love more than a good issue of Lucky is a terrible one.

Ruffles Are Powerful, and Other Startling Insights from Vogue's Anna Wintour

So we’ve been avoiding the March issue of Vogue because, frankly, that cover photo of Jennifer Hudson bent over, mouth open in agony, scares the hell out of us.  But when we found the courage to flip open the magazine, we only had to make it past 150 pages of advertising to find something equally as frightening—Anna Wintour’s “Letter from the Editor.”  (Good thing we didn’t encounter “Life with André” in those pages, or we probably would have relegated this issue to use as a doorstop.  Or a bludgeon.  It’s heavy.)

Anyway, now that Kim France appears to have renewed her grasp on reality (for now, at least), it’s time to crown a new editor-in-chief whose monthly notes are completely lacking in pretty much every way possible.   

Let’s get cracking, shall we?  Unlike every other editor-in-chief on the planet, Anna’s letter requires two full pages (albeit with a healthy—and much-needed—15-page ad break in the middle).  Taking it from the top:

When we considered which face belonged on this month’s cover—this is our annual Power Issue—the name on the lips of my editors was Jennifer Hudson.  There is no more inspiring example of the power of talent and tenacity than her rise from America Idol reject to Golden Globe winner.

Right.  There is no victory more vindicating than Hudson’s, no tale of adversity more incredible.  American Idol contestants are apparently among the most down-trodden citizens of this planet.

The question of body image is a current one, and I can’t think of a more compelling and beautiful argument for the proposition that great fashion looks great on women of all sizes than the sight of Hudson in a Vera Wang dress on the red carpet.

On the red carpet, sure, but in the pages of the magazine?  Don’t hold your breath.

The model Natalia Vodianova is another woman whose charm and determination are as empowering as her beauty…

Oh, is beauty empowering?  That’s not what we’ve been told.

I’ve always believed that the great models develop the power to exert an individual influence—moral, aesthetic, commercial—on the culture.

Can someone please give us an example of a model having a “moral” influence?  Perhaps because it’s late at night, but we’re having trouble coming up with a single instance to justify Anna’s statement.  Unless Naomi Campbell hurling things at the help is somehow morally compelling.

(One thought about Ivanka: I’ve watched her since she was a teenager, and I continue to take great pleasure in seeing her develop into a woman of real substance.)

Sure, if substance is constituted by having your assistant help you cheat at Monopoly.

[Nancy Pelosi]’s stylish now, of course; but more importantly, she’s made history in becoming the first woman Speaker.

Good thing she mentioned that Speaker Pelosi’s stylish!  That’s the true accomplishment here, isn’t it?

Olivier Theyskens’s spectacular new dress for Nina Ricci, photographed by Irving Penn, is designed to resemble a bird about to take flight.  Jennifer Hudson aside, I can’t think of a more hopeful emblem of the power we celebrate this month.

This missive mentioned politicians, models, and Ivanka Trump, and a “megaruffle” dress and former reality-show contestant (yeah, yeah, we know she has an Oscar) are what represents power?  Funny, we thought power might involve something like the ability to, oh, write something meaningful to millions of women every single month, but we guess we were wrong.

Or we were right.  We bought the magazine and read every word she wrote, didn’t we?

Previously: Wintour: Believe In Yourself, Believe In Your Staff

Lucky Staffers: Experts in Style, Snapping at Co-Workers

We dared hope that Kim France’s apparently diminished sense of self-importance—however temporary—would have a positive effect on Lucky staffers, because we are convinced that anyone so egocentric in print must be downright insufferable to work for. We dared to dream that the same confused but peaceful fog that fell over us as we read the current “Editor’s Letter” would also drift over the magazine’s HQ.  The changed workplace bound to result from France’s near-miraculous transformation would eventually yield reduced stress levels, less strenuous disagreements at staff meetings, and, most importantly for us, fewer made-up words.  Sure, Kim’s personality shift might make things more boring for us—we do look forward to her self-possessed screeds, after all—but Lucky would make up for it with inventive photo shoots and innovative fashion stylings.  Right?

Well, not so much.

Instead, in a move straight out of Lord of the Flies, creative director Andrea Linett fills the role, stepping in as the magazine’s chief antagonist.  Jean Godfrey-June documents this development in “Beauty Spy,” February:

At the end of a long, harrowing business trip, several members of the Lucky staff found themselves in San Francisco for one day, sitting in a single (if lovely) hotel room staring at one another, waiting for a final meeting, feeling haggard and jet-lagged.  We examined our respective emails for the 90th time, attempted to talk over one another on our cellphones, flipped the silenced TV from CNN to Oprah and back again.  “You’re the beauty editor,” blurted Andrea, looking at me.  “Find us a spa.”

It’s not enough the poor woman is forced into doing Kim France’s makeup.  Now she’s required to keep the other staffers entertained on business trips?  We aren’t huge fans of Godfrey-June (primarily because we are bored to tears by her modus operandi  of relating a personal anecdote only tenuously linked to the beauty product at hand to explain why she has grown irrationally attached to some new exfoliant/lip balm/perfume), but this woman has the patience of a saint.  If only that could be bottled up and, oh, sprayed on Andrea Linett.

In any case, it’s clear the calming effects of Kim’s break from navelgazing didn’t reach too far down the masthead.  Still, we’re consoled knowing that if the editor-in-chief has opted to permanently retire her diva crown, someone’s ready to step up and take her place.

Lucky Shocker: Kim France's "Editor's Letter" Is Not About Kim France

When we received the February issue of Lucky today, we were ready to follow our usual procedure and make fun of Kim France’s “Editor’s Letter”—in fact, we were anticipating our habitual mocking.  But, once we ripped off the plastic covering that shrouds every Condé Nast  publication, we were completely unprepared for what we found.

In a shocking departure from the self-obsession that normally permeates her monthly missives, Kim France does not mention herself once in the February edition.  In fact, she completely refrains from using “me” or “I” at all, and she uses “we” only to indicate the entire Lucky staff.

Let’s repeat that: She doesn’t talk about herself AT ALL.  So what if the result is possibly the most dull “Editor’s Letter” in Lucky history?  In an even more astonishing move, she actually acknowledges the magazine’s readers:

What we can do is watch and learn.  And hope that you’re as interested as we are.

No whining about foot injuries.  No overly personal revelations about divorce.  No discussion of how much a co-worker’s pregnancy affects her.

We’ve been rendered almost speechless by this development.  If this is the result of a New Year’s resolution to stop talking about herself, we wish her luck.  Clearly, she’s out of practice.