Glossed Over

To-Do List • Attempting to walk in Lucky’s shoes? Deadline’s approaching! The cut-off to enter the magazine’s caption-writing contest is Monday, March 3, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern.

And if you’re looking for reading material beyond the new issue of Vogue (what is up with Drew Barrymore on the cover?), these stories have captured our attention this week:

• Anna Wintour responds to Carine Roitfeld calling her a “puppet” by refusing to comment, thereby crushing our hopes for an all-out intercontinental war between the Vogue editors.

• Take a glimpse at the past—and the present, and, we fear, the future—of women’s magazines. (Thanks, Melinika!)

• InStyle mixes up the non-Beyoncé members of Destiny’s Child.

• And are Holocaust memorials wildly inappropriate locales for fashion shoots? One brand, facing backlash from shots of a male model at the Vienna monument, admits they “didn’t think through everything.” Well, that much is clear. (via SuperColossal)

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! 

Get Lucky in Los Angeles •  Longing to see a Lucky staffer’s words attributed to you?  Want someone else to pick out your “favorite” clothes?  Got nothing better to do on January 4?  Now’s your chance!  The magazine is seeking L.A. locals to appear in a spring issue.  LAist has the details.  Oh!  And one other condition: predictably, only those who wear sizes 2-8 may apply.

Lucky's "Real" Women Bring the Lie to Life

[Sorry about our unexpected absence last week.  Our week on deadline at work quickly dissolved into an eleven-hour-a-day nightmare, and, well, we chose sleep.  We hope to be back on our regular schedule this week.]

This isn’t surprising, exactly, but it’s always heart-warming to see our worst suspicions confirmed!   We’ve long suspected the “real women” segments of Lucky magazine of being completely false.   Are we really to believe that these women just happen to cite cutting-edge fashions as their favorites?   Is it mere happenstance that they can describe luxury beauty products better than the beauty editor herself?   Can it even be possible that, no matter how artsy or itinerant their profession, these women can handily afford high-end apparel and accessories?

The answer to all three questions:  No.

Two different women featured in January’s issue have said that their recommendations were, in fact, fabricated by the magazine’s staffers.  First, Courtney Childs Lewis of “My Foolproof Outfit” wrote that neither her photo shoot ensemble nor her enthusiastic descriptions of the pieces were her own. Then, “Lucky Girl” Victoria Asher claimed to have been misquoted on “almost everything.”

Obviously, we don’t expect gospel from these magazines, and we know that selling expensive products and ad space is far more important that portraying any kind of accurate look at, well, anything.  But pages like this are troublesome because they perpetuate the notion that average women look a certain way (skinny, long hair), dress a certain way (designer, trendy), and have immense spending power.  (In “My Foolproof Outfit,” the bracelets alone cost $5,423.  Get real, Lucky.)

Magazines like Lucky could use average women as a vital link between the fashion world and the one the rest of us inhabit—they could be  reality check, or a conduit for trends, or our most trusted resources.  (Wouldn’t you rather hear about an eye cream from a woman who uses it than from some editor who’s probably shilling for an advertiser?)  Instead, they are used to perpetuate the lie and peddle overpriced crap.  It’s not news, it’s not groundbreaking, but knowing that the magazine is more interested in selling than in showing us actual style makes us a lucky woman indeed.

Glossed Over Book Club: Jean Godfrey-June's Free Gift with Purchase, Chapters Two-Four

Chapter Two:  This is the chapter that made us almost—almost—like Jean Godfrey-June.  (Don’t worry—the feeling quickly faded.)  Her tale of sneaking into the bathroom to apply makeup before her boyfriend woke up struck a chord with us.  Her recollection of a science teacher who turned slaughterhouse remnants into Viking helmets did not.  There was an actual point to the story, something trite about how beauty rituals allow people to have control in a chaotic world, but we aren’t sure how the science teacher anecdote related to it, and we refuse to read those paragraphs again.  Ew.

Chapter Three: Jean’s father eats tuna covered in ketchup and molasses every morning.  We’re sure there was more substance (or at least more text) to this chapter, but that disgusting concoction is pretty much all we remember.  Oh!  And she’s always had the obnoxious habit of adding suffixes to extant words to create, well, non-extant ones.  As a child, she added “-ington” to people’s names—Jeanington, etc.  And, in a stunning display of naivete or stupidity, she chose to attend the University of Colorado because the subscription cards in her favorite magazines were addressed to Boulder, and she therefore assumed that the city was a hotbed of periodical publishing.  Sure, we’ve made life choices based on false information too, but you don’t see us writing about them for the world to see, do you?

Chapter Four: In what is surely its first appearance ever, the phrase “nasolabial-fold-emphasizing” appears in a story about getting a pedicure with a porn star.  (And we’re not sure what this says about our reading material, but we’ve seen that  “nasolabial” everywhere lately, usually followed by the admonition that it’s not dirty.  Enough!  We know!)  There are multiple tales of beauty rivalries with friends that are neither interesting nor vicious nor revelatory.  Beauty tip: Lauren Hutton suggests drawing a concealer stripe down the center of your nose  to make it look smaller.  And news flash!  Models endorsing beauty products are just there to collect a paycheck.  One unnamed model floundered when it was her turn to present the products to Jean; another anonymous mannequin admitted publicly that she had never smelled the fragance she was touting.

Next up: Jean continues her series of stories that are probably charming if you know her personally but are inexorably dull to the those of us who don’t.  Also, she goes out to lunch!  A lot!

Glossed Over Book Club: Jean Godfrey-June's Free Gift with Purchase

Last week, we celebrated our birthday.  And now we’re old!  Awesome!  One of our gifts was a copy of Jean Godfrey-June’s book, Free Gift with Purchase: My Improbable Career in Magazines and Makeup.  We didn’t open it for a few days because, well, we were busy studying the bags under our eyes.  But last night, we put on our glasses and succumbed to the siren call of the paperback.  We couldn’t hold off any longer. Godfrey-June’s column is the second thing we read in Lucky every month, right after Kim France’s letter from the editor.  And we had so many questions! 

• Would Godfrey-June’s aversion to plastic surgery somehow make us feel better about our aging face?  Not so far!

• Were the descriptors inside as shamelessly fabricated as the words in her monthly column?  Sure, if you count the use of “tint-y.”

• Would the book be crammed with lengthy go-nowhere personal anecdotes?  Well, yeah.  Like the book would even exist without boring tales from her childhood?

• And would she spill any insider dirt about Lucky?  Sort of.  But we’re only on the first chapter.  Hope abounds!

After the jump, the highlights from Chapter One.

Lucky: Jean Godfrey-June Isn't Even Trying

Jean Godfrey-June, what do you do all day?  You do spend your working hours reading press releases and listening to pitches from publicists, right?  The junior staffers at Lucky do keep you apprised of the latest industry developments, don’t they?  Because you’re supposed to be an expert, introducing us readers to the limited editions, the indulgent imports, the potions we haven’t heard about because they exist only in samples and don’t go on sale for six more months. Instead, this is what merits a write-up in your December  column, “The Beauty Closet”:

…I didn’t think it was possible to improve upon the blotting sheet.  Except for one small detail: When your reach into the little envelope to get one out, the sheets are so thin compared to your giantess fingers that you inadvertently extract many…

In an astounding flash of genius,

Which—spoiler warning!—is a complete overstatement.

…someone at Neutrogena has put a sticky spot on the inside flap that deftly lifts a single sheet and serves it up perfectly.

Ooh, a “sticky spot.” Amazing!  How clever!  That’s the kind of innovation and technology that put man on the moon! And—what a coincidence!—it’s identical to the “sticky spot” that’s been part of the package of our store-brand blotting sheets, like, forever. Way to be on the lookout for the latest and greatest, Jean.  There are two other Neutrogena products featured in the beauty section, including a glowing review of their makeup remover wipes (which are also pretty much like every other brand of makeup remover wipes).  Either these women love the stuff beyond all reason, or this is some seriously misguided advertorial.

Even if it is pay-for-play, we refuse to believe JG-J would be hanging out in skincare-research labs tracking down innovations and testing new forumlations on primates.  Her other featured product this month is a Jo Malone fragrance, which is probably indeed lovely, but who cares?  Is there a Lucky reader alive who hasn’t heard of Jo Malone?

The other possibility?  Maybe Lucky’s beauty editor really is transfixed by small dots of adhesive.  In which case, next month we expect wide-eyed astonishment at the wonder of flip-top shampoo bottles!  Apparently, it’s no longer necessary to pour an entire bottle into the palm of your hand!  And we’re breathlessly awaiting her special report on travel-size products!  Those miniature tubes of toothpaste are, like, the most genius creation ever!

Airfare Costs More Than Lipstick •Many years ago, a man from Amsterdam posed this question to us: “If a person who speaks three languages is trilingual, and a person who speaks two languages is bilingual, what do you call someone who speaks one language?”  He smirked and leaned toward us before giving the answer. “An American,” he said.  Ha!  Wow, that guy was a jerk—albeit pretty much on target.

We were reminded of this while flipping through our stack of French magazines. Each of them has a feature on international travel. Of the American magazines, only Vogue has a regular travel section, unless you count Lucky’s city shopping guides, which…we don’t.  Of course, American mags never come with Paris Hilton tarot cards, so we guess it’s a fair trade.

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.

Lucky's Jean Godfrey-June Goes Against "Type"

Ever modest, Lucky suggests we organize our accessories just like they do at the magazine’s HQ.  From “Lucky How-To,” September:

Store your jewelry…just like we do at magazines

Because, you know, the Lucky way is the best way!  Their tip about jewelry trays is valid…so in what other ways would we want to emulate Lucky?  If we ever wanted to make up words, amass a collection of expensive rubber pants, and sport the occasional heinous outfit (hello, Vanessa Minillo on the July cover), we’d definitely turn to Lucky for advice. 

Plus, Lucky beauty editor Jean Godfrey-June is extremely skilled at using the most inconsequential of personal anecdotes and stretching them into impassioned endorsements for overpriced beauty products, like the $48 hand cream she touts in September’s “The Beauty Closet.”  Hand cream!  $48!  The only thing more unbelievable than the price of the Peter Thomas Roth lotion is the story she tells to promote it.

My small town teems with Hollywood “types,” some legitimate, many wannabe or has-been.  They’re easy to identify:

Do tell us about “types”!  Is a “type” a man in sandals?  A woman who wears her sunglasses in a restaurant?

When they get ready to do something rude—say, shushing fellow adults as if they were toddlers, or elbowing past the crowd to grab the last tomato at the farmers’ markets—they press their hands together, as if in prayer.  Whether or not the “prayer” is accompanied by a bowing of the head, the gesture is the single most obnoxious of our time.

Well, yeah, that does sound annoying.  But those Hollywood “types” doing this sort of thing?  We live in L.A. and we’ve never once seen such a gesture.  Also, her description doesn’t make sense.  How do you press your palms together while plowing through a throng of people?  That isn’t to say this behavior doesn’t exist in Jean’s town—but maybe it has nothing to do with being a Hollywood “type” and everything to do with being an inconsiderate ass.

The practitioner may well be thinking, “I come in peace,” or more Hollywood, “I bow to what is holy in you.”  But the true message is unequivocal: “I am holier than thou!”

Also holier than thou?  People on the East Coast making broad generalizations about the way people on the other side of the country think and behave.  Yeesh.

Anyway, she goes on for a few more sentences about this alleged behavior and how returning the gesture is the sole defense against it.  (Don’t ask us to explain.  We read the whole thing three times and we’re still confused.)   Somewhere in the course of this fruitless exercise, we began to wonder what any of this had to do with the potion she’s tasked with hawking.  And what would Jean consider a “Hollywood type” beauty product, anyway?  A face lift?  Botox injections?  The blood of pious virgins?

Nope, it’s a $48 hand cream that magically trumps the lousy behavior of showbiz scoundrels.  We’ll let her describe it, since we found her segue to be a bit of a stretch:   

A smooth and youthful hand—naturally featured in this exchange—further irritates most Hollywood types, as age grates upon them more than most…

Good to know—having more youthful-looking hands is a surefire defense against annoying people!  Sounds like that cream would come in handy in places other than Hollywood…like, say, Jean Godfrey-June’s office.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

You know, the time of year when just a few morsels of information about the September issues have leaked.  It’s enough temptation to have us making daily newsstand visits in anticipation, and well before the actual magazines come out and we’re bombarded with sneeze-inducing perfume strips, a flurry of subscription cards, and, well, disappointment.

Just Jared has a preview Lucky’s September cover, which features Sarah Michelle Gellar.  Where’s she been?  We love the plum color.  We adore the outfit.  And we are genuinely appreciative that SMG is neither totally repulsive nor completely overexposed.

Elle could take a lesson from Lucky in that regard—the September issue will feature Lindsay Lohan for the second year in a row.  Apparently serving a failed stint in rehab, chasing a personal assistant through the streets of L.A., and starring in a wretched movie qualify a person for the cover of a major magazine.  With standards that low, we expect to be elected president on our 35th birthday.

But we digress.  Back to Lucky: The pose is unspeakably awkward. And the very concept of 971 “absolute must-haves”?  Please.  No one’s closet—or budget—is that big.

Also, we just realized that Lucky lengthened its tagline with the July issue to “The Magazine About Shopping And Style.”  Because, of course, it’s about sooo much more than shopping!  It’s about style, too!  Such range!  Good thing they point out it’s a magazine, lest it be mistaken for a catalog of “rich” accessories and hideous denim.

From this:  to this:

In other September issue news, Star Jones Reynolds writes a first-person essay for Glamour announcing what most everyone in the free world already figured out.  Guess that’s one less article to read!

Lucky and Glamour hit newsstands August 7, while Elle will go on sale August 14.

Image of Lucky’s September issue from Just Jared

August's Denim Stories Do Us No Good

It’s Friday.  Let’s talk fashion, shall we?

Reading Lucky’s “Denim Guide,” Marie Claire’s “Denim Trend Report,” and InStyle’s “Jeans A-Z” (in the August issues) has us wondering: Is apparel Armageddon upon us?  With the perfect storm of colored denim, skinny jeans, and high-waisted pants, it’s like every awful trend of the early 1990s has been revived all at once.  Yes, we realize ranting about this makes us sound old.

See, by mindlessly following trends throughout our youth, we suffered a ton of denim trauma.  In junior high, we pegged our jeans to show off our multiple pairs of colored socks.  In high school, we wore super-light washes in a tapered cut and cuffed denim shorts in teal and red (though at least we refrained from wearing ripped grunge-style jeans).  And in college, we lived in a pair of brown jeans from the Gap.  We cringe thinking about those crimes of fashion we committed so blithely—all we wanted was to be stylish!—so we’re skeptical about the return of denim looks we tried so hard to forget.  Won’t someone please make a reasonably modern, flattering, affordable pair of jeans and spare us further retrospective embarrassment?

Our list of the pants we will never, ever wear:

• The Oligo Tissew skinny jeans on page 145 of Lucky (at right).  They’re purple.  And rubberized.  And they cost $239.  We can only hope the price is a misprint.  The mag describes them thusly:

Very Studio 54: They have a touch of sheen and an extra-body-conscious fit.

We guess a Studio 54-inspired trend is a good thing…if you want to look like you were completely high when you got dressed.  Besides, we’re 5’1” with hips, and those pants are straining to cover the model’s curves.  They are not going to work on us.

• The high-waisted Earnest Sewns on page 47 of Marie Claire.  For just $240, they come with a complimentary back yoke and button pocket.  Exactly like pants we had in fourth grade!

The mag describes another pair of pants as

Disco-style denim…

Disco, Studio 54—we’re sensing a pattern here.  Since when is disco-inspired a positive attribute?

In the pages of InStyle, we simply can’t decide which is worse:

• Is it Jennifer Lopez’s high-waisted pair with three buttons above the zipper fly (page 169 and at right)?  Where do those things end?  They’re like a corset and a pair of pants in one.

• Or is it the $253 Rock & Republics on page 171 with red lightning bolts stitched on the back pockets?  They’re just like a pair we had when we were eight, only exponentially more overpriced!

Not all of it is horrible—we’ll be trying the pinstriped jeans InStyle recommends and the “baby bells” Lucky loves.  Or, you know, we’ll just stick to skirts. 

What do you think about the new denim styles?

Lucky's Taste Too "Rich" For Us

We’re becoming the very thing we hate.  Sure, we detest it when Lucky refers to something as “statement-y,” but at least we don’t talk like that, right?  Wrong!  This weekend, we actually used the term “suit-y.”  Aloud.  To another person.  For no discernible reason when other perfectly legitimate words would have worked.  We know, we know.  Either it’s an occupational hazard or we’re subconsciously assimilating.

Anyway, for a long time, we weren’t particularly bothered by Lucky’s frequent use of the word “rich” because, you know, it’s an actual word.  It popped up a few times in each issue, but it wasn’t nearly as egregious as “flea market-y” or straining to be precious like “MySpace-ish.”  But a few of you wrote to us about it, because it bothered you.  And the more we thought about it, the more we began to wonder.  Maybe “rich” wasn’t as innocent a descriptor as we assumed.  What if “rich” was a value judgment?  And, really, why should it matter if our clothes look pricey (even—or especially—if they weren’t)?  Style isn’t dependent on looking like you’ve spent a fortune on your wardrobe, or at least that’s what we tell ourselves every time we line up for the dressing room at H&M.  Still, we decided the word had the potential to be rather insidious—especially when attached to items we couldn’t afford.

So we were eager to check out the text in the July issue.  Once we managed to stop mentally adding “with a knife” to every Vanessa Minnillo quote (“…but the truth is, I always get a second opinion before I take a big risk.”  A big risk...with a knife! Oh, we amuse ourselves so much!), we counted how many times the word “rich” pops up in product descriptions.  Is there a correlation between the use of “rich” and the price of the items?

From “Style Spy,” page 54:

These pared-down sandals and clutch have a hard-edged-but-rich look that really works.

Perhaps rich isn’t much of an exaggeration—the chain-mail clutch is $198 and the shoes $375.

And then, from “The Season’s Best Looks for Under $100” on page 123:

Finish it all off with a rich, insanely plush bag.

Well, we don’t know about “insanely plush,” but it is only $48.  It wouldn’t pass as one, but it is blatantly inspired by Chanel’s quilted leather bags, leather woven through the chain strap and all.

And the third mention, from “Night and Day” on page 128:

The perfect rich-and-glowy, sexy-yet-flattering blouse: It adds a ladylike glamour to rock-star accessories and skinny, shiny trousers.

We assume that “rich-and-glowy” here means shiny, because this whole outfit reflects enough light to attract bugs.  And the price tag?  $210.

So our data remains inconclusive as to what “rich” really means to Lucky.  In all three of those instances, “sumptuous” or “high-quality” could have been substituted, but instead, they used a word commonly associated with material wealth.  But in reading every single description in Lucky, we did find one word whose meaning—and relation to cash flow—was clear.  The item in question?  A $498 pair of Louis Vuitton sneakers.

A classic shape—in the most upscale satin-and-patent combo imaginable.

We were thinking more along the lines of outrageously pricey, but upscale?  At least we know what that means—it’s code for “unjustifiably expensive with a fancy label attached.”

What do you think?

Lucky: Avril Lavigne's Post-Marriage Personality Makeover

We know Avril Lavigne just released a new album—how else could her appearance on the covers of Jane (April) and Lucky (May) be justified?—but we refuse to take her seriously as a fashion icon when she’s wearing an outfit that Shannen Doherty would have worn on season one of Beverly Hills, 90210.  (Maybe we’re showing our age here, but you know Brenda Walsh would have sported that vest at the Peach Pit along with the requisite paper-bag waist jeans and black fedora.)

In case the outfit isn’t reason enough to generate animosity toward Avril (though we will admit to coveting the star-shaped pendant), there’s the way she claims her marriage has changed her.

In Lucky’s “At the Shoot,” she says:

“I didn’t really care about fashion when I was a teenager, but in the last couple of years—since I got married, I guess—something changed,” says Avril, 22.  “Now I love so many things about it:  like cool heels and bags and all kinds of accessories.”

Then, in “Her Way”:

“I’m in a place in my life where I can try out things that are a bit more feminine, but still maintain some punk attitude.”

A place in her life? Being married, she means.

What a strange phenomenon.  Apparently, being legally wed leads a woman to develop a fascination with clothes and shoes!  Now that she’s got that ring on her finger, there’s no need to maintain her own persona.  Nope, the wedding day was the time to morph into an outmoded prototype of femininity!  Has she also cultivated an interest in cooking, cleaning, and childbirth?  Or is she only interested in exploiting stereotypes that relate to her appearance and therefore might boost her career?

We can’t say for sure, of course.  And as crassly commercial as the “new” Avril may be, her neckties-worn-with-tanks look from a few years back was just as calculated.  But what do we expect?  We can’t exactly hope for authenticity from a  woman who claims to have “punk attitude” while, in the same article, extolling the virtues of diamond jewelry and Armani gowns.

The Week: Vogue Goes Bold, Features Actual Models

• First, a look at next month’s Vogue and W covers.  Shocker!  Those are models, not movie stars, on the cover of Vogue.  Though if there absolutely must be a celeb on the cover, it’s hard to argue with America Ferrera.

• Jane’s newsstand sales may be flagging, but that hasn’t stopped the development of a TV show.

• Ooh, juicy.  Editors from Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, and Bazaar live it up in New Orleans, while low-level staffers at the magazines have their raises delayed.  We expect this incident to spawn at least one more thinly veiled novel about a magazine assistant.

• Is Good Housekeeping going hip?  As part of a makeover, the magazine hires editors from Jane and Lucky.

• Is Ashlee Simpson the face of June’s Cosmopolitan?  If so, why?

• And Jane Pratt blah blah blah another interview blah blah blah.  Yep, even we’re bored with her by now.

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.

InStyle Invents the Worst Word in Human History

We’ve previously lamented the recent penchant for adding a –y to transform a noun into an adjective, but as it turns out, we hadn’t seen anything yet.  This month, InStyle used a Sandra Bullock profile as an opportunity to create what is, by far, the worst amalgamation we have ever seen.  And we read every word of Lucky every month, but at least their made-up words don’t evoke mental images of anything other than an angry Noah Webster.  See for yourself:

From March’s “What Sandra Knows” by Phoebe Eaton:

But today, even in jeans and a ponytail and boots dusty from a nearby construction site, Bullock is still so…sexpotty.

Sexpotty?  Sexpotty? Did no editor see a problem with a word that manages to convey a squirm-inducing combination of sex and a first-grader asking the teacher for a hall pass?  And, sure, we realize some people enjoy the, uh, sexpotty, but we’re absolutely certain that’s not what Eaton is talking about here.  We’d like to think we aren’t likely to encounter a more appalling imaginary word any time soon—but then, we haven’t even cracked open the March issue of Lucky yet.

Previously: Sandra Bullock faced off with another magazine writer.  Think There Are No Stupid Questions?  Think Again, Glamour

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.

Glamour Takes the Wrong Cues From Its Competitors

Looks like someone at Glamour has been reading the competition!  The evidence?  Check out the title of this fashion spread in February’s issue.

Clothes a Girl (and a Guy!) Can Love

A woman’s clothes should be man-approved?  That’s InStyle’s schtick.

Leave it to the women in your life to appreciate your trendy, complicated clothes; guys are always drawn to the simpler stuff.

Hey, it’s one of those overly simplified stereotype-reinforcing statements, the likes of which we’ve come to expect from Cosmopolitan.

Who’d have guessed that your standard jeans-y combos could look so irresistible?

And “jeans-y”?  Lifted straight out of the pages of Lucky.

Still, we have to give Glamour credit for improving our efficiency.   Instead of finding the things we dislike scattered across three different magazines, we only had to read one page.

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.

Lucky Progress Report: Now Even More Incomprehensible!

To: Lucky

From: Glossed Over

Re: Your progress with the English language

Last month, we discussed your penchant for making up words (which is completely unnecessary, as you’re inventing constructions when words that mean the exact same thing already exist).  Now that you’ve had an issue to consider our suggestions, we wanted to follow up on your progress using commonly accepted American English terms.

First, while the cover didn’t include any freshly invented words, it didn’t exactly inspire confidence.

Grey’s Anatomy’s Katherine Heigl spills her fashion secrets

We understand there was absolutely no way to avoid that double apostrophe.  Obviously, there were serious considerations preventing you from saying something less awkward like, oh, “Katherine Heigl of Grey’s Anatomy,” and thereby sidestepping that quandary.   We can’t think of what those might be, but we’re sure you had your reasons.

Unfortunately, our dismay didn’t end there.  Below, in alphabetical order, is the list of dubious words sprinkled throughout the January issue.

‘50s-ish

aromatherapeutically

chainlet

drapey

fashiony

foresty

Frenchy-chic

gleamy

lipsticky

MySpace-ish

partyworthy (We freely admit to nitpicking here.  “Party-worthy” would be our preference.)

rain-foresty

suitish

un-makeupy

vintagey

zhoozh

We’d especially like to discuss the final entry on the list.  What is this word and what could it possibly mean?  How many editors looked at this and decided it was perfectly comprehensible to the average person who doesn’t actually work at Lucky?  Let’s take a look at the context:

We keep this in the beauty department at all times for last-minute volumizing: Flip your hair over, spritz a few times, and zhoozh with your fingers.

That doesn’t exactly clarify this strange word apparently invented in the heat of a hair-volume emergency.  Is zhoozhing like scrunching?  Is it distributing the product through your hair?  What else could you do with your fingers in this instance? 

We’re stumped.  Perhaps the staff should consider including a Lucky-specific glossary in each issue. Or perhaps it would be easier if we simply give up trying to read the small amount of text in each issue.  From now on, we’ll just stick to the pictures.

The Week: Anna Wintour More Fascinating to Herself Than to Anyone Else

•    Anna Wintour is named one of Barbara Walters’ “Ten Most Fascinating People.”  Clearly, Wintour agrees with the “fascinating” verdict—she has three portraits of herself hanging in her office.

•    Brandon Holley tries too hard to stay in touch with her 20-something audience by throwing herself a 40th birthday party complete with a street fight and police presence. 

•    Feel like crashing holiday parties?  Gawker and WWD have dates and locations. 

•    Lucky’s hired a stylist.  We really were concerned about Kim France’s ability to dress herself.

•    And this week’s cautionary tale comes from former Allure staffer Molly Friedman, who, after soliciting beauty products for the magazine and then selling them on eBay, is “pretty much banned from Condé Nast for life.”  Which we think is supposed to be an even worse fate than actually having to work at Condé Nast.

Photo of Anna Wintour from the New York Post