Glossed Over

W Hopes Someone's Still Taking Sides in Celebrity Feud

The second annual Art Issue of W is out…and with dueling covers!  Such classy, current covers they are, too!  And economical, too, using paparazzi photos of Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie for the cover instead of, you know, staging an actual photo shoot.  Or do they have to pay a residual to Brad Pitt for referring to his marital troubles?

Last year’s first-ever Art Issue is nominated for ASME’s 2007 Best Cover Award.  Somehow, we doubt these covers are going to be nominated for anything, unless some organization offers awards for Most Likely to Resemble the Cover of US Weekly and Trying Hardest to Cash In On an Outdated Celebrity Scandal. 

So which one will you buy?  We’re leaning toward Aniston.  Or maybe we’ll just pick up the latest issue of Star instead.

Edit:  There are actually nine covers: Nicole Kidman, Lindsay Lohan, Cameron Diaz, Katie Holmes, Jennifer Aniston, Julia Roberts, Jessica Simpson, Angelina Jolie, and Britney Spears.  Apparently, this is what W considers art.

Scoping Out September Issues: Elle

The issue weighs: 2.8 pounds

Issue thickness: a robust three-quarters of an inch

Who’s on the cover: Lindsay Lohan, rocking a dead-eyed stare and hair and skin that are the same color. Not attractive!  Love the dress, though.

Number of words on the cover: 127 (Guess the “newly enhanced” design by Joe Zee, making its debut in this issue, doesn’t involve reducing the amount of text crammed onto the cover.)

Who bought the back cover: Chanel’s Coco Mademoiselle fragrance, featuring Keira Knightley

Number of ad pages between the cover and the table of contents: 80. Celebs appearing in those pages include Scarlett Johansson for Louis Vuitton; Kerry Washington for L’Oreal; Sarah Silverman, Selma Blair, Lucy Liu, Regina King, and Twyla Tharp for Gap;  and Rihanna for Cover Girl.  Also up front, not one but two Kate Moss campaigns, for Versace and David Yurman.

Total number of pages: 592

How many of those pages are ads: 398, about 67 percent

Most schadenfreude-inducing cover line: Duh.

Exclusive! The Lindsay Lohan Interview

“I’m glad I went to rehab—I need to get away from everyone, and I didn’t know how”

Subscription cards: a measly 3

Cosmetic samples: 2 fragrance testers (Dior J’adore and Fendi Palazzo)

Is it portable? At nearly 3 pounds, we say no.  And even if it were a more purse-friendly size, would you really want to lug Lohan’s prematurely aged mug around?  We certainly do not. 

Scoping Out September Issues: Glamour

A seasonal feature in which we take a purely superficial look at those massive September editions.  Pages and pages of fall fashion!  In-depth interviews with famous people!  Hours of reading!  Inches-thick issues!  Resultant muscle strain!

Issue weight: 1.6 pounds

Issue thickness: a smidge under half an inch

Who’s on the cover: Claire Danes, Queen Latifah, and Mariska Hargitay

Who bought the back cover: Banana Republic

Number of ad pages between the cover and the table of contents: 27 (including, conveniently enough, a two-page Cover Girl spread featuring Queen Latifah)

Total number of pages: 418

How many of those pages are ads: 285 (source; we didn’t count)

Most intriguing cover line:   

Biggest issue in 20 years!

We find this bit interesting not on its own merits, but because we wonder whether the magazine’s touting ads, not content: Glamour last reached 285 ad pages in a September edition in 1986 (source).  Also, the rest of the cover lines are truly dull.

Subscription cards: Only 4

Cosmetic samples: 2 (a perfume strip for Ralph Lauren Romance, and a foil-sealed sample of Clinique Perfectly Real Makeup)

Is it portable? Low potential for inadvertently leaving a trail of postage-paid subscription cards + content that won’t embarrass when someone reads over your shoulder/almost two pounds of paper, 68 percent of which are ads= moderately portable

Know When to Fold ‘Em: Jane to Close

There’s no official announcement yet, but looks like we’ve seen the last of Jane.  Condé Nast is folding the magazine, which has reportedly struggled at the newsstand and with advertisers in recent months.  Fashion Week Daily says that editor-in-chief Brandon Holley and vice president/publisher Carlos LaMadrid will both leave the company.   

We’re unexpectedly saddened by this news.  We may have mocked Jane relentlessly, but we’ll miss it nonetheless.

For more:

Jane Magazine Folds (Fashion Week Daily)

Rumor: Jane Magazine Folds (Gawker)

Lady Down (Gawker)

Condé  Nast Folds Jane (Radar Online)

Edit: Radar Online has more, including the official press release announcing the closure.  And Mediabistro has a bit more about the affected staffers.

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.

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

The Week: No Further Cameron Diaz Updates Planned

• At Conde Nast’s holiday party, Anna Wintour and Cindi Leive sit at the grown-ups’ table.

• So Nicole Kidman was supposed to look like that on the cover of Vogue?

• Lucky’s losing its senior fashion editor. Now who’ll help Kim France get dressed?

• And if you’ll indulge us in some self-promotion, we have a (somewhat serious) short article, “Youth and Consequences,” about fashion mags’ treatment of aging, in the Winter 2007 issue of Bitch magazine, which goes on sale this week. Further incentive to pick it up: Bitch’s always spot-on  “Jane Petty Criticism Corner.”

Goodbye and Good Riddance to Shop

We’re a little late on this, but we couldn’t not acknowledge that Hearst has decided to cease publication of Shop Etc. after the forthcoming October issue.

Of course, we can’t say we’re surprised. Why pay $3.49 an issue for a magazine whose design and photography pale in comparison to the free J. Crew catalog?

Still, we’re holding on to a tiny shred of hope that editor-in-chief Mandi Norwood will explain the meaning of “Etc.” in the last issue.  Please, Mandi, don’t leave us hanging.

Bonnie Fuller Equally Insensitive to Everyone

Former Glamour editor-in-chief Bonnie Fuller, not satisfied to merely be running Star, has penned a tell-all book with the laborious title—take a deep breath if you’re reading aloud—The Joys of Much Too Much: Go for the Big Life—The Great Career, the Perfect Guy, and Everything Else You’ve Ever Wanted. Taking a cue from the book’s title, a story called “Onetime Editor of Glamour Writes of Some Last Straws” appeared yesterday in the New York Times business section.  From their article about the soon-to-be-classic tome:

If her experience at Glamour has not permanently shut Ms. Fuller out of ever working at Condé Nast again, perhaps a dig in the book at Ms. [Anna] Wintour will.

Ms. Wintour, she writes, “supposedly once said that a woman should carry only a small clutch bag because a shoulder strap ruins the line of the clothes.”

Ms. Fuller ignored the small-bag dictum. “I'd call my on-the-way-to-work look more Ellis Island than Fifth Avenue,” she wrote. “I have more important ways to spend my time in the morning than agonizing over my choice of tote.”

And what an apt comparison, too, Bonnie. Schlepping up Madison Avenue, Kate Spade bag stuffed with gym shoes and an extra sweater, is exactly like emigrating to the United States with only the meager amount of possessions you can carry on your back. Exactly.

According to the Times’s description of the book, Bonnie “admits repeatedly to errors in judgment.” Sure, it’s not quite on par with revealing the name of an alleged rape victim, but we wonder if this particular gaffe made the list.

Covering the Covers, One Number at a Time

Only a month after the New York Times covered it, this morning the Today show tackled the topic of numbers on magazine covers (and gave the segment to David Gregory, because presumably he’s the correspondent most in touch with fashion magazines). Glamour editor-in-chief Cindi Leive appeared on the program to offer her expert and—we’re certain—totally unbiased opinion on the matter.

The upshot?  The numbers are there to attract newsstand buyers, but you still have to have a celebrity on the cover. In other words, we learned nothing new.

Two parts of the interview did, however, capture our imagination:  First, Leive recounted a former art director who didn’t like to use ones and sevens because those numbers were too “mean” and “pointy.” Who knew numbers had actual personality traits?  Later, she reassured us that her team at Glamour would never stoop to the crass tactic of numbers on the cover in order to tout a serious article, which we think was meant to make us feel like magazine staffers really do care about our wellbeing.

Fortunately, we know better.  Still, what could top the newsstand numbers of a cover trumpeting “Nineteen Absolutely Foolproof Definite Signs You Have a Deadly Disease”? We’d buy that for sure.

Relief: Jane Pratt's Career Crisis Nearly Resolved

Women’s Wear Daily reported last Friday that, contrary to previous reports, Jane Pratt did not leave her magazine voluntarily.

In the eight months since Pratt was forced out of her namesake magazine after endless antics…

We don’t mean to be flippant (well, not overly so), but is this news? If you’re so self-involved as to name something after yourself—like, oh, a building or a child—you’re in it for the long haul. Was Jane Pratt already so exhausted by her revealing monthly notes and “cute” comments scattered throughout the magazine that she had to leave? Of course not. Of course she left involuntarily.

Anyway, since the “antics” that resulted in her departure are unlikely to be revealed for a while yet,  we’re currently more intrigued by reports that Pratt may launch a magazine with popstar-cum-cultural force Gwen Stefani.  Might this be the long-awaited Elizabeth?  The erstwhile No Doubt lead singer may not have any magazine experience, but that doesn’t matter. Clearly, a woman with a music career and a not-unpleasant-but-way-overpriced clothing line needs one more way to promote herself—or, we suspect, Jane.

News: An Unnecessary New Magazine, A Recycled Idea, and A Breakup Foretold

■ Elle’s May issue, helmed by guest editor Laurie David, will focus on environmentally friendly fashion  and, in a departure from usual glossy-mag procedure, will be printed on recycled paper. We’re looking forward to this—for once, the green Elle’s pushing won’t be an unflattering shade of eyeshadow.

■ Sheryl Crow, current Allure cover girl, recently announced that she and Lance Armstrong have decided to end their relationship.  We should have known their love was doomed; not once in the spread did Sheryl sport a yellow rubber bracelet.

■ And a new fashion magazine is slated to go on sale this fall. Modus will cover clothing and lifestyle trends in Southern California for 18- to 24-year olds.  We’re not sure why that age group warrants a magazine—don’t they get everything they need to know from The O.C.? 

Brandon Holley: Not So Jane After All

Mark your calendars:  the March edition of Jane goes on sale February 21.  With Kate Beckinsale on the cover, it’s the first totally revamped, Brandon Holley-ized issue.

What kinds of changes are afoot?  Holley told Women’s Wear Daily she plans to expand the magazine’s fashion coverage and redirect the focus of those pages. 

“A twentysomething doesn’t have to feel like a sellout for really wanting the Dior bag.  A Jane girl can wear Marc Jacobs shoes and still be irreverent.”

Does Brandon Holley actually know any women in their twenties (besides, you know, the ones who work at the magazine and steal their designer gear from the fashion closet)?  We think it’s more likely the price tag—not the fear of being branded a sellout—preventing the purchase of Marc Jacobs shoes and Dior bags. 

Jane’s publisher, Carlos Demadrid, made it plain that the changes in the magazine’s aesthetic are not solely artistic choices.  He told the New York Times last week the magazine will now target “millennials,” those consumers born between 1980 and 2000.  Why is this demographic so coveted?

“...they’re big consumers.  They’re the children of baby boomers so they like to buy and they like labels.”

Which, Holley’s ponderings aside, quite handily explains the sudden upscaling of Jane’s fashion coverage.  With the next issue, Jane will be less like Jane Pratt (which, let’s be honest, is not necessarily a bad thing) and much more like every other magazine on the newsstand.

But look on the bright side: we’re certain we’ll still be able to mine the editor’s letters for unintentional comedy.  After all, any woman who tells WWD “Our girl is a lot like her iPod” can’t be entirely without merit.  If you define merit as “taking herself way too seriously and then writing about it in a national magazine,” of course.

How to Succeed in Magazines Without Really Trying

It’s what thousands of Mediabistro subscribers are dying to find out: how to land a job at a top fashion magazine like Vogue.  But completing a series of soul-crushing, photocopying-intensive internships or attending a top journalism school won’t help.  No, confirming what we already suspected, the way to be hired at Condé Nast is much simpler: have well-connected relatives. Women’s Wear Daily reports:

Kelly Florio is going to work for her uncle Tom at Vogue…[she] submitted her resignation from her post as a promotion assistant at Vanity Fair. She’s taken a job as special events coordinator at Vogue…Meanwhile, Steve Florio’s son, Steven J. Florio, was just promoted at Cargo, from assistant editor to associate editor.

Don’t have connections? Fret not about your lack of access; conditions at HQ are apparently not as plush as you’d expect from the preeminent magazine publisher. From Gawker:

There seems to be an ongoing police crackdown...out back on 43rd Street, where a three-deep lineup of VIP black cars regularly blocks traffic. In the past week, there have been increasing patrol car appearances, at which waiting drivers are forced to circle the block, leaving Condé bigs on the sidewalk waiting in vain for their expense-account rides…

So much for that glamorous job at a fashion mag.  If you are lucky enough to have a bigwig relative at Condé Nast, be prepared and bring an extra pair of shoes to your first day on the job:  you’ll be changing out of those stilettos and taking the subway home.

A Bazaar Democratic Process

Not long ago, we groused that Bazaar’s cover lines were completely generic and held only a tenuous connection to the actual content of the magazine.

Unfortunately for our self-regard, complaining didn’t do a thing to change the situation.  The February issue (seen here) boasts “Best New Shoes and Bags” and “Hair and Makeup Quick Tips”; um, doesn’t every magazine offer those things, if not those exact features, every single month?  Big deal, Bazaar. 

But then, perusing the magazine’s web site, we stumbled upon an opportunity to do something more fruitful than whining here.  Bazaar has posted a poll, asking readers to state their cover preferences. 

It begins with a list ten already over-exposed celebrities, allowing us to rank how much we’d like to see them on the cover.  The alternatives include Nicole Richie and Paris Hilton (what? you’d prefer luminaries like Mischa Barton and Lindsay Lohan?), which led us to search for the option to vote in negative numbers.  We’ve been keeping February’s Lucky face down to avoid Nicole’s gaunt stare and stick arms.

Then there are ten utterly bland headlines, each supposedly designed to incite the desire to purchase the magazine, but really just inciting us to pick at our cuticles. “Day clothes made easy”?  “Winter fashion issue”?  Dullsville!   

And what’s with continually announcing the number of “best buys” and “best basics”?  Do you, the reader, ever compare the numbers on the cover of a magazine with either the articles or the numbers on other magazines’ covers?  “Hmm, Bazaar has 10 best buys, but Elle’s featuring 15 hot new looks.  I’m definitely buying Elle.” 

We don’t think that way, but then, we buy every magazine.  Perhaps we’re not the best test subjects for this survey (although we did vote).  Inanely interchangeable or not, we still fork over the cash for the latest issue. So, Bazaar, carry on with your personality-free cover lines.    But the day you put Paris Hilton on the cover, we’ll be parting with our money begrudgingly.

Photo courtesy of Salma Hayek Online

Jane Pratt, Ghostwriter

It’s the next Devil Wears Prada--with a twist.  This time, the editor-in-chief is the one to cheer for.

Jane Pratt’s former assistant, Karen Cohen Yampolsky, is shopping a book proposal for a novel called Wunderkind.  In the book, editor Jill White--running a magazine called Jill, natch--does battle with a publisher installed by a nemesis CEO.  We’re sure the similarities between the plot and actual events--Fairchild CEO Mary Berner hired a close friend to oversee Jane--are purely coincidental.

Now who’s going to play Jane Pratt Jill White in the movie?

Heidi Klum Is Always the Exception

Women’s Wear Daily saved us from our annual guessing game--not to mention constant jaunts to the newsstand to see if the new issues have arrived--and posted a comprehensive list of September’s cover girls.  Women.  Whatever.

Allure: Mariah Carey
Cosmopolitan: Scarlett Johansson
Elle: Jennifer Lopez
Glamour: Jennifer Connelly
Harper’s Bazaar: Demi Moore
In Style: Jennifer Garner
Jane: Hilary Duff
Lucky: Rachel Bilson
Marie Claire: Reese Witherspoon
Self: Ashley Judd
Vanity Fair: Paris Hilton
Vitals Woman: Heidi Klum
Vogue: Sarah Jessica Parker
W: Kirsten Dunst

Let’s get a few nitpicks out of the way, shall we? 

First, while we’re glad to learn in advance that Paris Hilton will be on the cover of Vanity Fair--that way we can avoid it--we’re a bit miffed that the magazine is lumped in with women’s titles.  We consider it the mark of a poorly run newsstand when VF is filed with fashion magazines rather than with celebrity/lifestyle titles.

Next, can we assume the photos of Jennifer Garner and Demi Moore were done pre-visible pregnancy?  (This is assuming Demi Moore is pregnant at all.)  Heidi Klum is hugely pregnant, but she also posed nude.

Which brings us to the real point of this.  Remember when there were models on the covers of magazines?  (Heidi Klum, being a model-actress, is just barely once again the exception, but see above.)  Are models now relegated to the less-prominent fashion spreads in magazines--the majority of spreads, of course, inevitably snatched up by some up-and-coming actress who can’t wear a dress to save her life?  We love certain actresses (even some on the list above), and we like that actresses display a modicum more variety in body types than do models--it’s refreshing to see short women like Reese Witherspoon and Sarah Jessica Parker and curvy women like Jennifer Lopez on magazine covers.

On the other hand, we don’t read fashion magazines for a dose of reality.  We’re searching for aesthetic superiority, out-of-this-world drama, clothes we could never in a million years afford, and that we’d have no occasion to wear even if we could.  We want our cover models to be impossibly tall and improbably thin, to wear dramatic dark makeup that has no place in real life.  We’re not looking for affirmation.  We want aspiration.

There’s a reason there isn’t a magazine out there featuring 5’1” bespectacled brunettes, and if there were, you can be sure we wouldn’t buy it.  Not unless they put Heidi Klum on the cover.

Shopping for Shopping Magazines

Me?  I like a nice brisk walk.  But mostly I rely on the editor-in-chief workout, a never-fail way to get my heart rate up: looking at Lucky’s weekly newsstand numbers.

Lucky, “Editor’s Letter,” July 2005

Kim France, mercifully, hasn’t yet gone the Jane Pratt route in her editor's letters, but we were so disappointed by this statement.  We read Sassy.  We remember when Kim was a young writer with an untamed mass of frizzy hair (which she still has, we suspect, although every photograph shows her with a messy ponytail).

But it seems Ms. France has turned on us, the humble reader, in this month’s missive.  After explaining why shorts have never been featured in Lucky—come on, even we weren’t paying that much attention—and giving us the rundown of Fashion Director Hope Greenberg’s workout routine, she tells us how she maintains her cardiovascular integrity.

It’s an odd statement, and we wonder to whom it’s truly directed.  Readers are more concerned with the editorial content than with the sales numbers.  No, we’re convinced this is a self-congratulatory show of strength, a display of newsstand supremacy in the battle for the shopping-magazine readership.  Take that, Shop Etc.! 

Shop (the "etc." confuses us) would do well to forgo the occasional comment about “other shopping magazines”—the genre wouldn’t exist without Lucky’s success.  And we’d wager that makes Kim France’s heart beat even faster.

The Conde Nast-iest of Them All

Poor, poor Anna Wintour.

We've been breathlessly watching this thread at MediaBistro for word that Conde Nast's HR squad has finally found someone worthy of fourteen-hour days spent taking Ms. Wintour's Dolce and Gabbana to the dry cleaner, but obviously, an Ivy League grad with just the right clothes and the right amount of self-esteem (little to none, we think) hasn't yet turned up.

Still, what girl with serious fashion-magazine aspirations wouldn't relish the chance to work at Vogue?  Spending your days swallowing your pride--and forgoing your social life, lunch, and dignity--could set you up with contacts for life. 

Maybe we're taking all the rumors too seriously.  Maybe it's the word that entry-level CN staffers pull in a wee $24K salary.  Still, it's difficult to believe that, post-The Devil Wears Prada and a lawsuit from her former nanny, anyone would want to work for Anna Wintour at all. 

But we're pretty sure that means that we're just not right for the job.  We certainly don't have the wardrobe.