Glossed Over

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: Like Jane Pratt Needs More Attention Right Now

• In an attempt to counter anything they’ve published that might make you think they aren’t proponents of feminism, Elle hosted a panel discussion about women.

• Jane Pratt announced that, back when she was still relevant, she had an affair with Drew Barrymore, and said we can “speculate if [we] want” about a rumored magazine collaboration with Gwen Stefani.  Which means they’re launching a new mag, obviously.   

• Speaking of Jane Pratt being relevant, Mediabistro interviewed the authors of the upcoming book about Sassy called How Sassy Changed My Life: A Love Letter To The Greatest Teen Magazine Of All Time.

• Radar weighs in on Vogue’s shape issue (sorry, we couldn’t resist the pun), while Counterbalance opines about the April issue’s book reviews.

• And a Glamour editor is grooming the next generation of “beauty gurus.” Oh, good, we can’t think of a better role model for today’s girls than one who introduces them to nail polish. [via Gawker]

The Week: At Last, Cringe-Free Cover Photos

• April issues are coming over the transom: Reese Witherspoon looks fierce in Bazaar, Scarlett Johansson wears dark lips and short shorts in Vogue, and both constitute massive improvements over last month’s horrifying cover shots of Katie Holmes and Jennifer Hudson, respectively.

• Still more changes at Elle: While a new design director comes on board, other staffers make a blatant attempt to guest-star on The Hills by defecting to jobs at Teen Vogue.

• The New York Times’ Cathy Horyn asks why anyone except “daughters with lucky DNA in New York and L.A.” should care about Vogue.  We agree.

• And Conde Nast plans to launch a new web network, featuring content from Jane, Self, Allure, and Glamour. Like reading the magazines once on paper isn’t punishing enough.

The Week: Simple-Minded Simple Life Stars Land Bazaar Cover

• First, a bit of Glossed Over news.  We’d love to hear more like this.  Got dirt?  Email us. Also, we’ve added Twitter to our front page for quick updates.

•  Hankering for more thinly veiled, poorly written “fiction” about a spunky editor being deposed from her eponymous magazine?  Gawker’s got another installment.  Or hear the actual story from Jane Pratt next Friday.

•  Anna Wintour hates the word “blog” and has ordered her staff to come up with a replacement immediately. 

•  W, Glamour, and Vogue were nominated for National Magazine Awards.  We aren’t sure why either.

•  And in case you needed another reason not to read Bazaar, the June cover will feature Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie.  Pass!

The Week: Now Officially Sick of Jennifer Hudson

•  Marie Claire staffers are reportedly fleeing the magazine.  What, are they not getting enough screen time in “The Masthead with Marie Claire”?

•  Elle Executive Editor Alex Postman tells Mediabistro that, when interviewing candidates for a job, she asks about their reading habits.  Good news, job applicants: If you’ve managed to read every word on the magazine’s cover, you’re hired.  (And we promise to never trot out that joke again!)

•  Catfight!  Jennifer Hudson and André Leon Talley are still arguing over that ugly bolero.

•  And these excerpts from former Jane staffer Karen Cohen Yampolsky’s “novel” about Jane Pratt reveal the inner machinations of the magazine industry. Also, they reveal that Yampolsky is an exceedingly bad writer.

The Week: Anne Slowey Still Hasn't Eaten a Thing

•  If you’€™ve been lamenting that In Style is too heavy to carry around, fret not!  Now, in a move every other magazine will soon follow, style content is available on your cell phone.

•  Debate continues over the veracity and/or sanity of Anne Slowey’s self-reported Fashion Week diet.

•  Jane wants you to take your top off.  No, seriously.

•  Speaking of topless women and Jane, this is pretty much all you need to read from the Drew Barrymore interview.

•  And after receiving yet another hilariously awful email from Bazaar’€™s subscriber customer service, we found a phone number (which, naturally, was on the website all along).  We’ll have a full report on our call next week.

The Week: February's W Gets Caught In Traffic

•  The publishers of Glamour and Vogue are the front runners in the race to be named the Condé Nast publisher of the year.  Those not nominated continue to act indifferent about this award. 

•  Elle brings Joe Zee on board as creative director.  First task: finding a way to cram even more words on the cover.

•  And a truck carrying copies of the February issue of W crashed in Ohio, spilling copies of the magazine across Interstate 71 and causing massive traffic jams.  Yeah, sometimes W brings us screeching to a halt, too.  (And if this had happened a month ago, at least there’d be a plausible reason why we have yet to receive our January subscription copy—though, considering it was a Sienna Miller cover, perhaps we should just be glad to have dodged that bullet.)

The Week: Special Almost-All-Vogue Edition

•    A documentary crew will go behind the scenes at Vogue as Anna Wintour and her minions put together the massive September issue over the next eight months. 

•    In a series of apparently unrelated observations, James Brady queries Glamour’s Cindi Leive about her rumored rivalry with Cosmopolitan editor-in-chief Kate White, compares her clothing to Lord Byron’s, and describes her as “tallish.”  Thanks for the insight, Jim.

•    PETA activists picketed Vogue’s holiday party, while straight men boycotted Allure’s event.

•    And Angelina Jolie reportedly clashed with Vogue over the writer hired to profile her for the January issue.  Angelina vs. Anna?  We hope they got that on film.

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.”

The Week: A Preponderance of Potential Disasters

• Watch this video.  Suddenly the existence of a 30-year-old virgin won’t seem so improbable.

• Marie Claire may be down in ad pages (scroll to the bottom), but it is way, way up in breasts.

• Is Jane stealing from Details? Does anyone really want to claim credit for this idea anyway?

• Looking for work?  You too can be the next Andrea Sachs Lauren Weisberger brutally overworked Anna Wintour minion.

The Week: We'll Never Believe Lauren Weisberger Again

The Devil Wears Prada’s production designers reveal that Miranda Priestly’s movie office was nearly identical to Anna Wintour’s real-life digs at Vogue.  Now, in what’s obviously a totally coincidental move, Wintour is redecorating.  Way to squelch those claims that the movie wasn’t based on Wintour’s reign of terror at the magazine, everyone.

Copyranter weighs in on Jane’s relentless campaign of self-promotion.  Either he doesn’t get it because he’s not part of the target demographic, or these ads are misguided and annoying.  We’ll let you guess where we stand on the issue (hint: the latter).

And luxury jeweler H. Stern is reaching out to the five people— all of whom must work at Glamour— who weren’t repulsed by Ashley Judd’s therapy confessions.  They’ve hired the actress to appear in an ad campaign in September’s Vogue and W.      

This Week: It's All Anna Wintour's Fault

While we were slacking off this week, here’s what else was going on:

Did Elle make up Hilary Duff’s attestation of virginity?  Did anyone believe it in the first place?  Does anyone over the age of fourteen even care?

Jane wants readers to contact editors with story ideas.  Remember when Sassy did its annual reader-produced issue?  This is like that, only lazier and not as innovative.

This week’s most bizarre internet mashup features legendary Cosmo editor Helen Gurley Brown lecturing how to have an affair over salacious news footage dissecting the breakup of Peter Cook and Christie Brinkley.  If only Cook had followed HGB’s helpful and totally outdated advice.

And this is old, but too good to pass up.  Apparently, Anna Wintour is considered so powerful that she gets blamed for everything—including the economic performance of companies she isn’t even affiliated with. 

The Week: Banish Celebs from Covers, Make Life Easier

Elsewhere this week:

Kirsten Dunst’s shoot for Vogue goes terribly wrong, proving yet again why models should reclaim magazine covers.

Interning—or, in this case, is it “interning”?— at Teen Vogue will get you nowhere.  However, if your mother edits the grown-up version, all sorts of opportunities present themselves.

Continually managing to be ever more insipid, Cosmo announces its sixth annual “Media Man” contest.  You know, because there just isn’t enough space in the magazine for all the objectifying that needs to be done.

The Week: What Didn't Happen on Glossy Paper

Here’s what else happened this week:

Glossed Over—that’s right, the very website you’re reading now—has joined the legions on MySpace. Validate us by adding us to your friends list.

Fashion experts decreed in the New York Times that the wardrobe in The Devil Wears Prada is not even close to what actual people who work in fashion wear. Of course, one of the more outspoken critics was Elle’s Anne Slowey, and we trust her judgment about as much as we trust that Anna Wintour is nothing like TDWP’s Miranda Priestly.

Jossip got hot and bothered about the prospect of eating pizza with Brandon Holley. We’d like to attend so we can query the Jane editor-in-chief about her drinking habits. Think that’s the kind of feedback she’s looking for?

And finally, The Devil Wears Prada hits theaters today. We can’t wait to see if the whole thing is more palatable on film than it was on paper—and to check out that wardrobe for ourselves.  We’ll be sure to discuss it next week. See you then!