Posted on thefashionspot.com
"VOGUE’S MARCH ISSUE IS A RECORD BREAKER.
London, 30th January 2008
The March International collections issue of VOGUE hits the newsstand on 4th February at a record 430 pages, the biggest March issue ever for the fashion bible. The cover is strikingly glamorous, featuring Kate Moss in Dolce & Gabbana and photographed by Craig McDean. The March issue will also include a record level of ad pages, standing at 282, and dominated by all the major international designers.
VOGUE will also be increasing its price with this issue, from £3.70 to £3.80, so based on the January-June 07 UK newsstand data this will generate an additional £142K in annual RSV for the retailer. In addition the March issue of VOGUE will be supported by a national print advertising campaign running in The Times, The Guardian, The Independent and the Evening Standard throughout the first week of sale. The theme of the campaign is “Get it first, Get it fast”.
Stephen Quinn, Publishing Director, comments, "Despite turbulent conditions at newsstand VOGUE is holding a very steady circulation just over the 220,000 mark. The March issue ad campaign will support the retailer and convey the mood of a confident up-market magazine which is leading its field".
The latest ABC delivered by VOGUE was its 11th consecutive circulation increase, with a record ABC total of 220,084 (Jan-June 2007), reinforcing its position as the dominant magazine in the fashion and luxury market."
430 pages!!?!? Pchoom!
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Vogue US February 2008
Found this today at a newsagency on Broadway for $18.50 (!!!!!!). But it was worth it...I might be experiencing something of a conversion to US Vogue (never at the expense of UK Vogue though). Review coming very soon.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Back Soon/Vogue UK March 2008
So sorry for being away for so long. I've been preparing for the imminent return to uni, plus I've been trying to look for a place to live in the crazy Sydney rental market. Enough said.
Anyway, this is the unconfirmed cover, featuring Kate Moss, of the Vogue UK March 2008 issue. I have to say, this is about the most on-crack I've ever seen her. She doesn't look like herself but like a bizarre waxwork model of herself: like someone got 25kg of cigarette ash, 25kg of wax, mixed it up with a little bit of dirty water and was forced to complete a lifesize representation of her in less than an hour. I don't know what her dress is but I'm still loving this silver ascendancy.
I can't wait for the Feb '08 issue of US Vogue to hit the stands: this stunning edit with Catherine McNeill (for some reason was posted by my blogfriend Green Grenadine and whilst I don't want to steal her thunder, I love these pics so much I just have to post them again...the snakeskin bags (by Coach, Ferragamo and D&G) are completely lush...as is the volume of her hair.
On thefashionspot.com there seems to be much derision re: Catherine McNeill, which I don't completely understand....anyone care to enlighten me?
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Back on Monday
Hi all,
Heading down the coast for the weekend. Next week:
1. promised review of Two Days in Paris
2. review of Vogue UK February '08 which I FINALLY was able to find + full commentary on the "Anarchy in the UK" edit I posted
3. thinking of reviewing No Country for Old Men
xx
Heading down the coast for the weekend. Next week:
1. promised review of Two Days in Paris
2. review of Vogue UK February '08 which I FINALLY was able to find + full commentary on the "Anarchy in the UK" edit I posted
3. thinking of reviewing No Country for Old Men
xx
Damn AdSense
Mortified to see that my AdSense bar was displaying ads for tanning booths and fake tans!! The irony...
Anarchy in the UK
To show how much I can't wait for the Feb UK Vogue, I'm going to be totally extravagant and post ALL of the Lily Donaldson "Anarchy in the UK" editorial:
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
The Tanned Ideal II
Some desultory additions to yesterday's comments on tanning:
1. For fashion magazines to continue to feature soul-searching and heart-rending pieces about (for example) breast cancer (such as the February Vogue) whilst continuing to implicitly or otherwise to advocate tanning is basically hypocritical. For those in doubt about the public health impact of skin cancer vis-a-vis breast cancer, any Google search will reveal that they are very similar in terms of their mortality and economic impact.
2. It matters not whether or not tanning is addictive (vis-a-vis smoking) for the comparison to be valid. Not all behaviours with adverse health consequences are unquestionably addictive, though of course it would suit some people to claim that tanning is. If it isn't addictive - great, it'll be easier to change the relevant behaviours. If it is addictive - equally great, because it'll be *even more* deserving of public health intervention.
3. If fashion magazines do take a stand on tanning, they can't honestly expect a backlash from readers. Who would care? Advertisers maybe, but so what? Advertise more shoes, or bags. Magazines have survived the death of cigarette advertising.
1. For fashion magazines to continue to feature soul-searching and heart-rending pieces about (for example) breast cancer (such as the February Vogue) whilst continuing to implicitly or otherwise to advocate tanning is basically hypocritical. For those in doubt about the public health impact of skin cancer vis-a-vis breast cancer, any Google search will reveal that they are very similar in terms of their mortality and economic impact.
2. It matters not whether or not tanning is addictive (vis-a-vis smoking) for the comparison to be valid. Not all behaviours with adverse health consequences are unquestionably addictive, though of course it would suit some people to claim that tanning is. If it isn't addictive - great, it'll be easier to change the relevant behaviours. If it is addictive - equally great, because it'll be *even more* deserving of public health intervention.
3. If fashion magazines do take a stand on tanning, they can't honestly expect a backlash from readers. Who would care? Advertisers maybe, but so what? Advertise more shoes, or bags. Magazines have survived the death of cigarette advertising.
Harper's Bazaar UK
About time this glorious mag had an online home
I'll be reviewing Two Days in Paris later in the day.
I'll be reviewing Two Days in Paris later in the day.
L'Officiel India
My blogfriend eccentric is adamant that L'Officiel India (website not apparently up and running properly...quite yet) is the greatest fashion publication going around. It's a syndicated version of a French title of the same name which - although it's been published since 1921 and is a household name in France I'd never ever heard of. The covers are absolutely stunning and I'm right now I'm busting to hold an issue in my very own hands!
PS. Just in case anyone was thinking - I intend to adhere to a policy of tanning non-promotion on this blog. Pallor ala Trentino and Kidman has mercifully dominated so far.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Nicole's Silver Balenciaga Pantsuit @ Golden Compass Premier: Thanks Jelenie!
I'll end my silver-induced mania v. soon, but I thought that this should be shared. It's been condemned as fug, but I don't give a fuck. What do other people think?
The Tanning Wars
Great article by Sydney-based journalist Rachel Hills (published, of all places, in Russh last summer): http://rachelhills.typepad.com/rachelhills/2007/01/the_tanning_war.html
Karl Lagerfeld DVD
From Vogue Australia Forums
"Hi Voguettes,
The Vogue Australia March issue (on sale Feb 6) will include a feature-length DVD of Lagerfeld Confidential. Direct from its cinematic run in New York, London and Paris, the definitive Karl Lagerfeld documentary is exclusive to all Vogue readers.
Make sure you save the March on-sale date Feb 6 in your diary! This is one issue not to be missed!"
Sounds great, but depressing to see Vogue stooping to gimmickry for sales (ala Harper's Bazaar)...
"Hi Voguettes,
The Vogue Australia March issue (on sale Feb 6) will include a feature-length DVD of Lagerfeld Confidential. Direct from its cinematic run in New York, London and Paris, the definitive Karl Lagerfeld documentary is exclusive to all Vogue readers.
Make sure you save the March on-sale date Feb 6 in your diary! This is one issue not to be missed!"
Sounds great, but depressing to see Vogue stooping to gimmickry for sales (ala Harper's Bazaar)...
The Tanned Ideal
In her review of the recent issue of Russh, Girl With a Satchel made some interesting observations on tanning, picking up on Russh editor Charlotte Scott's comments in response to a reader's letter exhorting Russh to be more judicious in the selection of images which may promote tanning. In response, Scott admits she loves the tanned look and points the magazine's readers to a feature elsewhere in the magazine documenting the latest in self-tanning products, whilst (perhaps ironically) endorsing the contingent fact that tanning is considered an aesthetic ideal: "White skin spells kooky and possibly bad at sport, while tanned skin is inextricably linked with health, vitality and hot Brazilians like Gisele Bundchen." All this is quite unfortunate. The most responsible way to disendorse tanning is not to endorse fake tanning, but to help bring about the disendorsement of tanning as an aesthetic ideal altogether, by refusing to feature models who are in any way unnaturally tanned (by self-tanning products or otherwise).
Advising people to use self-tanning products instead of sunbaking seems to me as misguided as pointing smokers in the direction of smokeless cigarettes. It does not in any solve (one of) the core problems, which is that, because of whatever series of historical accidents and contingencies, tanning represents a central Western (as distinct from in the East and South America, where pallor is big business**) aesthetic ideal, which will continue to exist no matter how many magazine editors say "Pale is the new pretty". It's not enough to simply present alternatives in these situations, but the aberrant ideals themselves have to be undermined and discredited.
As a medical student, I've been exposed to quite a bit of core epidemiology and I know for a fact that skin cancer in all its manifestations together represent a public health burden that is greater than what will ever be the case for anorexia nervosa or bulimia, two conditions for which the fashion industry has been traditionally an aetiological scapegoat. Just as magazines should under no circumstances feature models smoking, no magazine should feature unnaturally tanned models. The link between cancer and smoking is just as clear as it is between cancer and tanning. Just as it doesn't matter whether a model is "really" smoking or not in the photo shoot, it doesn't matter whether the tan is fake or not.
In this regard it seems to me that - as I have said on GWAS' blog - fashion magazines could do quite a bit of good public health work in disendorsing the tanned ideal. There has been much justifiable uproar over the years about the over-sexualisation of young models, as well as the glorification of waiflike thinness, but the tanned ideal has been curiously absent from the continual debate regarding the moral responsibilities of the fashion press.
**And has had equally appreciable public health costs: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/health_science/articles/2003/12/16/whitening_skin_can_be_deadly/
Advising people to use self-tanning products instead of sunbaking seems to me as misguided as pointing smokers in the direction of smokeless cigarettes. It does not in any solve (one of) the core problems, which is that, because of whatever series of historical accidents and contingencies, tanning represents a central Western (as distinct from in the East and South America, where pallor is big business**) aesthetic ideal, which will continue to exist no matter how many magazine editors say "Pale is the new pretty". It's not enough to simply present alternatives in these situations, but the aberrant ideals themselves have to be undermined and discredited.
As a medical student, I've been exposed to quite a bit of core epidemiology and I know for a fact that skin cancer in all its manifestations together represent a public health burden that is greater than what will ever be the case for anorexia nervosa or bulimia, two conditions for which the fashion industry has been traditionally an aetiological scapegoat. Just as magazines should under no circumstances feature models smoking, no magazine should feature unnaturally tanned models. The link between cancer and smoking is just as clear as it is between cancer and tanning. Just as it doesn't matter whether a model is "really" smoking or not in the photo shoot, it doesn't matter whether the tan is fake or not.
In this regard it seems to me that - as I have said on GWAS' blog - fashion magazines could do quite a bit of good public health work in disendorsing the tanned ideal. There has been much justifiable uproar over the years about the over-sexualisation of young models, as well as the glorification of waiflike thinness, but the tanned ideal has been curiously absent from the continual debate regarding the moral responsibilities of the fashion press.
**And has had equally appreciable public health costs: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/health_science/articles/2003/12/16/whitening_skin_can_be_deadly/
Monday, January 7, 2008
Can't Think of Any Good Puns Involving "Silver"
I don't rate my abilities in fashion criticism at all, so it comes to my great surprise (and vague pride) that my newfound, reptilian obsession with the metallic is endorsed by reputable sources, i.e. Style.com: http://www.style.com/fashionshows/stylehunter/content_6269
Style.com says that the trend is just in time for the red-carpet season, which of course may be truncated because of shenanigans involving the American Screenwriters Association: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN0433567820080108
From top-to-bottom: Luella, Ralph Lauren, Galliano. (Balenciaga was there too but to my mind nowhere near as successful as in the recent past).
Why Do I Go Gaga Over Silver Pants?
Salvatore Ferragamo's Spring/Summer '08 collection was (to my mind) centrepieced by the stunning silver pants (on right) which aroused some sort of reptilian part of my brain in a way I've not experienced since Balenciaga's S/S '07 collection, in which metallic shades touched everything in a sort of godly infection. See the entire collection: http://men.style.com/fashion/collections/S2008MEN/review/SFMEN
Friday, January 4, 2008
Soft Sell Part II
NB she's also in my blog banner above (famous Gucci ad).A comprehensive collections of her covers and editorials: http://www.herfamedgoodlooks.com/hfgl/Caroline%20Trentini/index.htm
Soft Sell Part I
My favourite editorial, featuring my favourite model of all time, Caroline Trentini. I saw this in Vogue Australia, February 2006 (Kate Moss cover) but it looks as if (from the font, and the fact that it was done by Patrick Demarchelier) it had to be reprinted from UK Vogue. I'll have more to say about the heartbreakingly beautiful Trentini very soon.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Can't Wait to Get My Hands on This
February 2008 UK Vogue with Sasha Pivovarova on the cover and amazing-looking supplement (which I hope makes it to Australia).
I guess I spend the next fortnight traipsing around every newsagent in Sydney trying to find this. I would subscribe to UK Vogue but it's about as expensive as a year's worth of Mexican black tar heroin (US magazine subscriptions are inexplicably cheap).
Fellow Male Fashion Traveller
http://chicest-eccentric.blogspot.com/
Loving this exuberant, effervescent blog.
Loving this exuberant, effervescent blog.
My Prayers Are Answered/Iconography
The November '96 issue of Vogue Australia with Kylie Bax on the cover: the first Vogue I bought. I found the cover on
http://www.fashion-iconography.net, an amazing site that ought to be consulted by every mag enthusiast.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Beige Pages
You can bank on the first couple of issues of any mag in any given year to be write-offs, dominated by ads, editorials (often staggeringly mismatched with the current season) reprinted from overseas editions, half-hearted features on "getting into shape over the summer" and (as is the special province of Vogue Australia) encyclopaedically-detailed and puff-encrusted "sealed sections" on cosmetic surgery. February's Vogue Australia is no exception, so perhaps it's a bit unfair to give it too much a of teeth-kicking.
The Jennifer Connelly cover, reprinted from a recent editorial in US Vogue (another pic from that shoot claimed the cover for that edition) is typical of the blandsome and beige aesthetic favoured by Anna Wintour's glorified telephone directory - a Beige Pages, if you will - of a mag. Plus, in the cover pic she reminds me of Andie McDowell, which puts me in a mental state which is, I suspect, next door to the sensation of swallowing razor-blades in the street of my imagination. Almost every other pic in the shoot (with the exception of the one that made the US Vogue cover) is more cover-worthy than the one they chose. And I don't understand the Vogue Australia obsession with halter dresses - every second cover features some hapless celebrity being throttled by one.
There is nothing more depressing than reading a celebrity-interview. Jennifer Connelly offers us such words of wisdom as: "I don't think someone's hair colour should define their personality." Clearly those two months at Stanford didn't rub off...
Season/mood-inappropriateness manifests itself gloriously in the "Suit Yourself" editorial: who wants to be reminded of one's imminent return to work at this time of year? Not only is it inappropriate but I find it incomprehensible when Vogue pretends to be practical by doing edits on (for example) "workwear": either offer realistic fashion options for mundane scenarios (and not Ana Demeulemeester sequined jackets) or don't offer them at all - Vogue does glamour and fantasy best, and that's what it should stick to.
The Raquel Zimmerman edit (reprinted from Paris Vogue) is fairly lush and I fell in love with the telegraphic classicism of the Ralph Lauren shirts. The "Body of Evidence" lingerie editorial is beautiful, but the Bill Hensonesque aesthetic almost prevents the bras and things from being seen properly at all: there are ways of making a shoot moody without plunging everything into Stygean darkness.
Features articles in Vogue Australia not concerned with fashion have as far back as I can remember had a tokenistic and amateurish quality (underscored by the Natasha Inchley controversy of earlier this year): if we really wanted to read about breast cancer or the neurobiological basis of romantic love, we'd read marie claire (which of course some of us do).
All in all, this issue is not a keeper, in the tradition of most January/February issues. In general, though, the trajectory for Vogue Australia since being purchased by News Limited has been an upward one: you do get the feeling there's more money sloshing around. I bought my first Vogue Paris today: where has it been all my life? Maybe if I keep buying it enough French will rub off in time to appear chic during my planned Montreal jaunt at the end of this year.
The Jennifer Connelly cover, reprinted from a recent editorial in US Vogue (another pic from that shoot claimed the cover for that edition) is typical of the blandsome and beige aesthetic favoured by Anna Wintour's glorified telephone directory - a Beige Pages, if you will - of a mag. Plus, in the cover pic she reminds me of Andie McDowell, which puts me in a mental state which is, I suspect, next door to the sensation of swallowing razor-blades in the street of my imagination. Almost every other pic in the shoot (with the exception of the one that made the US Vogue cover) is more cover-worthy than the one they chose. And I don't understand the Vogue Australia obsession with halter dresses - every second cover features some hapless celebrity being throttled by one.
There is nothing more depressing than reading a celebrity-interview. Jennifer Connelly offers us such words of wisdom as: "I don't think someone's hair colour should define their personality." Clearly those two months at Stanford didn't rub off...
Season/mood-inappropriateness manifests itself gloriously in the "Suit Yourself" editorial: who wants to be reminded of one's imminent return to work at this time of year? Not only is it inappropriate but I find it incomprehensible when Vogue pretends to be practical by doing edits on (for example) "workwear": either offer realistic fashion options for mundane scenarios (and not Ana Demeulemeester sequined jackets) or don't offer them at all - Vogue does glamour and fantasy best, and that's what it should stick to.
The Raquel Zimmerman edit (reprinted from Paris Vogue) is fairly lush and I fell in love with the telegraphic classicism of the Ralph Lauren shirts. The "Body of Evidence" lingerie editorial is beautiful, but the Bill Hensonesque aesthetic almost prevents the bras and things from being seen properly at all: there are ways of making a shoot moody without plunging everything into Stygean darkness.
Features articles in Vogue Australia not concerned with fashion have as far back as I can remember had a tokenistic and amateurish quality (underscored by the Natasha Inchley controversy of earlier this year): if we really wanted to read about breast cancer or the neurobiological basis of romantic love, we'd read marie claire (which of course some of us do).
All in all, this issue is not a keeper, in the tradition of most January/February issues. In general, though, the trajectory for Vogue Australia since being purchased by News Limited has been an upward one: you do get the feeling there's more money sloshing around. I bought my first Vogue Paris today: where has it been all my life? Maybe if I keep buying it enough French will rub off in time to appear chic during my planned Montreal jaunt at the end of this year.
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