I bought a grazia this morning as i'm in that period before the UK and US magazines get air-freighted here and there are no magazines out that i either a) haven't already bought or b) would like to buy anyway. I don't normally buy grazia unless i'm in this period, because i find it one of the oddest magazines out there.
not this week's grazia, from 2 weeks ago, but my screen grab wasn't working on grazia's site and the image was so small anyway, so i couldn't get you the current cover with Miranda Kerr and the Met Gala gossip on the cover.
[nine msn]
I know, it looks innocuous and innocent. A weekly with some inoffensive gossip masquerading as salacious rumours, some nice (read: not fabulous) fashion shoots and the writing is often irritatingly pedestrian (the letters from the editor are stilted and often unstructured, as if she merely jotted down some stream of consciousness thoughts about the week and whacked them into the magazine as is), and the tone is very casual, as if they're trying hard to be conversational, a magazine that's really your best friend, with all their sass, style and looks to boot.
And that, in a nutshell, is the problem with Grazia, they have pretensions to be much much more than what they really are, which is a weekly magazine. With their fashion shoots filled with 4 figure price tag items of clothing they want to be high fashion, with their gossip stories however, they want to be your regular, run of the mill rumour rag. With their Fashion department of 8 (count 'em) full time positions they want to be a monthly with all the prestige and glamour that accompanies it. But with their bright, fluro scribbled covers and their insistence on running all those gossip stories (is jamie hinze cheating on kate moss? do we really care?) and their bizarre layout (letters/comments at the back, an almost non-existent discussion of entertainment movies/tv etc unless in a full on article) they can't transend the box that is the gossip weeklies.
And the worst thing about being a weekly magazine is how expendable you are. I used to buy Grazia ever week at the beginning of its launch, i applauded a weekly that focussed more on fashion and had some decent, well-styled editorials. That was until i realised that i was buying it and throwing it out every week. I have stacks and stacks of magazines in my room that i will never throw out. When i get my own space i'd love to catalogue them in chronological order and in piles according to their respective publications. Among this hotchpotch mix of vogue (uk, us, paris, germany, italia, australia), elle (uk, us), harpers bazaar (australia, uk), W, L'officiel, Teen Vogue and marie claire there is not one grazia magazine.
Why is this? Because, like i said, a weekly magazine is completely, entirely, expendable. You are never compelled to keep it, just to buy it. Which, at the beginning, might not be a problem, people still buy the magazine, your sales are up. But as the Grazia team are reportedly beginning to understand now is that if you don't provide your customers with a reason to want to KEEP your magazine, more than just BUY it, then they will not continue to buy it. I see it now as a bit of a waste of my $5, because i am not getting any lasting enjoyment from it, the 'nice' fashion editorials i can find better in a monthly, the articles, like i said, i could get from Who, the entertainment i can find, well, anywhere except them. Why would i want to buy a magazine i just throw out after i read it? I like to think, in my own little naive way, that magazines are their own form of art. And the flashy, bold graphics of Grazia's art design just can't compete with those of Harpers Bazaar UK, who do cut-out frames much better. I buy magazines to keep them, to refer back to, so that i can have a touchstone reference point for all my fashion whimsies, so that i can look back and see what was happening in 2004, and whether gypsy bohemia really was as big as i remember it (it was, thanks lucinda chambers!)
And, to add insult to injury, Vogue Australia is only $3 more dollars, and if you think about it, much more value for money even if you're only thinking about the quality of journalism, the artistic direction or the fashion features. There was a page in today's grazia about 'Balmania' and how everyone in the fashion world is going crazy for Balmain. Groundbreaking stuff, really. I'm not saying Vogue Australia is anything special, you've all seen me dole the love out for the UK and US versions, i am much more attached to them. I do think, however, that Vogue Australia has (when it doesn't reproduce articles from its sister versions) great fashion features journalism and commentary, insightful and well-written columns, editorials that are better styled, photographed (and better modelled) than their Grazia counterparts and a glorious, delightful escapism element to it that Grazia simply cannot replace as a weekly.
I know that Vogue is 'High Fashion' and thus very different from Grazia. But i question whether a magazine that regularly features designers with 4 figure price tags, has a fashion features department, reports from shows and has more than 1 editorial (or 1 editorial at all!) is aspiring to be anything but high fashion!?
Grazia has come leaps and bounds from the beginning. I buy it now because i think that the cover design is SO much better from when they launched, and the team has all learnt alot in the 9 or so months since it began. But i still am not compelled to keep the magazine. I understand they are trying to fill a gap in the market, and that becoming a monthly would only add another to a long line of Australian high fashion monthlies, but i just don't think that their current focus is working. Perhaps if they decided to become the Vogue of Weeklies, then it might work. If they got rid of the gossip and focussed solely on fashion with some small offshoots into lifestyle and entertainment.
I'd like to see Grazia continue to develop as a magazine. Then perhaps it might get its own little section in my imaginary magazine room.
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