I harp on a lot about Vogue Australia and how it's so inferior, but i do rather enjoy picking it up off the newstand first wednesday of every month. It's always a very clean lay out, easy to read and digest, the articles are consistently interesting, if not always well written, the editorials are less so, but they always manage to make me smile. And they reprint editorials from magazines that i would not be able to get my hands on, such as Vogue Russia, China and Mexico. An interesting tactic that means that although they are reprinting most of their audience have not seen (in print, some of them like me may have seen them on the internet) before, and thus it's a pleasant surprise.
Basically i think Vogue Australia is a great example of how a magazine can be done well on a low budget. Of course it would be a better, more innovative and incredible magazine if it had a higher budget, but Kirsty Clements does what she can with what little resources she has. Harpers Bazaar, and their new EIC Edwina McCann should take note.
However something in the most recent issue, Vogue Australia August 09, caught me eye for all the wrong reasons. They have a section each month called 'my fashionable life', which is one of the best in the magazines. It is akin to the Une Fille Un Style section in Vogue Paris that everyone loves. This month they featured Fashion PR Karla Otto, a woman who is by all means a very stylish woman with great taste and has become very successful off her own back. I find her very interesting and am in awe of her success. But one of her answers grated with me.
Do you have to spend to be stylish?
"When you are stylish and you can afford something fantastic, of course it really helps. There are some amazing dresses around that not everyone has access to."
Hmm... It's all getting into dangerous territory but i would hazard a guess that this answer sort of sums up the Vogue (of any country) view of style. Yes, it is easier to be stylish if you can spend, you have endless resources available to you and it's easier to put something together that is quality and will work for you. That's why so many actresses suddenly 'become' stylish when they hit the big time (Megan Fox, anyone?). But i resent this statement from Otto, firstly because of the implication that there are some 'amazing dresses' that only the rich has access too. It's almost like if you are poor then you are denied 'amazing dresses'. I'll have you know that there are amazing dresses for everyone, and i suppose some wealthy people don't have access to some of the cheaper ones because of some misguided fashion snobbery in that they wouldn't set foot into the stores that sell them or the thrift stores that pass them on.
But even more importantly is this idea, that i find pervading every single international Vogue, that being stylish is synonymous with being wealthy. Just look at the people they feature within their pages, the things that they put in their shopping sections, most tellingly the things that they believe are a 'steal'. Sometimes they are genuinely cheap, Kirsty Clements from Vogue AUS always puts together thoughtful shopping pages with cheaper items on them. But sometimes it's just laughable that the average woman would think that a 250 pound dress is a 'steal'.
It all comes back to this idea of whether a magazine should be accessible or aspirational. The eternal struggle between Elle and Vogue (Harpers Bazaar has dropped off the radar in every country except for Britain) boils down to those two essential elements. Should a fashion magazine show a reader what she can have, or what she could have... And is there a resonable middle ground in between the two that a magazine could conceivably tread.
Elle is approachable and accessible. It must be said. Although they regularly feature big ticket items there are many features within (both UK and US, i don't know about the int'l versions) the magazine that feature 'ordinary people' and their price tags. Best of the high street is a memorable one in Elle that features thoughtful shopping pics from a range of stores and not just H&M and topshop.
Vogue, on the other hand, is distinctly aspirational. A cursory glance at the pages of any of the international vogues (including the masthead) will show you that they firmly believe that wealth and style are synonymous. All of the girls featured in the magazine are wealthy, all of the clothes are expensive. And although Vogue US is making a concerted effort to move towards being more accessible this means featuring a skirt with a 3 figured price tag instead of a 4. Baby steps, but steps nonetheless, that i commend them on.
As a buyer of both magazines i cannot say which i prefer. I suppose that i like elements of the two, and wish that i could find a magazine that would breach the two sides of the debate. It is a marvelous thing to read vogue and be charmed by gorgeous clothes and accesories, stories about beauty products, techniques and holidays that i will never have, houses that i will never live in, lifestyles that i will never live. But it can be exhausting after a while. I think they should save most of the aspiration and hopes and dreams for the fantasy editorials (oh look at that couture, those 4 figure lanvin bejewelled shoes!) and features. In the 'flash' sections and shopping pages they should try and be more realistic.
This view is reflected in the business of magazines. For the first time in 24 years of catty american magazine history Elle has topped Vogue in the US market for ad pages in the first half of the year. Elle holds 970 pages of ads this half, and Vogue 956 pages of ads. Both of those figures are a decline (22% and 32% respectively) from their previous year's half of figures. And as we move into the second half and ever closer to the important issues of September who knows how this will turn? Vogue's newstand sales are up by 5% while Elle's are down by 16%, interesting figures thought in part to have been spiked by the Michelle Obama March cover that Wintour bravely put on the market, and has reaped the rewards of. Say what you want about the woman, but when she's on her game, she's on.
So what can these magazines do? Although this was a tiny insignificant comment that i'm sure many just flicked over and paid no attention to, i think these kind of comments from Karla Otto have to be removed. They do nothing to spur excitement or interest from the reader to reach that aspirational phase that Vogue desires, and are certainly not accessible in the manner of Elle. More prudent would be to celebrate Stylish and fashionable people the world over, regardless of their age, size, wealth and employment. Karla Otto is a fabulous example of this, she is incredibly stylish. But another equally as great example would be my Aunt Fleur, a working mother of one who still leaves that lingering scent of Chanel No.5 and promise wherever she goes. Or my godmother Sophie, a doctor who is the doppelganger for Sofia Coppola and still wears the clothes that she wore in college when she and my mother shared a dingy flat in Stanmore.
If the success of Garance Dore and street style photography has taught us nothing, and the feature in Vogue Australia by Garance that was beautifully set out and filled with gorgeous, never before seen photos is evidence of this, people like seeing style, in whatever form it comes. Yes, style in editorials comes from rake thin models clutching 4 thousand dollar bags wearing a rodarte dress that no-one except the very wealthy will be able to afford (and the very thin will be able to carry off). But style in the rest of the magazine can be achieved, as Elle UK sometimes does, through showing street-style photographs, showing high street picks, telling readers where they can shop on their lunch hour (humorous AND practical), all with the air of imparting information upon a less knowledgeable friend, rather than sending forth a fashion education to the masses.
I would go so far as to say that featuring people who are rich, and therefore have access to beautiful quality clothes and thus must be stylish is, well, lazy. It's so easy to be stylish when you are wealthy, everyone knows that. But real style, interesting, fascinating, intriguing style that makes you think and stimulates thought doesn't come from wealth or riches. It comes from an innate understanding of the aesthetics of clothes, the richness of fashion history, the influences and allusions, the beauty of texture and silhouette and colour combinations... You can't learn it, you're born with it. You either have that eye or you don't.
And i for one would love to see a fashion magazine featuring everyday stylish people in their pages. Kind of like how the Sartorialist has been doing recently. My main criticism of him has been he takes beautiful pictures of people within the fashion industry, who are stylish by necessity and with ease. I used to prefer his shots of normal people, 'on the street', the average person interpreting trends and doing it their own way. He has gone back to that recently, and by god, it is a joy to see.
It is a difficult thing to do. I can imagine that for the Sart being surrounded every fashion week by Margiela shoe boots and Givenchy furs meant that a return to the everyday shots (i remember one particularly beautiful one in paris of two friends wearing denim miniskirts and converse) can seem banal. But actually it's the opposite of that. Think of the fashion types with their wealth and expertise and knowledge and access as one part of the job, and the everyday person as a breath of fresh air. In advertising you always say that you are writing for the lowest common denominator, in magazine publishing you are supposed to breach the two. The two together would be a powerful combination, no?
X
Recent examples from the Sart:
[sartorialist]
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