The new H&M magazine is out and as usual it’s a cracking good read. Each issue has three 1000+ word features and this issue includes one of mine on the magic of fashion shows. That’s not the only reason it’s a good read though. (more…)
H&M Magazine’s Summer 2012 issue is out on Tuesday and the feature I wrote on the magic of fashion shows has made a coverline. I’ll be hunting out a copy next week, in the meantime, watch Clare Richardson styling Edita Vilkeviciute’s cover shoot here
You can keep Jessica Alba for Marie Claire and Cameron Diaz for Harper’s Bazaar, I’m more interested in Yayoi Kusama on the cover of Wallpaper (and she designed it too). My problem with actresses and pop stars on the cover of mags is that each celeb has done so many covers with the required !!EXCLUSIVE!! interview that they literally have nothing of interest left to say. Everything of consequence has been said already. Artists on the other hand tend to be less publicity hungry (obviously there are exceptions) so rarely give interviews and they have a more specific outlook on life which means that when they do, they actually have something worth saying.
If you haven’t yet seen the Kusama exhibition at Tate Modern, do hurry. It ends on 5th June when it then moves to New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art on 12th July. And then on the 15th, we’ll finally see the long-awaited Louis-Vuitton-Yayoi-Kusama ready-to-wear collaboration – with windows in all LV’s stores worldwide showing VM displays created by Kusama of course (think red and white polka dotted eels writhing under the sea). It’s in the diary…
The limited-edition cover by Kusama is available to Wallpaper subscribers and on newsstands in Japan.
My take on The Future Of Fashion Magazines is generally that the collectable bi-annuals will continue and the commercial monthlies will eventually migrate to online-only. My Self Service magazines with their endless photo-editorials and long-form interviews have stood the test of time because they’re not topical (there’s no news or celeb interviews promoting their latest film-slash-beauty contracts), so the content is more ‘pure’. All the attention right now is on Carine Roitfeld’s forthcoming ‘fashion book’, CR Fashion Book (which is really a bi-annual magazine) and from this WWD article, the format looks to follow my theory. Only spreads and long form articles will be featured while the gaps between the twice yearly issued will be filled with more immediate, newsy online content.
Obviously, this switch won’t happen overnight. There’s still a huge market for print mags (evidenced by my own monthly tower of glossies), but the generation in its early teens now most likely won’t have the nostalgic connections to print magazines as we know them, so won’t continue to buy the Glamours and Grazias as we do.
And there’s another big development in magazines coming very soon indeed. Hearst’s tie-up with Youtube, a fashion channel called Hello Style launches on Saturday. I imagine these weekly digital TV shows from the likes of US Marie Claire, Harper’s Bazaar and Cosmopolitan will have far reaching implications for the editorial industry as we know it, so I’ll be watching closely. Will you?
