I know we’re at the brink of the death of Big Print… I know that the marketplace has changed and that new consumers are more cheaply and effectively reached through digital advertising. I know that fashion magazines, at their heart, were an advertising vector and were always at the whim of ad sales…
but.
I just picked up the September US ELLE – a SEPTEMBER ISSUE – and ugh. Skinnier than what used to pass for a spring doldrums issue, printed on paper so cheap and terrible that it’s genuinely unpleasant to touch. I don’t want to be Old Man Nostalgia, but a September issue used to be a two-to-three-inch thick bible of mirror-polished gloss. Pages so smooth and beautiful that you could see the reflection of a fingertip as it traced the outline of the gorgeous photography contained inside. Heavy. So weighed down by all the sex and sheen and polish that the pages would just wrap themselves around a lap when opened.
I think the future of print fashion magazines will be boutique stuff – think Lula or iD or Love – published twice to four times a year, $36+ per issue. And they’ll still be treasures just like they are today, but I think we’re at the end of an era for the mainstream pop culture fashion glossy. There was something a little extra sexy (for me) about the mainstream capitalism of it all – the monthly bible dipped in hedonistic, kinda crass consumerist sex – but all things change.
I’ll make peace with it, but I feel like I need to mourn just a little.
Sigh.
I’m right there with you. I’ll add that the march toward progressive gender views in society has also had an impact on the *content* in the ever-shrinking market. I’m a feminist, but I grew up in the 90s and have complex feelings about beautiful women as objects used to sell goods- and therefore magazines. I miss scanning the racks at the checkout stand and seeing scores of beautiful images of women on the covers of glossy magazines, which, of course held even more images of beautiful women used as objects to sell products. It is telling that the covers of international womens’ magazines retain the sex-sells approach. I assume the content does as well, but I am no longer in a position to buy international editions other than the British and Italian magazines at Barnes & Noble. But if you look at Mexican, Indian, and some more Eastern European editions, they retain some of the sexualized images of women on their covers.
Yes to all of this. I have found peace (mostly) with celebrating the strange hook in my sexuality that fashion magazines catch, but it’s never lost on me that they’ve always been super problematic. I won’t belabor that point, because that’s not what this site is for and I am quite confident you know the dichotomy I’m talking about, but it’s funny how fetishes aren’t necessarily reflections of their holders’ worldviews. I have a good friend who is a staunch feminist with strong views on the toxicity of gender roles and how men are trained to equate masculinity with violence… but she’s always very embarrassed to admit that she finds the tropey image of the man wearing pistols in a shoulder holster (the beleaguered vice cop, etc) to be short-circuit sexy. Doesn’t jive with her front brain, sends electricity to her pants region nonetheless.
I will say: I’ve always loved the way different fashion magazines have voices. Like, Vogue is a very different girl than ELLE, and they both hang out in different circles than Cosmo. This isn’t an accident, of course – they’re marketed towards different demographics – but it deepens the attraction for me. I find that ELLE rides that line of classy-but-not-snobby that is a really powerful sweet spot for me, and when you coupled it with the high-quality paper (the tactile parts are a big part of the fetish for me), it was a whole Venn diagram of “yes please”. Seeing the physical vessel cheapen hurts a bit – though in a bit of humor, ELLE Canada was always printed this way – which totally fits with the “voice” of that publication. A little frumpier and more practical than her slightly-more-hedonistic American cousin.
Chris, well said!
With regard to this year’s September issues, I will say that Bazaar had great quality paper inside (though I liked the cover(s) the least) and I do like the ad campaign for Dolce & Gabbana- which is very much an homage to late 80’s early 90’s glam. So it’s interesting that there are vestiges of the sex sells approach.
More generally, I have found myself turning to publications like Town & Country and Tattler lately. The paper is high quality and the images are usually a little more on the sexy/glam side. There is usually like, only one good ad though.
As I said, some foreign publications are still good. But magazine stands are shutting down. There used to be half a dozen in the LA area. Now I only know of one. And it doesn’t even carry that many international fashion magazines anymore. Barnes & Noble has also divested.