Fashion Journalism

[Olivia]

oh please.. somebody respond to this thread, because i have the exact same question as modern_romance.

 

[kimair]

i'd suggest reading this thread from the beginning...
there's a few members who had similar questions, and some people have had some very helpful answers...

 

[homeboy]

oh please.. somebody respond to this thread, because i have the exact same question as modern_romance.

Getting into the world of journalism in all about working your way from the bottom to the top. As soon as you have got your first job you can start working your way up the ranks and move from magazines to magazines.
Write, write and write even more and try to get your stuff published in fashion magazines. After your articles have been posted in a few magazines you can start applying to big magazines like Vogue, Elle and Vanity Fair.
Your success depend partly on your writing skills but mostly on your knowledge and expertise in the subject.

 

[sassybella]

It's funny that Marion Hume is speaking there. I remember how she used to be slagged off in Oz when she was Editor-in-Chief of Australian Vogue. She put noses out of joint as soon as she stepped off the plane from England by writing harsh but honest editorials about the state of the industry in Australia. Now they're inviting her as a top speaker at Melbourne Fashion Week. Ain't that always the way...

I'll call her when she gets back 'topside' and ask her about the seminar. If I get anything likely to be helpful to any of you, I'll post it here as well. J J Picart is also well worth listening to. He's forgotten more about the business than most people even know.

PK

It is ironic huh? I am a little too young to have seen the brunt of all the backlash, but after some research when her book came out (which I love - and since working in the Australian magazine industry I've got my suspicions[FONT=&quot] )[/FONT] about who's who.

Shame Marion's gone, Australian publishing really needs to be so la di da and take the reins and an authorative figure in Australian fashion. I think Aus Harpers is starting to do it, while Vogue is lagging behind.

Now back to why I posted in the first place... I would post tips from the business seminar, but my so called friend who used my website to get a media pass to all the events, has gone MIA. And boy amd I peeved. She's completely dropped off the face of the earth and is not answering her phone or taking my emails. URGH.

Shame because I really want to make my "online magazine" better and would love to bring a few people on board to help me (and themselves) as my side career - because currently my career career isn't going so well. Long story, I won't bore you all with it.

As for other journalists to watch... I'm really liking Jamie Huckbody's writing of late, the stuff he's done years ago in the UK, and now with Aus Harpers. It's refreshing because during the Aus Fashion Week SS06 last year he really told it like he saw it - that certain designers looked like their pieces were straight off a European designer's catwalk (my thoughts exactly).

 

[prosperk]

Marion's book was funny, especially when one can guess upon whom some of the characters were based. It was gently savage in places. Some people didn't get the allegorical nature of the cake shop reveries. Put bluntly, she was taking the piss. However, her book didn't have the bitterness of, say, The Devil Wears Prada, which was of course heavily toned down when turned into a script and given the requisite Hollywood happy ending. Still, Marion Hume's experience in the top job at Oz Vogue was a textbook bad one, with friends who stabbed her in the back quite viciously - even by Planet Fashion's worst standards - and a directorship that left her out there for the wolves afterwards. So she sued them, won and then wrote a satirical book.

She had a hard time. I ran her Paris set-up and remember persuading Peter Lindbergh to shoot a cover for Oz Vogue. Now, this wasn't too hard as Peter and I know one another and he'd previously shot a cover for the mag but the sticking point was that Oz Condé Nast had stiffed his team for their expenses, including the hair and make-up by Odile Gilbert and Stéphane Marais respectively. Nevertheless, Peter Lindbergh knew that it would be a coup for me - and so did the others - so they did it. That's an example of the kind of people who get to the top in Fashion and stay there but without screwing people over. They're generous. Oh, you can choose to be a total sh1t and you can and often will make it but you'll be living under siege from all the people you dicked over on the way up. maybe you need to tell your friend that if she is, indeed, blanking you.

Anyway, Peter shot Rachel Roberts for the cover. And the working prints were fantastic. Rachel is a natural blonde - as opposed to an aircraft blonde - and has slightly frizzy hair and quite generous lips. With me so far? Good! Now, we had this hair stylist on the job and when I saw him approaching with the straightening irons, I headed him off. "But we usually straighten her hair...", said he. "No, let's have her as she is. She looks great and this is for Australian readers, you know, healthy, outdoors kind of people..." I replied, in my idealistic naivety.

Marion Hume loved the images. However, the publisher vetoed them. I got a call at stupid-o-clock saying that they wouldn't be used after all. As I had to tell Peter Lindbergh, I insisted upon a reason. I got one: the publisher - who happened to the sort of buttockclenching suburban English crypto-fascist who emigrated to places like Rhodesia and Australia back in the 1960s - had looked at them and pointed out that Vogue Australia's readers were white and that putting a black or a "dyed blonde half-caste" on the cover would kill sales.

He'd looked at Rachel Roberts with her full lips and frizzy hair and decided that she must be partly black. I am glad to say that he was sacked unceremoniously not long after this by Jonathan Newhouse who is no racist. I don't know if this episode figured in his sacking but it was by no means an isolated one during my time working for Oz Vogue. Marion Hume, as I said, had a tough time dealing with such attitudes there. But she did a good job, forcing the industry in Australia to take a long, hard look at itself.

Yes, it is indeed ironic...

PK

 

[sassybella]

How interesting.... I often found it amusing at how much control certain people have over a single magazine with decisions sometimes being made for all the wrong reasons.

One of the publishing houses here can never seem to be not nepotistic. They always seem to self promote themselves and they're buddies in the in category of magazines. Shame, because with a little bit of extra research they could unearth some amazing talents.

By the way, what are people's thoughts on Cathy Hoyrn's blog ( http://runway.blogs.nytimes.com/) and her comments about Vogue being a bit non trend setting anymore? I really appreciate her comments about fashion, her thoughts are usually pretty well informed and she obviously knows her stuff.

 

[dulcedeleche]

I agree with whomever posted about starting a blog. Especially the 'street-wear' blogs. The Facehunter, went from just posting pictures to being sent out by men's magazines to take photos and write about different fashion events. Which is great!

And the same here in Austin. We have a 'street style' blogger, but I have to admitt, the people she picks to blog about have atrocious style, in my opinion. Either way, she was interviewed for Nylon magazine, and I believe she's written for a few other publications.

It seems like you don't really have to work for anything anymore, doesn't it? Seems like fame comes quite easily on the internet these days.

 

[rollagasper]

Could someone list some well-respected fashion journalists? Or, what are the best fashion magazines writing wise? I'd like to read lots of articles and learn from them.
By the way, is it just me, or are US Vogue articles really boring? The beauty ones are especially horrible because most of them are about various injections! I like the Hamish Bowles articles though.

 

[peacelover142002]

^Probably most of the highly respected fashion journalists work for newspapers rather than magazines.

Robin Givhan of The Washington Post, who won a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism (the first fashion journalist to do so)
Cathy Horyn of The New York Times
Suzy Menkes of The International Herald Tribune
Hilary Alexander of The Daily Telegraph

 

[prosperk]

Anglophone choice:

Marion Hume
Suzy Menkes (International Herald Tribune)
Cathy Horyn
Hilary Alexander
Godfrey Deeny (Fashion Wire Daily)
Colin MacDowell
Hamish Bowles
Andre Leon Talley
Harriet Quick
Hadley Freeman (The Guardian)
Erin Skrypek
Alicia Drake
Horacio Silva

Francophone:

Laurence Benhaïm
Phillipe Utz
Loic Prejean

There are others but these are some of the better ones...and their copy isn't written or rewritten for them. I would have to agree that the better fashion writing or, at least, more truthful fashion writing is found in newspapers. Fashion magazine writers tend to be limited in what they can say by editorial policies shaped to pander to advertisers although good, sincere stuff occasionally slips through the filters. You would never find the sort of comments made by Suzy Menkes or Hadley Freeman in VOGUE or Bazaar, for instance.

PK

 

[rollagasper]

Thanks for those lists!

 

[Luxx]

^I agree that the best fashion writing is often found in newspapers. Magazines seem to deteriorate into fawning far to often with either their subjects or their critiques. Its not really a critical view if you love everything and/or focus only on the positive. Cathy Horyn's blog has been a source of inspiration for me as well as Robin Givhan's (though it appears she has not updated in awhile) perhaps there can be an little link list of places online where we can all read examples of good fashion journalism. Some of the names mentioned up thread were new to me - especially the French critics. I'd love to see examples of their work.

Thank you for all your commentary prosperk - it really is intriguing. Its good to know that people from different backgrounds can still make it in journalism. I find it especially heartening as I'm from a film and art history background originally

 

[vogue_addiction]

I've only written poetry until now.
Anyone has tips/idea's on how to start practicing writing articles(fashion)?

 

[prosperk]

^I agree that the best fashion writing is often found in newspapers. Magazines seem to deteriorate into fawning far to often with either their subjects or their critiques.

Ooohhh! Don't say that in an interview! Hahahahahahaha! Truth hurts! When at some stage in the distant past, before most of you were born or, at least, were growing t*ts and things, I was Australian Vogue's Man-in-Paris. Fine. I knew fcuk-all about the intricacies of Fashion and cared even less, my respect for the métier as a whole notwithstanding. So you can imagine how I felt when I was manoeuvered into covering the shows in Paris. How to get out of this? Hmmmmmm. Well...as I said earlier, truth hurts. So I wrote like Suzy Menkes on crack. Without Suzy's knowledge base, but expressing my gut reactions to what I saw on the catwalks.

I was never asked to do it again...

Result!

Its not really a critical view if you love everything and/or focus only on the positive.

They don't love everything. They love the presents, the freebies, the kickbacks, the bribes they get from designers and houses for pretending, year after year, that the king's new clothes are lovely. An eight grand handbag - or two - plus a week in a Marrakesh thalasso and a juicy styling contract are just some of the reasons many magazine fashion editors and their bosses never write anything nasty. Even the writers who do try to get truth into the pages will be gagged for the sake of keeping the advertisers on board.

Newspaper writers are less hampered by this but, to be fair to their colleagues in the glossies, newspaper fashion writers are mean because they don't tend to get freebies and backhanders...because newspapers don't really carry that much fashion advertising. Were the same writers working for glossies, most of them would toe the line and smoke the pole.

Thank you for all your commentary prosperk - it really is intriguing. Its good to know that people from different backgrounds can still make it in journalism. I find it especially heartening as I'm from a film and art history background originally

Thank you! If anything I write here debunks bullsh1t and helps people trying to get a foot on the ladder, so to speak, that's good. Nothing wrong with film and art history! You have a lot of the essential elements of 'origins of style' right there!

Rgds,

PK

 

[prosperk]

I've only written poetry until now.
Anyone has tips/idea's on how to start practicing writing articles(fashion)?

Just start! Do it! Pick some topics and try your hand. I guarantee that you will loathe what you have written. What I mean to say is that if you don't, then go no further! You must know this already because you write poetry. Just sit down and bash something out. Write me something short about...ummm...the return of classic beauty. 200 words on that. PM it to me.

PK

 

[sassybella]

They don't love everything. They love the presents, the freebies, the kickbacks, the bribes they get from designers and houses for pretending, year after year, that the king's new clothes are lovely. An eight grand handbag - or two - plus a week in a Marrakesh thalasso and a juicy styling contract are just some of the reasons many magazine fashion editors and their bosses never write anything nasty. Even the writers who do try to get truth into the pages will be gagged for the sake of keeping the advertisers on board.

Newspaper writers are less hampered by this but, to be fair to their colleagues in the glossies, newspaper fashion writers are mean because they don't tend to get freebies and backhanders...because newspapers don't really carry that much fashion advertising. Were the same writers working for glossies, most of them would toe the line and smoke the pole.

Just adding to the above point...

I've found a lot of respectable newspapers have it in people's contracts that they are not to receive gifts and goodies so are less easier bribed into giving gushing reviews and raves. I'm not sure what the policy is on beauty products though. Those items leak out of PR companies and reps like water through a sieve.

I much prefer reading the fashion pages in the Australian newspaper than reading the glossy mags. Though I have no idea where the Friday fashion section has gone...

 

[fashionablylate]

does anyone know of any LA based fashion mags besides 944 (which i already write for)? i'm trying to get into fashion editing or directing but it seems like if u dont live in NYC you're SOL

 

[hon3yb]

Calling All Fashion Journalists!!! Prefferably From Canada!!

OK, so here's the deal!
My name is Brittany. I live in Ajax which is in Ontario, Canada. I am in my last year of highschool and I plan to go to University for journalism. My vision is to apply for an editorial internship ,after I graduate. I want to apply for an internship with a canadian fashion mag. called FASHION. But for now I'm just trying to figure out what I need to do and what programs I need to take in order to become a journalist.

Thanks!

 

[elizaveta]

Im In The Exact Same Position!
Same Age And All

 

[softgrey]

first and very importantly...
i would say learn the importance of research...
starting with searching this site for pre-existing threads on this topic...



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