http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24355938-37275,00.html
Glossy success for a well-dressed bloke
Georgina Safe | September 17, 2008
A WOMAN has occupied the editor's chair at Harper's Bazaar throughout the magazine's 10 years in Australia, most recently Alison Veness-McGourty and Karin Upton-Baker.
It's the same story at arch rival Vogue, where Nancy Pilcher and present editor Kirstie Clements are among those who have slid their Jimmy Choos under the desk at the title that will celebrate its 50th anniversary in Australia next September.
But here I am in the Park Street offices of Harper's Bazaar in Sydney talking fashion with a bloke, albeit a very well dressed one. In his Viktor & Rolf jacket, Hermes tie, Gucci shoes and Bulgari cufflinks, Jamie Huckbody certainly looks the part of a glossy magazine editor, but his appointment as the first male editor of a women's glossy in Australia has not been uncontentious.
"I was quite surprised at the initial shock of the appointment of a man," says Huckbody, who took up his post in June. He addressed his critics in his first editor's letter in the June-July issue of Harper's Bazaar. "Some have been quick to ask, 'What does a man know about women's fashion?"' he told readers. "Well, the names Karl, Giorgio and Viktor and Rolf ... resonate just as much as Donatella, Frida and Stella."
Nonetheless, blogs, newspaper columns and industry gossips dissected Huckbody's arrival with the zeal usually reserved for a new season Prada collection. "I couldn't see the problem," he says. "My education, my training, my expertise and my passion for Bazaar are the only things that matter.
He is certainly well qualified for the job, having worked as Harper's Bazaar's European fashion features director for three years, and with extensive experience in fashion in Australia, the US and Britain. After learning his craft at the Evening Standard in London, he was fashion features editor at Elle magazine, fashion and features writer at The Independent newspaper and fashion features editor at international fashion magazine i-D. He has also contributed to the US and British editions of Vogue, and has interviewed everyone in the business, from Karl Lagerfeld to Donatella Versace.
It's quite the fashion fairtyale journey for a boy who grew up in a small village in Yorkshire, his career inspiration coming from his grandmother. "She is an incredibly stylish woman who in her prime was something of a fashion plate: she wore couture, she was always covered in jewels and she truly understood luxury," Huckbody says.
"I was seduced by her past, how people really made an effort to entertain and hold intelligent conversation, all the social arts. It was a world that was missing in Yorkshire in the early '70s." So Huckbody went to London, where he studied fashion at Central Saint Martins. "It was the era of Cool Britannia," he says. "Kinky Gerlinky nightclub, Vivienne Westwood was in her prime and Alexander McQueen was just emerging. It was incredibly exciting to leave the comfort of a quiet village and to be plunged into this metropolis with all of its excitement and danger. I got to wear outrageous clothes, to go to outrageous parties, and to ask myself, 'Who do I want to be, what do I want to do?"'
He began his career as a stylist as well as a writer, but soon decided to focus on the writing. "I wrote from the heart and from personal experience, as does any writer, and I loved it," he says. Many in the local fashion industry did not take to Huckbody's writing when he arrived in Australia three years ago. His take-no-prisoners approach in his comments on designers won him few friends and many enemies. "One woman attacked me in the front row of a fashion show," he recalls. "She said, 'Who do you think you are, what right do you have to say these things?'
"She took everything so personally, but I wasn't being personal. As a journalist I felt it was my duty to impart the truth."
That objectivity came from eight years of writing on the international collections for The Independent, a newspaper not afraid of getting to grips with the story. Not surprisingly, in his new job Huckbody is more circumspect. "Those were painful lessons for some designers, but sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind," he says. "My new role is to nurture in a much more gentle way."
Given his background in fashion writing rather than beauty and advertising (the usual pair of prerequisites for editing a fashion magazine), many wondered whether Huckbody would have the commercial chops to nurture his cash-cow clients. The September issue of Harper's, the first that could truly be described as Huckbody's, with a whopping 211 pages of advertising and promotional offers, laid such suspicions to rest. It included a handful of advertiser-friendly features, such as a Liz Hurley-Estee Lauder story and a tribute to the Hermes Kelly bag and the Bazaar List product pages. Add to that the fashion spreads and the contents and stockist pages, and there wasn't all that much room left for editorial copy in the 388-page issue.
"The easiest thing in the world is to be creative without any borders," says Huckbody of shifting from straightforward writing to being mindful of advertisers.
"When I started on independent magazines, it helped me to develop a voice, an opinion, and to gain confidence.
"Then you can put that point of view into a commercial frame where you have to work on your relationship with advertisers and clients. Then you can truly create magic, because it's serious business and you can make a real difference. When we focus on a particular product and the stockist says (it has) flown out the door, that for us is a truly wonderful feeling.
The focus for Bazaar under Huckbody is unashamedly high-end. "Luxury has never been more important," proclaims the new prospectus for advertisers. "Who wants mediocrity when you can live the dream?"
Huckbody began his tenure at Harper's by going through the archives from the first edition of the magazine in 1867. "I went through them in the same way a designer does when they become the creative director of a historic brand," he says.
He has brought back a page from the 1930s called The Well Spent Dollar (if you consider buys under $500 well spent), and introduced pages on cars, food and men's fashion, with a baby page to come. "I believe in luxury in the true sense of the word," Huckbody says. "Our readers don't just wear a Chanel suit, then eat crap and drive a bad car."
While wary of succumbing to Australian stereotypes ("As an Englishman it wouldn't be right for me to put models on top of Uluru wearing bikinis and Ugg boots"), Huckbody has a commitment to promoting local talent such as Adelaide-born actor Teresa Palmer, who graces the cover of the October issue, and Sydney designer Kit Willow Podgornik, who is the subject of a feature in it.
"Rather than lifting shoots and stories from overseas, like other fashion magazines here do, we want to celebrate the talented people and dynamic lifestyle we have here in Australia," he says.
He cites Harper's Bazaar awards for writers and photographers as further evidence of his commitment to the local industry. "To be given the opportunity to head up a magazine that I truly believe in, in a country that I love, is a dream come true," Huckbody says.
If I remember right, its a white boomerang with a red 'I Love you' scrawled in loopy letters across it and then it has the signature wax-seal of Viktor and Rolf in a corner of the boomerang in gold. For some reason when I realised that Jamie was chummy with V&R I got all excited! although it does not affect me whatsoever. Possibly because I'm feeling really optimistic about Jamie and V&R is just frickin fantastic in my opinion...
