Jamie Huckbody - Editor

[sweetpop]

Current editor-in-chief Alison Veness-McGourty announed that Jamie Huckobyd would be replacing her in this month's most recent Australian Harper's Bazaar:

Harper's Bazaar Australia May 2008" [/I]]
With a multimillion-dollar price tag on her pretty head, Naomi Watts could be excused for being quite the Hollywood diva. Hugh Stewart photographed Naomi for us and helped her to fleetingly put to one side her terrible sadness as she struggles with such loss this year.
I went along to the studio to watch magic being made, partly too, as this is my last issue as editor of Harper's BAZAAR. So thankyou Naomi for being incredibly brave and inspiring, and thanks to all the other great actresses who have graced the covers during my time in the editor's chair.
Since I pulled on my Prada bag (see March 2008 editor's letter) and the rest- yes I have an embarassingly vast wardrobe- I can seriously say it has been a fashion-fabulous journey. The funniest time have been with the exceptional staff who have made me laugh till I cry, which has to be one of the greatest luxuries in life. There have been moments, like the one when we sent a journalist to La to test-drive a Bentley and discovered after she arrived that she couldn't drive... and then spent the trip being chauffeured everywhere. God bless Bentley. Then there was an overzealous Imelda Marcos-type fashion editor who sliced up a very expensive pair of Balenciaga boots in order to get the model's feet ("lubed") into them, because well, she just had to photograph Balenciaga, as you do. Take a deep breath.
It's been an honour being editor and bringing you the best of the best, hopefully lots of good stories and more than a little bit of fantasy.It has to be fun right? It has also been a privilege to have followed Karin Upton Baker's footsteps, been mentored by publisher Pat Ingram and supported by so many talented writers, photographers, hair and makeup artists, PRs and advertisers.
The next editor will be Jamie Huckbody (Yes, a man! For fashionista, read fashiomista), who is already working hard on the next issue. You will already know his work as he has been fashion features director with us for the past three years, interviewing Georgio Armani, Christopher Bailey, Miuccia Prada, Donatella Versace and pretty much every important fashion player.
I have worked with him for more than 14 years and he is quite simply set to take you most beautifully and extremely stylishly into the next decade of our history. Thankyou for being part of my BAZAAR and for all your support and feedback. My next move: I'm off to launch a new magazine. See you on the newsstands.

And this is the announcement ACP Magazines published:

JAMIE HUCKBODY APPOINTED EDITOR OF HARPER’S BAZAAR

International Fashion Editor Jamie Huckbody has been appointed as Editor of Harper's BAZAAR.

Jamie Huckbody has been Harper's BAZAAR's European fashion features director for three years (based in both Sydney and London) and replaces Alison Veness-McGourty who has been promoted to launch Editor-In-Chief of Grazia.

Huckbody's extensive experience in the fashion magazine industry spans Australia, the US and UK. Previously he has held the positions of Fashion Features Editor at ELLE, Editor of ELLE COLLECTIONS, Fashion News and Features Writer at UK newspaper The Independent, and Fashion and Fashion Features Editor at international fashion magazine i-D. He has also contributed to both the American and British editions of Vogue.

"Jamie's calibre of international experience brings a fantastic perspective to Harper's BAZAAR. We are delighted to have him back on board in Australia," said Pat Ingram, Group Publisher, Women's Lifestyle titles, ACP Magazines.

Huckbody said: "I am thrilled to be appointed as the new Editor of Harper's BAZAAR. It is the number one fashion title in Australia with a rich heritage and I look forward to being part of that in this exciting new capacity."

Huckbody will take up the role in April 2008.

Ends.


About Harpers BAZAAR

Style that inspires, beauty that makes news. Design direction that advances, and imagery that builds brands. Australia´s most powerful consumers rely on BAZAAR as their lifestyle sourcebook. BAZAAR reports on the runways, beauty´s best, health issues, design innovators and celebrity lives to deliver award-winning editorial with inspirational appeal. BAZAAR´s consumer authority attracts the prestigious brand marketers and passionate readers who are the current and future influences of modern style.

Harper´s BAZAAR. Knowing what you want before you want it.

What do you think about Jamie being new editor-in-chief? I interested to see the magazine edited through a man's perspective, no doubt it will be pretty interesting and fresh (hopefully!) ...

 

[Cicciolina]

I'm interesting to see what it's going to look like. I noticed Jamie Huckbody did one of the small features in March US Vogue, talking about Australian fashion.

 

[Miss Dalloway]

^^WOW great observation, i was just yesterday reading that section.

It will sure be interesting to see where he takes HB.

 

[voguelover94]

congratz to him. I hope he makes us aussies proud! Not that Alison wasn't good.

 

[sweetpop]

Just a little something that was on the Australia Harper's Bazaar website

The new editor


May 13, 2008:
So you’re probably wondering how the new editor is coping, having moved to the other end of the world, left family and friends behind in Blighty, set up a new home and started a new job. The answer: fine and dandy. This is, after all, everything I have dreamed of since the age of 16. My love affair with Harper's BAZAAR started when I saw Liz Tilberis’s very first edition in the US. I was on my way to Spain for a family holiday when I laid eyes on that legendary front cover with Linda Evangelista wearing Donna Karan’s caviar-beaded top and holding up a dropped letter A from the masthead. I no longer wanted to go to Ibiza to try and blag my way into the infamous Pacha nightclub. Over-bronzed aristocrats and spaced out ravers suddenly looked dull compared with glamorous supermodels wearing the most exciting fashion. Nineteen years later and I have finally arrived. And let me tell you, it feels good to be home.

 

[Cicciolina]

It'll be interesting to see his work from other publications like UK Elle

His new issue is out tomorrow, Monday, in Australia

 

[voguelover94]

I'm fairly excited! I hope it's thick

 

[voguelover94]

I just bought it. Blahh it was $9.95 because it came with a crappy mascara.
but the issue isn't bad. Katrina Isreal is writing most of the features. But the editorials are baddd

 

[Cicciolina]

New blog entry

All you need is...

May 20, 2008:

Donna Summer felt it; The Supremes stopped everything in the name of it, and for The Beatles, it was all you needed. I am, of course, talking about LOVE. The four-letter word is so potent that I dedicated my first issue of Harper’s BAZAAR to the subject. There’s our cover girl Kate Bosworth who loves Australia so much that she flew in from LA so that we could shoot her in Bondi. There’s Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, whose love of French President Nicolas Sarkozy has just possibly changed France’s fortunes. There’s the 25 moments at RAFW that team BAZAAR loved; romantic fashion; the story of Yves Saint Laurent’s Les Loves, and Viktor & Rolf’s good-luck gesture: an “I LOVE YOU” emblazoned boomerang. Crazy but cool.

From http://www.harpersbazaar.com.au/Blogs

 

[sweetpop]

There's a picture of the Viktor and Rolf boomerang that they sent Jamie on the editor's page in the magazine- ohymgosh! it has got to be the coolest non-traditional aboriginal boomerang ever!!! 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...
Anyway, thanks for the posting the new blog entry Cicciolina!

 

[voguelover94]

Yes! i was like OH I SO WANT ONE!

 

[sweetpop]

yeah that boomerang was pretty spiffy, but then I guess it wouldn't be as special if everyone could get one...poo.

I was flicking through the Harpers Australia with Kate Bosworth on the front cover, and I've just realised that they've printed the names of the models for each editorial at the end of the editorial! It's the first time I've seen the models have their names printed (or maybe I'm just slow) and, in a way, been acknowledged as being more than just a mannequin. Its up to Jamie what gets printed...right? If so, it seems to me that he's taken into consideration that his readers might want to know the names of the models in the editorials- at least, I for one will always like to know, given my limited knowledge (well, at least here) on models. I think its great!

 

[Cicciolina]

Good observation sweetpop! I just grabbed a random old issue (March 08 with Nicole Kidman/Abbie Cornish/Emma Booth) and checked an editorial and the models aren't credited

Jamie Huckbody from what I've heard seems to be very much into high, avant garde fashion, so it'll be interesting to see how his new Harper's turns out. I've noticed some other small changes but nothing major yet, I guess it'll take a couple of months or so. I thought Alison Veness McGourty did a great job so hopefully he'll be able to do just as well.

 

[Cicciolina]

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.

 

[voguelover94]

"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.

praise that line!

 

[Cicciolina]

Funnily enough was flicking through an old Harper's Bazaar (2004? 2006?) and came across one of those Contributors pages which included him. I've typed up his section

Jamie Huckbody
As a former stylist and now as Fashion Features Director for the London magazines 10 and 10+, Fashion Features Editor at i-D magazine, Contributing Fashion Writer for The Independent and self-claimed "guest star at Harper's BAZAAR", Huckbody is a very busy man.... (then it lists the pieces he wrote for that particular issue).

About Huckbody:
- The last movie he watched was Shirley Valentine - because he "needed a good laugh".
- His all-time favourite writeres are Truman Capote (Answered Prayers is "pure genius"), John Steinbeck and Jeanette Winterson
- Is currently working on reports for London, Milan and Paris shows (see next month's issue for the whole story)

 

[voguelover94]

Jamie's adding more more graphics and more interesting fonts. which is good

 

[songbirdsel]

ive heard only good things about him so lets hope!

 

[Cicciolina]

What have you heard songbirdsel? Personally I still find the magazine very... messy, it's just so much stuff going on, I don't feel it's very coherent yet.

 

[Cicciolina]

Jamie Huckbody has left Harper's Bazaar Australia.

He will be replaced by Edwina McCann, fashion features director of Grazia. She has previously worked for Australian Vogue, The Australian and Harper's Bazaar (in another capacity, obviously).