[30daysoffashionandbeauty.co.uk]
guardian.co.ukThe Observer, Sunday 3 February 2008
The queen of Harper's storms the fashion bazaar
Lucy Yeomans changed her magazine's name and led it from the county to the catwalk. Now it's face to face with Vogue, writes James Robinson
She is the most blow-dried woman in magazines, according to competitors, a self-confessed clothes-horse who is always immaculately turned out. .
When Lucy Yeomans, the effusive editor-in-chief of the UK edition of Harper's Bazaar, takes her place in the front row at fashion shows in Milan or London, she turns almost as many heads as the models on the catwalk. But away from the glamour of parties and premieres, the 37-year-old has been fighting a gruelling battle, attempting to make the title fit for a 21st century readership.
In the decadent Twenties and Thirties, the society magazine documented the lives, loves and pastimes of the country's idle rich for the amusement of the upper classes, and those who dreamed of joining them. But now Harper's Bazaar has been remade for another era, shedding its old name, Harpers & Queen, along with its reputation as a handbook for Sloanes, and emerging, butterfly-like, as a glossy fashion mag aimed at modern working women.
The reinvigorated title has been showered with critical acclaim, and Yeomans walked off with armfuls of industry awards last year, including the coveted consumer magazine of the year gong handed out by the Periodical Publishers Association, and the British Society of Magazine Editors' editor of the year title.
Industry recognition will be bolstered by evidence of continued commercial success - the only measure that really counts - later this month. Harper's Bazaar is expected to be one of the big winners when ABC figures for the second half of 2007 are released, recording a tenth consecutive circulation rise with figures of around 110,000 - its highest ever figure - in a tough market.
In 2000, when a 29-year-old Yeomans inherited a title that covered polo tournaments and charity balls, vying with its upmarket rival Tatler for the best shots of debutantes, it was selling fewer than 85,000 copies.
Competition now comes in the form of fashion bible Vogue, Tatler's iconic sister title, and the tussle between the two has captured the imagination of the gossipy magazine world.
'I read Vogue when I was younger,' says Yeomans, perched on a sofa in her office just off Carnaby Street. 'People buy it out of habit and its hard for Harper's Bazaar to take some of that ground, but at the same time people like to have a choice. It felt a bit like a David and Goliath battle at times but now I think we have carved out our own niche.'
With her long, flowing hair, black designer clothes ,and red-soled Christian Louboutin high heels, Yeomans looks like an identikit glossy magazine editor, but the she insists she 'was never really a magazine person' in her youth, barring a pre-pubescent infatuation with Bunty
Raised near Loch Lomond by English parents, she read art history at St Andrews University, where the fickle world of fashion was of less interest than the inclement climate. 'It was so cold. It was just about keeping warm.'
It was only when she left Scotland for France that the fashion bug began to bite. 'I went to Paris and fell in love with French Vogue and French Glamour and Elle,' she says. Her first big article, about an unknown actor called Hugh Grant, appeared in the Daily Telegraph in 1994, much to her father's delight. 'He thought his useless daughter had run off to Paris and would come to nothing. After that I think he thought things weren't going to be so bad after all.'
And so it has proved. Yeomans worked at French magazine Boulevard, then Tatler, and then Vogue - although only for half a day; she was offered the Harper's editorship during her lunch break. Once in situ she set about altering the tone of the title immediately, but her bosses at National Magazines, part of the Hearst media empire, were more cautious and the changes were incremental.
It had acquired the name Harpers and Queen in the UK after merging with Queen, a title founded in 1862, and briefly encapsulating the excitement of swinging London in the 1960s. Yeomans had to fight hard to jettison it, finally succeeding in 2006. 'I thought I'd get lots of letters, but I only got one, from an elderly vicar in the shires saying it was an outrage'.
The name change brought the British edition in line with its US counterpart, which has long been a powerful player in the fashion world Stateside, but even then the 'Harper's' part of the title dominated the cover in the UK. It was only in September last year that Natmags sanctioned a bolder move: the 'Bazaar' part of the title is now writ large, with 'Harper's' rendered above it in smaller type, aping the US edition.
To sugar the pill, every copy of the September issue was studded with Swarovski crystals in a promotional push that made newspapers, which habitually give away DVDs, seem positively parsimonious.
'It was like rebranding Marathon as Snickers,' Yeomans says, reaching for an unlikely analogy to explain the metamorphosis. The parallels aren't immediately apparent, but as a lesson in how to reposition an established brand without alienating existing customers, it is a valuable one.
Harper's Bazaar publishes in 28 countries, and an Indian edition will be launched later this year, taking it into direct competition again with Vogue. In the UK, Vogue's powerful editor Alexandra Shulman is unlikely to be shaking in her Jimmy Choos just yet - her title still outsells Harper's Bazaar by two to one - but Yeomans has attracted new readers and their average age has fallen from around 45 to 35. More importantly, the magazine has also won new advertisers, including high-street giants such as Hennes and Topshop, and profits doubled last year. Yeomans spent last Christmas overseeing the magazine's biggest ever issue, with 420 pages - nearly as large as Vogue, whose March issue has 430.
She claims Harper's Bazaar has a wider scope these days, encompassing the arts, politics and business. Even the latest cover star, Brazilian supermodel Gisele, was chosen because she is as savvy as she is sexy, Yeomans claims. 'I love the way she has the business sense to ask to be paid in euros rather than pounds.'
Yeomans has become a regular on the London scene and appears in newspaper diary columns with increasing regularity, although her reputation as a party girl was forged when she was younger, she says. 'That's what happens when you're 29 and you get a big job, because you're still partying and having a great time.
Asked to name the most glamorous event she has attended, she struggles to find an answer. 'I suppose I should say one of our parties,' she muses, 'although Elton John's birthday wasn't bad. You might be at a Led Zeppelin concert one minute and watching Doris Lessing pick up the Nobel Prize for literature the next. That's what makes the magazine such fun to edit and, I hope, to read.'
Nowadays the celebrity-studded bashes are just part of the job, she insists, and she is as likely to show up at the ICA or the Hay-on-Wye book festival as the Baftas; the hobnobbing with Louboutin, Blur's Alex James or film star Val Kilmer is simply the best way to generate material. 'They are useful for getting ideas', she says. 'If people are excited about an idea, they'll do it. I'm a great believer in just going up to people and asking them, then pinning them down the next day.'
Even the most cosseted star might be swayed by Yeomans's power of persuasion. You sense that she will be buttonholing them for some time yet.
