The Business of Magazines

[tigerrouge]

From Media Guardian:

Cheryl Cole helps lift Vogue sales

Stephen Brook
Thursday 12 February 2009

Cheryl Cole's appearance on the cover of the February issue of Vogue pushed the glossy to a record circulation for the month, but the magazine is facing a tough year with the number of advertising pages falling 20% in the current quarter.

The February issue of the magazine, which included an exclusive interview with the Girls Aloud singer and The X Factor judge talking about her marital difficulties with her husband, Ashley, pushed Vogue's circulation to 240,000 – its best-ever February figure.

Vogue's latest average monthly circulation figure is 221,090 for the first half of 2008. New Audit Bureau of Circulations figures for the second half of last year will be released today and are expected to show a slight sales drop.

However, the number of pages of advertising have fallen 20% for the February, March and April issues, the Vogue publisher, Stephen Quinn, said.

Quinn added that the media coverage of Cole's Vogue front cover from quality and tabloid newspapers boosted sales, but that the magazine would not attempt the same every issue.

"I would be worried if the magazine was relentlessly putting a celebrity like that on the cover," he said. "The girl has clearly got it, whatever it is, I was going to say The X Factor, I know that she is on that programme although I never watch it."

Quinn added that the media downturn had hit British Vogue later than the American edition and some of the European versions of the title. For the March issue the magazine has raised its price from £3.80 to £3.90.

Last year the UK edition of the magazine contained a record 2,236 pages of advertising. This compared with 2,000 in 1990, falling to 1,500 in the 1991 recession before recovering to 2,000 again in 2001.

The biggest-selling issue of the past 10 years was the December 1999 millennium issue, which had a silver mirror cover. The UK newsstand sale was 142,399 and overall circulation was 241,001.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/feb/12/cheryl-cole-helps-lift-vogue-sales

 

[tigerrouge]

And not strictly fashion, but a culturally iconic magazine - Media Guardian again:

Le Monde sells influential cinema magazine Cahiers du Cinéma

Ben Dowell
Tuesday 10 February 2009

French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, which helped launch the 1950s new wave, has been sold by Le Monde to international arts publishing house Phaidon Press.

Phaidon said 30 interested parties had inquired about buying the magazine, which was founded in 1951 and helped spawn the French new wave cinema through writers including Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut and Claude Chabrol, who went on to become critically lauded film-makers.

The magazine, published in French with an English version available online, and sells around 25,000 copies a month. Cahiers du Cinéma also has a book division that publishes a range of cinema titles.

In 2001, the magazine's 50th anniversary, the New York Times wrote that "in the history of motion pictures, Cahiers du Cinéma stands unrivalled as the most influential magazine".

Le Monde, which has owned Cahiers du Cinéma since 1998, announced last April that it intended to dispose of the title as part of a plan to reorganise and cut costs.

Phaidon was founded in Vienna in 1923 before moving to London after the occupation of the city by the Nazis in the 1930s. In 1990 current owner Richard Schlagman bought the company, which has bases worldwide with two central offices in London and New York.

Schlagman said of the purchase of Cahiers du Cinéma: "I am delighted to have taken custody of this venerable title. The magazine has had an extraordinary history, although in recent years it has struggled.

"I am determined to once again make Cahiers du Cinéma play a central role in the world of filmmaking and indispensable to its participants and aspirants. I am positive that Cahiers can once again become relevant to our times and speak to a new generation of cinephiles."

The Le Monde director general, David Guiraud, added: "We are convinced that Phaidon will continue to develop Cahiers du Cinéma and all its current activities, in full respect of the history and the values of this mythical revue."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/feb/10/le-monde-sells-cahiers-du-cinema

 

[vavavinny]

About the whole Carine launching a younger edition of Vogue Paris, I think it's a good idea. So many teens and younger people scour VP every month and constantly look to Carine and Emmanuelle for inspiration. The only thing is, the clothes in the magazine are meant to be bought by 30 to 40-something career women who actually can afford them. And we all forget how old Emmanuelle and Carine actually are. A younger version of VP would offer an alternative and (hopefully) focus on clothes that are accessible to people of younger ages. I am very excited for this!

 

[tigerrouge]

More from Media Guardian and the ABCs of UK magazines:

Fashion mag Red hits sales high

Jemima Kiss
Thursday 12 February 2009

Hachette Filipacchi's fashion and beauty magazine Red had a solid second half of 2008, fighting back against a slump earlier in the year to push circulation to a record level of just over 225,000.

Red's average monthly circulation was 225,380 between July and December 2008, up just 0.5% year on year but defying the downward trend of most of the sector, according to the latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, published today.

Overall, circulation of women's lifestyle and fashion titles saw growth of 7.4% – but that figure is inflated by the retail website ASOS.com, whose monthly glossy is free and designed to drive readers to spend money online. ASOS.com magazine's distribution was up 20.4% year on year to 447,480 a month on average.

The picture for the more traditional lifestyle and fashion titles is less rosy. Glamour, Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping all saw a fall in circulation year on year.

Seven of the top 10 women's lifestyle and fashion titles saw a fall in circulation in the six months from July 2008. Glamour remains the most popular magazine in the sector but saw circulation fall by 0.4% year on year to 547,607.

Cosmopolitan – which overtook its National Magazines stablemate Good Housekeeping in the first half of 2008 to become the second biggest title in the sector – retained its position in the six months to the end of the year, despite a 2.1% year-on-year drop, with circulation falling by more than 10,000 to 450,836.

Good Housekeeping was down 8.3% year on year to 425,407 copies – a drop of more than 38,000.

IPC title Marie Claire and Bauer Media's Yours magazine also fell. Marie Claire saw a 4.8% decline compared with the second half of 2007 to 314,259 copies; while Yours was down 6.1% or more than 20,000 copies year on year, slipping from sixth to ninth in the women's lifestyle and fashion pecking order and dropping to 307,064 copies.

The second half of 2008 was also a bad period for Hachette's Elle, which dropped below 200,000 copies for the first time, recording a year-on-year fall of 4.1% – or 8,000 copies – to 195,114.

However, IPC's Woman & Home continued its strong performance with a 5.1% year-on-year rise to 353,160, while sister title Look reached 314,329 after a 2.9% circulation increase.

Condé Nast's flagship title Vogue, which is raising its cover price next month to £3.90, maintained steady circulation at 220,386 for the second half of 2008; while Bauer's Grazia hovered at 227,156. Both magazines recorded almost exactly the same average monthly circulation as in the last six months of 2007.

There was bad news for NatMags' Prima and Company, which fell 2.1% and 3.9% year on year, respectively, to 284,093 and 240,334 copies. Bauer's More was down a more dramatic 9.4%, or almost 20,000 copies, year on year, to 181,260.

Smaller-circulation titles in the sector posted modest increases, including Hachette's Psychologies, NatMags' Harpers Bazaar and Condé Nast's Vanity Fair.

Psychologies gained a few hundred copies to reach 140,438; Harpers rose 0.4% year on year to 109,468; and Vanity Fair added 1.8% or almost 2,000 copies, to reach 101,169.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/feb/12/magazine-abcs-fashion-mag-red

 

[tigerrouge]

And in general...

Sales slump hits homes magazines

Stephen Brook
Thursday 12 February 2009

The credit crunch is hitting magazines about homes and decor hard, with circulation falling for 19 out of 24 titles in the sector in the second half of 2008.

Despite the economic recession that began to bite towards the end of last year, the overall number of magazines sold or distributed in the UK continues to grow, up 3.7% year on year, to reach a total net average of 81,227,572 in the final six months of 2008.

However, the rise in consumer magazine circulation came mainly due to the growth of free magazines and customer titles, as the men's and home interest sectors experienced heavy losses, with Maxim, Zoo, Nuts, Loaded, 25 Beautiful Homes and BBC Good Homes among the hardest hit, according to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations report for July to December 2008.

High-end titles including society monthly Tatler and Horse & Hound suffered due to the credit crunch. Horse & Hound was down 6.4% year on year to 61,445 in the second half of 2008, while Tatler, which has just replaced the London Evening Standard-bound editor Geordie Greig with Catherine Ostler, was down 4.9% to 86,107. Country Life, the IPC weekly showcase of Britain's poshest houses, fell year on year 2.8% to 39,674.

In the women's weeklies market, starved of big wedding buy-ups and increased to rely on regular Kerry Katona covers, Richard Desmond's celebrity weekly title OK! plunged 25.6% year on year to 508,504, a fall from the first half of 2008 of 16.2%.

In the men's sector, there was further evidence that the era of the lads' mag is drawing to a close with Maxim falling 41.4% year on year to 45,951 in the second half of 2008. Loaded was also down, as were the weeklies Nuts and Zoo. NatMag Rodale's Men's Health overtook Nuts to become the second biggest-selling men's magazine, behind FHM. Bauer Media's FHM, despite a more upmarket revamp, was down 13.5% year on year but only 2.8% on the first half of 2008 to 272,545.

Men's Heath sold an average of 250,094 copies a month, up 4.1% year on year, while IPC's Nuts fell 13.3% year on year to 234,034, and Bauer's Zoo was down 18.7% to 161,331.

Despite the doom and gloom, the magazine sector is still growing, with a total average net circulation and distribution of 81,227,572 across the second half of 2008, a 3.7% increase year on year and up from 76,238,115 in the second half of 2003.

Full version of article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/feb/12/magazine-abcs-sales-slump-hits

 

[MissMagAddict]

Thanks for posting tigerrouge

source | wwd

LOVE, ACTUALLY: Never let it be said Katie Grand is one to perch on fashion’s fence. The editor of Love, Condé Nast UK’s latest title, has decided her affair with the perfect woman is over — so she’s picked the rotund gay crooner Beth Ditto as cover girl for the launch issue.

“She says the wrong things. She looks the wrong way. Isn’t it confounding and amazing to have an iconic figure…who doesn’t have a 25-inch waist?” asks Grand in her first editor’s letter. “She is happy with who she is and the way she is.”

Inside, there’s a whole new brand of celebrity confessional. Not for Ditto’s coy admission that she “battles” with her weight or was “unpopular” in high school — instead, we get: “I really, really want Lindsay Lohan to be gay,” says Ditto. “We haven’t had the hot young **** couple before. We don’t really have the hot young boy couple either.”

This isn’t the first time Grand has worked with Ditto. In the fall 2007 issue of Pop, Grand tapped Steven Klein to shoot the singer wearing specially made outfits by designers including Giles Deacon, Louis Vuitton and Gareth Pugh.

Love, which costs 5 pounds — or a little over $7 at current exchange — hits newsstands on Feb. 19. The launch issue also includes a Bruce Weber shoot with Iggy Pop; an interview with Anjelica Houston, who is photographed by her stepson Terry Richardson, and a chat with the British model and actress Kelly Brook.

Advertisers include Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Cartier, Burberry, Gucci, Tom Ford, Marc Jacobs, Miu Miu, Dior Jewlery, Stella McCartney and Dolce & Gabbana. There are 116 ad pages in the 336-page launch issue.

Like with Grand’s former venture Pop, which Emap plans to relaunch later this year, there’s a retail component. For one week, starting on Valentine’s Day, there will be a Love In at Dover Street Market in London. The store will sell limited edition clothing and accessories from brands including Burberry, Chloé, Dolce & Gabbana, Gap, House of Holland, Katie Hillier, Loewe, Luella, Prada and Stella McCartney.

Stella McCartney, Prada and Burberry have all designed underwear; Chloé has come out with customized handbags and belts; while Luella and Henry Holland have each created T-shirts. There will be Loewe nappa leather cushions featuring “I Loewe you” embossed in gold, and silk dresses from Victoria Beckham.

 

[MissMagAddict]

source | wwd

ON SECOND THOUGHT: Condé Nast has pulled the plug on its upcoming launch of Glamour Japan as it seeks to cut costs and wade through the financial crisis. “The only reason for this is the economy,” said Kazuhiro Saito, president of Condé Nast Japan, who added the concept and mock-ups for the new title were “perfect.” About 10 employees, including editor in chief Sayumi Gunji, are affected by the decision, but some will likely be placed elsewhere within the company. Glamour Japan would have entered the country’s crowded field of mass-market fashion magazines including AneCan, Oggi, Sweet and Glamorous.

 

[tigerrouge]

Former UK Marie Claire editor talks about the good times, and makes an admission of never having been a fashionista: (Life & Style, guardian.co.uk)

My catwalk years are over

The fashion shows start this weekend but for the first time in a decade Marie O'Riordan - until recently the editor of Marie Claire - won't be going. She explains why she's happy to wave goodbye to the front row.

You're either a fashion person or you're not. If you can recall the precise angle at which the coolest kid at your school wore her blazer collar, then you're definitely style-focused. The real fashion nut is likely to have been the too-cool-for-school kid, the one who sent shockwaves through the playground one morning when she arrived with her blazer sleeves rolled up. And after more than a decade of editing glossy magazines, this is perhaps my main insight: most of fashion is an attempt to recreate, to recapture and prolong the intensely giddy and sensual, absurdly exciting success of a school look. Indeed, I would say that most of us seem to have our fashion imaginations arrested at 14 or 15. We are, like drug addicts, forever trying to recreate that early rush. (That also might help to explain why models always have been, and always will be, over-thin: adolescent-gawky thin.)

Although I've sat in the front row of perhaps 1,000 fashion shows, I have never been a true fashion devotee. Growing up in Dublin, in the 70s, Topshop was the only outlet for fashion-hungry teens and that was long before Jane Shepherdson sprinkled her fairy dust on it. Any spare money I had was spent on books or magazines, not clothes. Which is why I became a writer, then a subeditor, then an editor - but never a fashion insider. An arch Sunday Times cartoon was published during my first season of the shows, shortly after I joined Elle in 1996, all tight curls and boxy jackets. The caption attached to my caricature summed me up nicely: "More high-street than high-fashion; it looks lovely, dear, but how does it wash?"

Twelve years later I had become a well-established figure on the circuit. I'll happily admit to being sucked in by the razzmatazz and glamour. I found myself using words like "thrilling" and "breathtaking" to describe some shows and started talking about "pieces" rather than clothes. As if I had been born to it. But the repetition of the circuit started to grate, and the economic climate meant trimming the travel budgets. You couldn't argue with the sense but it sure spoilt the fun. In the end, although I knew I would miss the camaraderie, the dressing up, the hysteria, I also knew I would happily go to my grave without ever eating another canape.

My last Paris fashion week, in October, began with Elise, a junior fashion assistant, coming out on Eurostar for the day to sift the invitation mountain: armfuls of exquisite stiffies, wristbands, invitations as bags, T-shirts, toys. When the magazine's senior players, fashion director Jayne Pickering and her style lieutenants, arrived at our hotel off the Place Vendôme, they scrutinised the sparkling residue for scheduling and seating issues. Like Kremlinologists, they assessed our place in fashion hierarchy. Calls were made to PRs: "Where is AA3? Is that definitely front row?" If an editor-in-chief ever accidentally accepted a second-row ticket, she would be fashion roadkill. Ultimately, the golden tickets of the day were presented to me with my breakfast tray each morning.

My last show was Chanel: we shouldered through the crowd, ignored the queue, scarcely nodded at the clipboard people - and were in. Straight to the front row, where there might have been a trinket on our seats - a cushion, a flask, a bottle of the new fragrance. Finally, the plastic keeping the catwalk pristine was peeled off. Music pumped, the adrenaline started. And the first gorgeous, floating model appeared. There followed 12 minutes of exhilarating, exquisite spectacle - like nothing else on earth. At the end, following Anna Wintour of US Vogue (always the first to leave) in the crush, no one talked. But in the car Jayne finally asked: "So, Marie, what did you think?" After all these years, a proper fashionista like Jayne was seeking my opinion. Perhaps she just wanted a naive viewpoint but I couldn't hide my pleasure at her inquiry.

As an editor, you learn to blend in with the fashion crowd. You wear a lot of black and don't even try to compete with the fashion legends; perish the thought that you would try to stand out. The front row - or the British section of it, anyway - is, in fact, a rather forgiving, congenial place. We've been through some times together. Ghastly dinners hosted by deranged fashion magnates; insane dashes in New York snowstorms to wait in dangerous, disused warehouses for bonkers displays of unwearable clothes. There is much camaraderie. Just don't try to show off. As a magazine editor you're there only as a mark of respect to the designer or house who spend perhaps hundreds of thousands of pounds in advertising revenue in the magazine.

So there you are in the front row, but the true fashion elite actually sit in rows two and three. These will be the magazine's fashion directors, editors and assistants, who have ultimate knowledge and recall, laser-precision eyes and effortless, overarching style. They live and breathe their metier. They don't eat, of course. But they will take pity on a neophyte editor - also they need to suck up to you - and will take you to insanely expensive boutiques and with a nod to the assistant magic you up a 50% discount. And they'll give you advice such as: "Find a silhouette that suits you. And two or three designers. And stick to them." As part of the fashion circus, you stick together, on your twice-yearly, four-city tour: New York, London, Paris, Milan.

You eat in different "hot" restaurants every night. You spend up to 16 hours a day zooming between up to 10 shows a day, seeing perhaps half a dozen different PRs for coffee and lunch in between and then attending a fashion dinner: always somewhere spectacular, almost always outside town, with astonishing food, usually very late.

It's exhilarating, and also exhausting. My enthusiasm had lately waned. The repetition, the circularity, the intensity. It's a month-long industry show and bloody hard work. By the end most people are sick, or at least sick of one another. Tempers and hems fray. It's tough keeping up and then, one day, you just don't want to.

I have stepped off the carousel and, one season in, have no regrets. While I may come to miss it all, my timing feels good. In these cash-strapped, ecologically conscious times, should it really take a four-city, eight-week tour and tens of thousands of pounds to decide to roll up your blazer sleeves and leave your shirt sleeves buttoned down?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/feb/13/fashion

 

[tigerrouge]

A piece about Katie Grand, from The Times (thetimes.co.uk

Stylist and editor Katie Grand: a style maverick

A perfectly honed instinct for cool – and friendship with fashion’s edgiest stars – have turned Katie Grand into a celebrity in her own right. Now the style maverick turned queen bee launches a new magazine, Love.

It is a crisp December day in London. On Bond Street, London, the lights and window displays twinkle as they do every Christmas, even as the financial news grows ever more dire. Around the corner in Flash, a pop-up restaurant, a similarly glittering crowd have gathered to celebrate the birth of a high-end, biannual style magazine called Love, including designers Giles Deacon, Alexander McQueen and Gareth Pugh, models Agyness Deyn and Jade Parfitt and singer Beth Ditto.

It might not seem like the ideal time to bring an upscale new magazine into the world, but the odd couple whose love child Love is seem content enough. Mr Glossy himself, Nicholas Coleridge, boss of the Condé Nast publishing group, is oozing charm, a proconsular figure in pinstripes. And alongside him, Katie Grand – global tastemaker, super-stylist and now editor-in-chief of Love, Condé Nast’s latest title – is wearing killer heels and a look of complete contentment as she greets old friends and larks around with Deyn and Ditto, Love’s first cover star.

Ditto might not be everyone’s idea of a pin-up, but neither is Katie Grand most people’s idea of a fashion maven. Even today, looking glam, she’s more Hoxton-cool than Devil Wears Prada. Her hair can be frizzy, she has a gap between her front teeth (which is actually rather winning, but most people in fashion would have had it “fixed” at the earliest opportunity), and she speaks with a slight Brummie accent. And while Cockney easily trumps the plummy tones of Condé Nast’s Voguettes in the cool stakes, Brummie just isn’t the accepted sound of fashion.

Grand, in her late thirties, is no household name, but she is arguably one of the most influential people in fashion today. She is the stylist who has finessed the collections of Miuccia Prada and Marc Jacobs for the runway. She’s also the alchemist who, at Dazed & Confused, Another Magazine and Pop, combined a quirky take on fashion with an eye for photography and the willing participation of best mates such as Kate Moss to produce some truly extraordinary style magazines.

Love, aka What Katie Did Next, looks set to be Grand’s crowning triumph, with a launch issue stacked with lucrative advertising even as much of the industry struggles in the face of the crunch. As one of her oldest friends, the photographer Liz Collins, explains, when Grand, Deacon and the gang gathered for the after-party drinks at J. Sheekey, “There was this feeling that somehow we’ve all made it.”

Collins took several of the portraits of Grand which accompany this feature, the first when both were schoolgirls in Birmingham. “Lizzie’s mum hated me,” Grand recalls, “because she knew my dad [an academic] was liberal, so she knew Liz was up to no good at my place.” The latest shot, on our cover, was taken last month alongside model Jourdan Dunn, also currently at the top of her game – but who, when Grand first met her a few years ago in New York, “was just starting out, this gorgeous little thing, and we made her walk in these heels and she couldn’t, she did that Bambi thing. But now watch her walk!”

You could say the same about Grand, often seen striding around in the highest of heels. “I love shoes,” she says, admitting to an Imelda-beating “1,500 pairs – I’ve got a room full,” in the home in Tufnell Park she shares with Steve Mackey, the Pulp drummer. Famously, Grand also keeps all the clothes she has ever owned, a kind of archive of personal style, if you like, stored in alphabetical order: A for Alaïa, B for Balenciaga, and so on. And an archive of magazines, including the copies of Vogue and The Face she was reading as a teenager.

At that point, Grand’s drive was already obvious; where it would take her, less so. “I’m hopeless at art,” she admits. “But that was the field I wanted to get into. So I went to pottery classes and sculpture classes and made myself good at those things.” Then she started reading glossies and style mags, “wanting to be cool”. Needless to say, she planned to become editor of Vogue – and gamely wrote to its incumbent, Liz Tilberis, for advice. Tilberis told Grand to go to college, which she did, but given the scale and urgency of Grand’s ambitions, it’s no surprise that Central St Martins College of Art and Design proved to be a disappointment.

While studying there, though, she did meet the photographer Rankin, which would prove to be far more crucial than any degree. He had already enjoyed some professional success, but, to his irritation, had been rebuffed by The Face. And so in 1991, along with Grand and journalist Jefferson Hack, Rankin launched Dazed & Confused, a style mag that would define the era as effectively as i-D and The Face had defined theirs.

“Jefferson said to me the other day, ‘We were the biggest load of f***ing blaggers!’” says Grand. “We were complete idiots, but completely fearless – so bloody arrogant, but naive about how the industry works. Because I’d never worked for anyone, no one ever said this is how you get money.” Some readers would simply be utterly confused by Dazed. But The Face was impressed, co-opting Grand as fashion director – and winning her over with the prospect of her own magazine, Pop.

Launched in 2000, Pop was the last word in edgy. Grand’s final issue of the magazine, still on newsstands today, includes fashion shoots using a monkey and a sow as models. But the magazine proved a magnet for fashion advertisers, many of whom were also turning to Grand for input about their own collections, as Grand’s freelance career morphed from styling new bands (“Someone always tried to nick something!”) to the kind of consulting work she does today, for which she might earn as much as £3,000 or £4,000 a day.

Pop, as the name suggests, showed a keen understanding of how to tap into popular culture, with cover stars such as J-Lo, Kylie and Kate Moss. Once the chosen cover star had been shot by one of Pop’s stable of photographers (Mert & Marcus, perhaps, or Alice Hawkins), then Grand would turn to her friend, ex-Heat editor Mark Frith, to tweak the “cover lines” for maximum impact on Britain’s super-competitive newsstands.

Not that a style magazine like Pop was seeking to emulate Heat’s circulation – then around the 500,000 mark. Instead, what Grand has always tried to do is attract a small but powerful global constituency of fashion insiders. So successful was she that Nicholas Coleridge came calling. He tried to buy Pop from its publisher, Bauer. The company played hard to get, but lost out in one of last year’s most spectacular media coups, when Grand and her whole team defected en masse to Condé Nast. That’s an eloquent expression of loyalty, even if Grand concedes that she can be a “demanding” or “difficult” boss. (“The new era for Pop”, meanwhile, begins autumn 2009, says Bauer.)

As for Coleridge, Grand describes him as “probably the most charming man I’ve ever met”. For his part, Coleridge says he “got to know Katie from seeing her at the shows, liked her,” and recalls that, “Whenever I looked at Pop, I thought it seemed like we should be publishing it.” Powers of diplomacy have been deployed all round in welcoming this latest recruit into the Condé Nast fold. Grand isn’t moving into Vogue House, working instead out of Love’s new offices in Clerkenwell, and one senses that Coleridge and Grand both recognised that a semi-detached relationship would be key to making the marriage between Condé Nast (established, corporate and posh) and Grand (self-taught, maverick and edgy) work well. Perhaps this little bit of distance also suits the Vogue editors on both sides of the Atlantic.

Grand now enjoys the kind of marketing expertise and infrastructure she could only have dreamt about at Dazed. And access to photographers such as David Sims, whom she would effectively have been “blocked” from using, as Coleridge puts it, while outside the Condé Nast fold. (Rumours abound that US Vogue’s Anna Wintour has sought to ring-fence some of her own key contributors; but neither Grand – “I’m just keeping my head down!” she jokes – nor Coleridge will admit there’s any substance to them.)

So what does Love look like – and why do we need another style mag in times like these? Grand’s editor’s letter refers to the “reality check” we’re all going through, not least the fashion industry, and clearly that has had an impact on the aesthetic of Love, even if all the ads have been sold. “This time last year I said I really wanted to do an issue with no retouching. I don’t want to see a redrawn image of a woman – I’m just not interested. It feels too glossy, too shallow…”

So while Pop was famously “super-glossy”, Love will be different – witness the cover star, Beth Ditto. There are moving portraits of Anjelica Huston taken by Terry Richardson, whose father, photographer Bob Richardson, had an affair with Huston in the early Seventies, and profiles of Iggy Pop and designer Pam Hogg.

There’s also a photo shoot of Kate Moss by Mert & Marcus, hitherto famous for their retouched, high-octane fashion photography. “Only this,” explains Grand, “was shot at a Madonna concert in Paris, when we all went dressed as Madonna, with no hair and make-up, no retouching, just really raw.” Grand by name then, but not by nature, and while she might now have a Condé Nast budget, for Katie, running a magazine is still about doing cool things with your mates.

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/fashion/article5693897.ece

 

[j'adorekapusta]

Crisis, what crisis? Condé Nast says the future's glossy

The Vogue group's boss, Nicholas Coleridge, tells James Robinson why he's convinced two new titles will succeed

James Robinson
The Observer, Sunday 15 February 2009

'Reckless, aren't we?" jokes Nicholas Coleridge, Condé Nast's managing director, as he sits behind his desk at Vogue House, the company's pristine London HQ.

The upmarket magazine group, home to Vanity Fair and GQ, will launch two new titles in the coming months; Love, a painfully trendy biannual fashion title edited by Pop founder Katie Grand, and a UK edition of its technology monthly Wired. Both will appear as magazine circulation is falling, advertising revenues are in decline and the economic downturn is accelerating.

Coleridge, 52 next month, seems to view an advertising recession, and catastrophic circulation collapses elsewhere in the magazine sector, with a sort of detached insouciance, but that is all part of his charm. Everything about his relaxed demeanour, including the hole in the arm of his expensive v-neck jumper, seems designed to convey the impression that running a magazine company is a rather straightforward affair.

Well-connected and gloriously indiscreet, Coleridge gleefully recalls the day Geordie Greig, the Tatler editor who left to do the same job at the London Evening Standard this month after being wooed by the paper's new Russian owner, arrived at work on the day he resigned in a fur hat. "I wasn't sure if it was cold or it was his Russian look," he laughs.

Later, he reveals that the last time the Tatler editorship was up for grabs, he interviewed a wealthy banker's wife who claimed she was ideal for the role because she owned a wardrobe full of designer clothes and was accustomed to dealing with domestic staff.

Coleridge enjoys a good gossip but is also phenomenally hard-working, say colleagues, even rising early on Saturdays to work on his latest book. His next, Deadly Sins, chronicles a battle between a ruthless PR billionaire and a self-made man who buys the country mansion next door. Although Coleridge, educated at Eton and Cambridge, may move in those circles, it's difficult to imagine him sharing any of the traits of his power-hungry anti-hero, but his bluff exterior must disguise a steely streak. He has transformed Condé Nast's British empire since his appointment as editorial director in 1989, increasing its stable of titles from five to 22, and also heads the company's ambitious international expansion plans.

Love and Wired are simply the latest of many new ventures, but will be launched in the teeth of a recession. So was British GQ in the early 1990s, Coleridge points out, but the difference now is that the scale and length of the downturn is likely to be of a different order.

Condé Nast has so far remained relatively unscathed. The latest ABC circulation figures revealed its British titles, which include Glamour and Easy Living, held their own while sales of many rivals collapsed. The company has even refused to drop its premium advertising rates, Coleridge says. "We had one bad month in October [2008], when the banks were falling to pieces." Circulation fell by 15%, he reveals, but "stabilised" in the following months. "We've had five amazingly strong years in a row," he says. "The strongest that I can remember in glossy magazine publishing."

However, as the credit crunch bites, and the luxury brands and fashion houses that bankroll Condé Nast's titles begin to suffer, the good times could be about to end. The number of adverts in Vogue has fallen by 20% over the past few months (and advertising volume is down 7% across all group titles), demonstrating that even a company with a 70% share of the luxury-magazine advertising market is not immune. Coleridge admits he has ordered staff to take "slightly fewer taxis", and is "not in too much of a hurry to replace people if they leave", but that may not be enough.

So is it really the right time to unveil Love, a magazine with an underground feel, full of cutting-edge fashion, which will depend for its survival on the same brands and luxury goods groups that advertise in so many of Condé Nast's established titles? "So far the signs are good," Coleridge insists.

The first issue, which will hit newsstands on Thursday priced at £5, weighs in at 360 pages and "every major fashion brand has bought into it". They like "the combination of Katie Grand and Condé Nast, and the sheer audacity of launching a fashion magazine in 2009". As do the fashion industry's elite, including Agyness Deyn and Kate Moss, who appear in the debut edition. But Love represents an editorial risk as well as a commercial gamble.

The majority of Condé Nast's titles are relentlessly aspirational, and its offices in London's Hanover Square are filled with immaculate women in designer clothes. Love is as likely to look to the street as it is to the catwalks for inspiration, and Grand is an idiosyncratic figure with a huge following within the industry, but champions a less orthodox approach to fashion. "We've hired her for her edginess," Coleridge says, denying she will be asked to compromise.

Condé Nast tried to buy Pop from its previous owner, Bauer; negotiations dragged on so long that it poached Grand, and many of her staff, instead.

They will be housed in Clerkenwell which, for some, symbolises the cultural chasm between Condé Nast's other fashion title and its latest venture. Vogue is a juggernaut and its September issue, featuring Cheryl Cole, was the best-selling issue for nine years, but some wonder if Love will steal some of its thunder. Not so, says Coleridge: "Vogue is a very big magazine, with a readership of about 1.5m and an enormous turnover of over £25m. Love is a different beast. The whole point of magazines is picking off and catering for particular niches."

Wired, to be launched in April, will be aimed at another audience not currently well-served by Condé Nast, but it will be the second time a British version of the title has appeared. Guardian Media Group, the Observer's parent company, launched a joint venture with its American founders in 1995, but it failed to take off.

"Why will it work in 2009 when it didn't in 1995? Because only about one in 10 people had a mobile phone then," Coleridge says. "Only one in 20 had a internet connection." He insists there will be enough original content to fill the title, partly because big products such as the Apple iPhone launch at different times in different continents.

Coleridge is relentlessly optimistic. "Circulations are so far ahead of where they were 20 years ago," he says. "When I first became an editor [of Harpers & Queen] in 1986, consumer magazines were selling 26.9m copies a month. Twenty years later this had grown to 37.6m. Many readers buy five or six titles a month. The past two years have been softer, with a 1.9% decline across the industry, but we still sell more magazines per head than any other developed country. Quality monthlies are in better shape than most other parts of the media - stronger than newspapers, stronger than TV."

The hope is that when consumers start to buy fewer titles, as seems likely, Condé Nast's will be the last they drop. But even if they do, Coleridge is unlikely to be ruffled - and even less likely to show it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/feb/15/conde-nast-publishing

 

[MissMagAddict]

source | wwd

REALITY TRULY SETS IN: Joanna Coles, editor in chief of Marie Claire, may be a familiar face to the fashion world, but she’ll soon be judged by a whole different collective set when the magazine’s reality show, “Running in Heels,” premieres on The Style Network on March 1. Fashion director Nina GarciaLucy Kaylin, senior fashion editor Zanna Roberts and senior shopping editor Zoe Glassner — were followed for nearly five months by four camera crews. “I did get used to the cameras very quickly,” said Coles. “We tried to make it as realistic as possible.” But it is a show, and she admitted some scenes were reshot if the camera didn’t pick something up the first time around. And Coles now gets to watch the rest of her staff on camera and hear their personal conversations. “I found out that there are a few divas here,” she admitted surprisingly — mainly because what would a fashion magazine be without a few divas? That list probably included three new interns who try to one-up one another to catch the eye of Coles and other editors. But for the interns, a harsh reality sets in at the end of the eight episodes: all three go home without a job. Coles maintained the program was never meant to be a competition. “In this economy? No. We weren’t raffling off a job.” became a household name with “Project Runway,” and she’ll appear in “Running in Heels,” even as she’s continued to film for the much-delayed new season of “Project Runway.” In that show, Garcia will be joined by 20 Marie Claire staffers for the final runway show on Friday, as sources now say that, contrary to rumors — and after much legal action — the new season will air later this year. As for “Running in Heels,” Coles and Garcia — along with staffers including executive editor

 

[MissMagAddict]

source | wwd

SWITCHING STRATEGIES: BlackBook is scaling back its print ambitions and hoping digital guides and mobile applications will do the trick. The magazine, which went from bimonthly to 10 times a year in 2008, is now reducing frequency to eight times a year. Last May, both editor in chief Steve Garbarino and publisher Joe Landry took off in the same week, and the trickle of departures (voluntary and involuntary) since then has been fairly constant. More recently, BlackBook Media Corp. chief executive officer Ari HorowitzGrayle Howlett his walking papers several weeks ago, though a spokesman for BlackBook called it a “mutual decision, representative of a decision to focus on the digital space.” That includes the mobile guides the spokesman said were already “the primary revenue stream” for the company. The spokesman said that rather than hire a new publisher, Horowitz will take over the sales side, with advertising director Brett Wagner serving as associate publisher.

 

[MissMagAddict]

source | wwd

LOTS WRONG, BUT WHAT’S RIGHT?: Panels on the future of media are a standby in this fast-changing age, but lately news seems so bleak that even filling them out can be a challenge, as Gene Stone, moderator of a panel hosted by Out Professionals on Thursday, found when he sought a book industry representative. “No one would even agree to sit in the audience,” he said.

So who did turn out? Former Martha Stewart chief executive and current Gilt Groupe chief executive officer Susan Lyne, who noted that when media is no longer scarce, allowing advertisers to bid up prices for limited space, all previous business models are destabilized; author James B. Stewart, who found some hope in the fact that Manolo Blahnik reportedly makes money on his blog through click-through e-commerce, and television and film producer Mary Murphy, among others.

Plenty of people could point to what went wrong. Lyne said the magazine business had erred in drastically lowering subscription prices to rely heavily on the advertising model, tying its fortunes to advertisers rather than readers. Nathan Richards, the ceo of ContentNext Media, said networks had failed to gain traction on their Web sites, which he said draw fewer readers than newspapers online. And while all the panelists said the prized wall between editorial and advertising was important to journalistic integrity, it had also left many journalists ignorant of how their own business worked (or didn’t.)

Outgoing Wall Street Journal media and technology editor Rich Turner (who recently moved to a gig at WSJ.com) pointed out that it’s more fun now to be a consumer of media than ever, but in terms of news and information, someone was going to have to pay to gather it, and predicted The New York Times would have to make some tough choices. “I watched what happened with the Bancrofts,” he said, referring to the family that controlled the Journal’s parent, Dow Jones, before it was purchased by News Corp. “The discussions about preserving the integrity lasted about 30 seconds.” (He acknowledged the Sulzberger family was a different case, in part because it’s involved in day-to-day operations.)

But when it came to actually predicting the future — say, 10 years hence — few wanted to theorize. “You can’t plan your business for 10 years — it’s more like 18 months,” said Richards. “You have to be ready for uncertainty.”

 

[nyc_art_style]

Why is it that where ever Nina Garcia goes a reality tv show follows?

 

[MissMagAddict]

source | nymag via classicalbang

We caught up with French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld just before the William Rast show. The conversation went like this:

NYM: You're starting a French Teen Vogue?

CR: No.

NYM: No? Really?

CR: It’s a false rumor.

NYM: Where did it come from?

CR: [Shrug] Not from me.

 

[nyc_art_style]

no!

what cruel person would make up a rumor like that?

 

[tigerrouge]

Or maybe she is working on something, but really can't be bothered talking about it. Or doesn't want to, until things are much more certain.

 

[tigerrouge]

The latest from Media Guardian:

Grazia launches in China - with Victoria Beckham on front cover

Stephen Brook
Tuesday 17 February

The Grazia phenomenon has hit China, with the glossy fashion magazine launching a fortnightly edition in the country and featuring Victoria Beckham on its first cover.

Grazia's Chinese edition is a joint venture between Italian publishing house Mondadori and SEEC Media Group Limited, a Hong Kong-listed group that created a 50-50 joint-venture with the Italian company in 2007.

The new title, which will be the country's first glossy fortnightly, will include original material in Chinese and feature a glossy cover with matte paper stock. The magazine costs 10 Chinese yuan, about £1.

Grazia is available in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong and other major Chinese cities, with ads for western firms Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Lancôme, Tod's, Trussardi and Guerlain in its first edition.

"China is one of the most dynamic foreign markets in the world in which fashion, and 'made in Italy' brands in particular, continue to be widely appreciated," said Roberto Briglia, the general manager of the Mondadori Group's magazine division.

"In this context, a highly innovative magazine with high quality editorial content such as Grazia provides a guarantee for advertisers who want, also in China, to reach a target that is particularly enthusiastic about the world of celebrity, of style, fashion, shopping and luxury, with a vehicle that has a strong appeal," Briglia added.

Sun Zhe, the editor-in-chief of Grazia in China, said that the version would have the "sophistication of a monthly and the speed of a weekly". "A new [female consumer] is emerging in China. She needs to know about the latest trends and news, also regarding celebrities, but she wants easy, bite-sized pieces – and she doesn't want to wait a whole month," he added.

SEEC Media has launched local Chinese versions of 15 magazines since it was formed in 1992, including Sports Illustrated, Better Homes and Gardens, Time Out and PC Magazine. Mondadori, with 40 titles, is Italy's biggest publisher of consumer magazines, launching Grazia in 1938. In 2006 it bought Emap France, France's third largest magazine publisher.

The company entered into an arrangement with Emap, now Bauer Media, to launch Grazia in Britain in 2005. The UK version has a stable circulation of 227,156 each week. Grazia also publishes local editions in countries including Russia, the Netherlands and Australia.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/feb/17/grazia-launches-china-victoria-beckham

 

[donner]

Phaidon?

Strange about Phaidon Press buying Cahiers since Phaidon is not a magazine publisher. Great list of art including photography, design, architecture, etc.

 

[liberty33r1b]

Vanity Fair Germany Closing

from wwd.com:

BERLIN — Almost two years to the day of being launched, Vanity Fair Germany is closing. The current issue, which hits newsstands Thursday, is to be the last.



does anyone know why they are closing? unfortunately I do not have a wwd subscription to read the whole article.....maybe someone else could post it here? Thanks.