The Business of Magazines

[MissMagAddict]

GILLES’ NEW GIG: After shooting exclusively for Elle for more than 20 years, Gilles Bensimon has landed at Redbook, where he shot Faith Hill for his first post-Elle cover. The May issue actually features four consecutive covers, where Hill poses as herself, and three of her favorite iconic blondes: Grace Kelly, Twiggy and Brigitte Bardot. A series of vintage-inspired ads from Lily of France face each inside cover. A spokeswoman added that Bensimon has already shot another upcoming cover and the magazine expects to do more with him in the future

source | wwd.com

 

[Flashbang]

Rachel Bilson: InStyle’s New Fashion Editor!

Rachel Bilson has scored herself a monthly column as a fashion editor in InStyle.
The Q&A is called “Ask Rachel” and stars with the May 2009 issue (with Jennifer Garner on the cover).
“I am not planning on quitting my day job to be a full-time fashion editor, although I am really enjoying it and it intrigues me very much,” Rachel tells WWD. “I’m actually flattered more than anything that people want to ask me questions about style. I am honored to do it.”
She adds, “I can talk about fashion all day long, and I am an avid InStyle reader so the relationship seemed perfect! This column is the best homework assignment ever!”
You can send in your own questions at InStyle.com/AskRachel.

justjared

 

[MissMagAddict]

source | wwd

THEY DO REMEMBER ADS: It’s only April, but magazine publishers have already begun selling for those highly coveted September issues, and Condé Nast Publications is hoping some new research on the subject will give them a leg up. Together with MRI Starch and Starcom USA, Condé Nast studied September fashion magazines by interviewing nearly 9,000 consumers, with approximately 1,600 ads tested. A few of the questions they wanted answered: How do ads perform in an issue so thick with advertising? Do nonendemic ads suffer from the abundance of endemic advertising? How do consumers feel, in general, about September fashion issues?

The survey found that 23 percent of respondents only pay attention to fashion advertisements in September issues (instead of editorial coverage) and 49 percent believe a magazine such as Vogue specially selected the ads that ran in that issue. And, 35 percent said they look for fall fragrance suggestions from that issue. Despite having twice as many ads as a regular issue, 55 percent of those surveyed recalled all endemic ads and 51 percent of nonendemic ads. Meanwhile, 57 percent recalled ads in regular issues, and 52 percent recalled nonendemic ads.

Moreover, research suggested that those who pick up a September fashion issue, such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar or Elle, are more affluent; the average household income for that issue is $76,556, versus $62,878 in other months. And the study found that upscale shoppers — those who shop at high-end department stores and designer boutiques — have the highest ad recall and are most likely to take action, compared with those who shop at mass or midlevel stores.

As expected, research showed that multipage ads perform better than single-page units, with 82 percent recalling ad spreads of six pages and 50 percent recalling one-page ads. “We have known all of this anecdotally for years, that our readers see these issues as highly anticipated events, but we wanted to see if research supported it,” said Lou Cona, senior vice president of Condé Nast Media Group. Condé Nast has exclusive rights to the data for six months.

 

[mikel]

^interesting. Thanks for posting.

 

[tigerrouge]

When potential advertisers need to hear hard figures to give them a reason to spend, "sponsoring" this sort of "research" is a classic move.

It gives your salespeople something pseudo-factual to sell - with 'exclusive rights to the data for six months' - with the most convenient "fact" being that people remember multi-page ads a lot better than one-pagers, therefore advertisers had better buy in bulk.

Because if there are fewer advertisers out there, the magazine needs each of them to buy more pages than before, to make up the shortfall. The "findings" match the need.

Though I hope it goes some way towards working, a thin September issue would be a sad sight.

 

[tigerrouge]

Media Guardian reports:

Condé Nast's Portfolio magazine closes

Stephen Brook
Monday 27 April 2009

Condé Nast's $100m (£68m) US business magazine, Portfolio, closed today after launching two years ago to great fanfare.

The glossy magazine failed to gain enough readers and advertisers to compete against Forbes, BusinessWeek and Fortune in the crowded magazine market and had trouble attracting advertisers. The magazine had a circulation of 415,000, not enough to compete with its rivals.

"Our editor-in-chief, Joanne Lipman, just broke the news to staff, saying the decision had been made 'because of financial reasons at Advance', Condé Nast's parent company," the magazine's Mixed Media blog said today.

The Silicon Alley Insider blog added that Portfolio "was hatched for the boom and didn't change directions quickly enough after the bust".

Lipman was hired from the Wall Street Journal to launch the magazine, said to have an initial budget of $100m.

In October last year the magazine went from publishing monthly to 10 issues a year and its website portfolio.com cut staff.

The April issue had the dubious distinction of being Conde Nast's thinnest monthly ever, at just 106 pages - and only 21 of advertising - and Lipman's decision to put Sarah Palin on the cover six months after her failed vice-presidential campaign was criticised.
Condé Nast has also closed Domino and Golf for Women magazines in the US and shut Vanity Fair in Germany.

However, in Britain the company recently launched Wired UK.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/apr/27/conde-nast-close-portfolio

 

[donner]

Not surprising; if "Portfolio" had been the best business magazine ever published it would still be a very hard sell in a collapsing economy with 100% of your potential advertisers cutting budgets--those that aren't going out of business, that is.

 

[BerlinRocks]

from FStop in Mixte thread :

BIG NEWS>>>>>>>>>>>

Mixte just folded. It was announced today . June is last issue !! Sad as it was a cool magazine with a lot of different content , great fashion and has a long history in France . Carine Roitfeld , Emmanuel Alt all worked for it.

Economy really starting to take its toll........

 

[mikel]

That is terrible news!

 

[tarsha]

onde Nast Russia informs on changes in the company

Due to changes in the structure of CondéNet CondéNet International and Regional Manager Russia Russian CondéNet Anton Nikitin is leaving the company in June 2009. Publishing House Thanks Anton Nikitin for his contribution to the development of the Internet project, and wishes him success. From June 1 CondéNet Russia headed by Anita Gigovskaya.
Anita Gigovskaya worked in the Russian Condé Nast in 1998, practically since the founding of the company. It started with the post of assistant editorial Vogue and made a brilliant career, becoming in 2003 Director of Marketing.
In 2006, Anita left Condé Nast and became group publisher of magazines ELLE in Hachette Filipacchi Shkulev, hence back to Condé Nast.
The President of the publishing house of Condé Nast Karina Dobrotvirska confident that «Anita Gigovskaya bring CondéNet its enormous marketing, advertising and magazine experience, deep market knowledge and systematic work style».
Anita Gigovskaya was born in 1974. In 1996 graduated from Faculty of Arts and Applied Sciences, Moscow State Linguistic University in 1997 - master's political science faculty of Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences at the Academy of National Economy of Russia and the University of Manchester (United Kingdom). From 1998 to 2006 worked at the publishing house Condé Nast, where she was assistant editor of Vogue, editor Vogue, deputy chief editor of Architectural Digest, Director of Marketing PH participated in the strategic formulation and preparation of launching the magazine Glamour. C 2006 to 2009 Anita Gigovskaya served as group publisher of magazines ELLE ID Hachette Filipacchi Shkulev.
Condé Nast Publications in Russia started in 1998 to launch the magazine VOGUE. In 2001, the Conde Nast publishing house decided to submit to Russian readers another famous brand - men's magazine GQ. Exit GQ men's release was preceded by M Vogue as an annex to the magazine Vogue. In 2002, in light of the first issue of architectural publications - AD (Architectural Digest), and in 2004 - the magazine Glamour.
In September 2007, it was running yet another edition - Men's fashion magazine GQ Style, which is published twice a year. In September 2008 the publishing house launched the magazine Tatler.

glossy.ru

 

[MissMagAddict]

$100m is just criminal... I can only imagine the consequences of that for some of the other magazines. They can't possibly make up that kind of money in this economy.

 

[Miss Dalloway]

No surprise here, i actually expected more copes sold:

STILL STRONG: Michelle Obama’s newsstand appeal translated into above average sales for Vogue this spring. The March issue, where the First Lady wore clothes she handpicked from J. Crew and Jason Wu, sold 560,000 copies on the newsstand, just edging out their most recent best-selling issue on the newsstand in September 2008, which hit 559,000 copies. The March results trounced last year’s newsstand sales: Drew Barrymore’s cover turn sold 397,000 copies. The First Lady has been featured on the covers of Ladies Home Journal, More, Ebony, People and Us Weekly, however sales for those titles have varied. (According to Advertising Age, sales for the September issue of Ladies Home Journal with both her and husbandPresident Barack Obamaon the cover were 21 percent smaller than the year prior.) Obama is also featured on the April issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, along with Oprah Winfrey, and the May issue of Essence with her mother, Marian Robinson.

WWD

 

[tigerrouge]

I wonder, because her and her husband have been on so many covers in the US, has it caused a degree of Obama-fatigue on the newsstand, with diminishing returns.

Good to hear that it did well though, I liked that cover. Of course, the question now is - given that US Vogue are trying to shake things up, who will they assess as being a big seller for September?

 

[Miss Dalloway]

I think that September issues always consistantly perform relatively well, no matter who is on the cover, although it can help to have a best selling face, however like we have seen last year with Keira's god awful cover, it can do well either way. Even if a year before that, the June issue with Knightley was the worst seller of 2007, which i find fascinating.

 

[mariemaud]

from FStop in Mixte thread :

This is very sad news...
Their always awesome castings and creative editorials by promising photographers will be highly missed

 

[tigerrouge]

The New York Post ponders the state of the Conde Nast empire:

Nasty News Ahead

Keith J Kelly
April 29, 2009

THE demise of Portfolio, and its $120 million in cumulative losses, has not halted the sense of unease inside the $2 billion Condé Nast empire.

One insider said that many staffers are nervously watching for what might come in July, when Vogue, Vanity Fair, GQ, Glamour and others that have largely escaped the 5 percent reduction in staff will be shipping their September issues.

September is to magazines what Black Friday is to retailing its the time when a magazine can make up for whatever shortfalls it's had all year and coast profitably to the finish line. "A bad September will mean they will be forced to take the ax to their huge editorial staffs," said a former Condé Nast executive.

According to Media Industry Newsletter, Vogue through May is down 31 percent in ad pages, while Glamour is off nearly 22 percent. Earlier this decade, both titles battled it out to become Condé Nast's most profitable magazine. Meanwhile Vanity Fair is down 37 percent, fueled in part by a dizzying 52 percent drop in ad pages in the magazine's May issue.

"Conde Nast is operating the way General Motors did a few years ago," said a former executive. "They are bloated and out of touch with today's market."

With the pain likely to continue, speculation is rampant over what Condé Nast titles may go the way of Portfolio. Titles that are on the new endangered species list include Architectural Digest, down 49 percent through May; Allure, down 34 percent; and Wired, down almost 50 percent.

"[Condé Nast Chairman] Si Newhouse has ruled by his gut for many a year but he has always been an ad pages up or ad pages down kind of guy," said the former executive. "They are the only company that has yet to make a penny off of digital -- and they've been at it for over a decade, as long or longer than anybody else."

Added an insider, "Something has happened here that has set the whole place on fire. I don't know if it is just a scared Newhouse family reacting to the economy or if something else has happened. But something seems to be afoot."

Forbes estimated that the Newhouse family fortune, which is headed by Si and his brother Donald, has declined by 50 percent to $4 billion from $8 billion over the past year. The family's assets are controlled through parent company Advance Publications.

A big problem for Advance is the dozen or so daily newspapers it owns, including the Staten Island Advance, the Star-Ledger in Newark and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. All are wheezing, and as one executive noted glumly, many of the big retail advertisers in the papers have disappeared entirely as a result of the recession.

Meanwhile, Condé Nast finds itself in a similar position as it sorts out whether its advertisers have pulled back for good.

Last year Condé Nast CEO Charles Townsend urged publishers not to cancel vacation plans during the summer because there was not much that could be done.

This year, the human resources department toyed with the idea of Furlough Fridays -- without pay -- throughout the summer. The idea was shelved. But it hasn't stopped the speculation about what Condé Nast might do with summer hours, when magazines let most staffers take a half day with pay on Fridays.

Then again

Former Portfolio Senior Editor Bob Roe can now claim he's been dinged by Condé Nast twice.

The first time happened last year when he was forced out as a senior editor at Portfolio after famously feuding with then-editor Joanne Lipman. Then this week it happened again when Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson on Monday offered Roe the mag's No. 2 editor's job and then rescinded the offer yesterday.

According to sources, the speculation is that Condé Nast's human-resources department wants to fill that slot with one of the 41 displaced editorial workers from Portfolio, thus saving the company from paying severance to that individual.

When we called Roe to confirm the story yesterday, we learned that he intended to turn down the Wired offer anyway because it would have meant relocating to San Francisco.

Roe's wife Nancy Haas is about to start a new job at Bloomberg in New York.

Silver lining

Speaking of severance, it turns out that there's a silver lining for those who were cut loose from Portfolio this week. According to sources, the send-off package is more lucrative than insiders were expecting.

They can thank the federal Worker Readjustment and Training Act, which requires employees be given three months' notice if a company with 50 or more employees is shutting down.

Portfolio had 85 employees, and all were told that their last date of employment was July 27 -- exactly three months after the company decided to close the magazine. As a result, all pay and benefits remain in effect until then.

It is only after that date that Condé Nast will dole out its own non-mandated severance of two weeks' pay for every year of work. The magazine only published for two years, but a handful of workers were there for a year before the official launch.

The news seemed to hold down some of the internal grumbling. Still, one soon-to-be severed employee said, "Don't give Condé Nast too many kudos -- they are only doing what they are required to do under federal and state law."

Shrinkage

More signs of the screws being tightened at Wenner Media: Men's Journal, which owner Jann Wenner recently or dered to shrink from its oversized format into a standard magazine size -- is also cutting back two more issues and going to a frequency of 10 times a year.

"For Men's Journal, going to a 10-issue frequency was a good way to control costs with as little disruption as possible to our readers and advertisers," Publisher Francis Farrell said.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/04292009/business/nasty_news_ahead_166694.htm

 

[tigerrouge]

And another long look at Conde Nast, this time at the UK side, as Management Today interviews Nicholas Coleridge.

Why Conde Nast will remain in Vogue

29 Apr 2009

At 11, Nicholas Coleridge thought a journalistic career would be an enjoyable doss; 40 years on, the Old Etonian is running Conde Nast UK with increased circulation, headcount and profits. He believes his beautiful products will beat the web any day. Matthew Gwyther reports.

Optimists are thin on the ground in the world of media at the moment. The industry is enduring a battering the like of which it hasn't seen for decades. Worse, it is being storm-tossed by two separate weather systems. Firstly, there's the cyclical monsoon of economic downturn, experienced by everyone in business: advertising budgets get washed away very early in the cost-reduction process. Secondly, and more alarmingly, there is the possibly irreversible climate change caused by the rise of the internet.

The fact that the web offers so much for free threatens to drown the conventional business models of media companies who sell information and advertising space to the world. Print media appear especially vulnerable: newspapers, local and national, are being blown over in increasing numbers. Even those with rock-solid roots are concerned. There is, for example, a rumour that Paul Dacre - the estimable editor-in-chief of Associated Newspapers, owner of the Daily Mail - may be willing to close down his organisation's websites until a rival works out a method properly to 'monetise' and make them pay for their own lunch.

Stormy weather may be out there in Hanover Square and beyond, but inside Vogue House Nicholas Coleridge still has a smile on his face. It's not the done thing to be down-in-the-mouth at Conde Nast, of which he is UK managing director. His firm must both exude and feed upon confidence and positivity in order to create the virtuous cycle of consumption. Described by the New York Times as an empire built on 'gloss, style, consumption, fluff and substance', the publisher of Vogue, GQ, Tatler, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair is a $15bn privately owned US business, controlled by the low-profile Newhouse family. With 104 magazines published in 22 countries, Conde Nast is the leading producer of glossies on the planet and recession really isn't its style.

Whereas Coleridge's boss, the 80-year-old Si Newhouse, famously arrives to work in Times Square in chinos and an old sweatshirt, the 52-year-old Old Etonian prefers a crisp white shirt with his monogrammed cufflinks. While most others in magazine publishing are hunkered down in the storm shelter, Coleridge has launched two magazines in 2009 - Love, a painfully trendy fashion title; and a UK version of Wired, the ubergeeks' bible. Both were well received. Not content with this, Coleridge has just published his fifth novel, Deadly Sins. ('Take a bite, it's delicious,' encourages Jeffrey Archer on the cover.) His organisation may promote the values of the sybarite, but Coleridge has a Puritan lifestyle - the novels are written between 6.30 and 10.30 on weekend mornings at his Worcestershire country house.

So what of the web - will it spell the demise of all that is glossy in publishing? 'For the last 10 years, I've been attending conferences where someone is giving a Cassandra-like speech about the demise of the magazine business,' he says. 'But 2008 gave us the strongest set of circulation figures ever. We enjoyed seven amazing years of growth, each better than the one before. We simply aren't showing signs of going the same way as newspapers.'

Coleridge started at Conde Nast, aged 22, as an associate editor on Tatler under the fearsome Tina Brown. 'She was a ball-breaker,' he has said. 'When I joined, I was either number 13 or 14 on staff. Three years later, I was her deputy, because everyone else was axed. It was like being a member of Idi Amin's cabinet. Each day, another body was found floating.'

When he became MD in 1991, the London headcount stood at 240 souls. It now numbers 620, so although Conde Nast doesn't open its books to the public, we can assume profits have grown accordingly over the period. It is said that the company enjoys a margin of 20%. Coleridge admits that they've experienced a 15% downturn in advertising revenue so far in 2009 and doesn't see the market improving until the second half of 2010, but maintains that his magazine sales are holding up nicely. And he thinks he knows why. 'The greatest USP of magazines is the beautiful quality of the printed product. The net simply cannot replicate this, especially in the fashion area. Glossies are a different tactile and attitude treat. They give you a parallel world - it's part real life but part artistry and fantasy and art and culture.'

Even at the best of times, it's true, as TS Eliot noted, that 'human kind cannot bear very much reality'. It's also true - and this was definitely the case in the glamorous world of movies in the depressed 1930s - that during miserable recession a little escapism never goes amiss. That moment, albeit brief, when you can be taken away from the surroundings of credit-crunched reality and transported to another place filled with the gorgeousness of Chanel's latest little frock or Hussein Chalayan's black knits.

Creating that gorgeousness is a costly business. The likes of Patrick Demarchelier, Annie Leibovitz and Kate Moss don't come cheap. Nor does printing Love on super-thick paper that weighs in at 115 grammes per square metre. (Take it from someone in the trade, darling: 115 grammes is - like Love cover girl Beth Ditto - heavy.) Conde Nast taxi and flowers bills would make most management accountants turn pale in their Next suits, although, traditionally, Coleridge has run a tighter ship than the Devil Wears Prada setup in New York, where executives enjoy clothing allowances in the high five figures.

Neither is it just fashion coverage that gobbles the dollars. Conde Nast's US business magazine Portfolio - launched in 2007 - was closed down at the end of Aprll, victim of dramatically shrinking ad revenues. Nicknamed 'Fortpolio' by the US media bitcherati, it was famous for burining its way through cash even before the downturn hit. So the sums going out the door are a major reason why Conde Nast, despite doing its bit online, will be hoping that its magazines, with their premium ad rates, will endure.

Despite his claim that Conde Nast's websites have been profitable for five of the past seven years, for Coleridge the web's economics are essentially gruesome. 'The online business model is so different. The cost per thousand (the rates that advertisers will pay for a thousand-page impression) is so low. We fight for a figure of £20 at Conde Nast.' You simply couldn't afford to get Mario Testino out of bed and into his moisturiser at these rates.

But surely the world of fashion and luxury goods on which he relies for advertising is in for a torrid few years? Conspicuous consumption has never been so out as we all don our hairshirts and embrace the new age of austerity. Coleridge admits this is true. 'The challenge is that the attitude to wealth has changed. People are worried and even those who are immensely rich are just not spending. It doesn't feel right - they don't wish to portray a bad example and so they hold on to what they've got.'

But he admits he grows irritated when people moan at him about the cost of a magazine these days. 'I sit next to very rich people who complain that £4 is a lot of money for a magazine. Four pounds is enormously good value for a 500-page edition of Vogue.'

This is the third recession Coleridge has worked through, but it will be the most testing. 'I suppose when the history of it all is written, the bankers will get the blame,' he says. 'My father was in the City (he chaired Lloyd's), but I never had any intention of following him. Over the last five years, I had an inflated sense of admiration for bankers - how clever they were to think about money in the abstract. I'm bad at that. Every month, we produce a show - that we fill with as many ads as we can - and then see how many copies we can sell in 31 days. We produce something tangible. whereas what the bankers do proved entirely ... intangible.'

He grins. 'No, I knew I wanted to be a journalist from the age of 11, when a man came to give a talk at our school. It sounded like a real doss and very enjoyable.' Yes, it can indeed be very enjoyable. Even in current times.

http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/news/900707/why-conde-nast-will-remain-vogue/

 

[homeboy]

"Three years later, I was her deputy, because everyone else was axed. It was like being a member of Idi Amin's cabinet. Each day, another body was found floating."

Very informative articles, thanks for sharing.

 

[tigerrouge]

The Times wonders about blonde models in magazines at the moment (and fails to get Sasha's surname right

Recession chic: why blondes are having more fun

Carolyn Asome
May 6, 2009

Advertisers are moving away from ‘quirky’ models and fair-haired, blue-eyed girls are in great demand. Why?

There may be many consequences of the recession for the fashion world: much of the dross should be weeded out of our high streets, for example, and designers will probably have to push themselves to their creative limits in the fight to survive. But one wholly unexpected and rather mystifying development is the renaissance of the blonde.

You can’t fail to notice when flicking through the first 12 advertising campaigns of the May issue of American Vogue, that they feature nothing but platinum-haired, blue-eyed goddesses. It’s a similar story on the pages of Grazia, British Elle and French Vogue. In the past few months, model agencies such as Premier and Storm have observed a significant increase in requests for blonde hair-blue eyed (BHBE) models, something that they put down to a fragile economy and grim financial climate.

Advertisers, they claim, no longer want the quirky faces that have dominated the catwalks, billboards and weekly glossies in recent years. Instead, they’re searching for safe, wholesome-looking girls with flaxen manes who will reassure rather than shock the consumer.

“We have definitely experienced a larger than usual demand for the classic rather than the quirky,” says Carole White, founder of Premier Model Management. “In a recession clients won’t stick out their necks, they know what sells and they want to hire models with wideranging appeal. When every penny counts, they’re much more likely to opt for the formula that sells the best.”

The “formula” at Premier is Gabriella Calthorpe, a society beauty turned model, and Dorith Mous (above). At Storm, Sarah Doukas, the managing director (and legendary booker who discovered Kate Moss), says: “If there’s one thing I’ve noticed as the cry of the model bookers’ table, it’s ‘we need more blondes’. That’s partly because it isn’t easy to find a fabulous-looking blonde, as you need someone quite classy looking”.

Only 30 per cent of Storm’s 200 girls are blonde.“ Look at the ads,” Doukas says. “There’s Raquel Zimmermann in Marc Jacobs, Lily Donaldson seems to be in everything, as does Toni Garn (Prada, Fendi and Versace) and Claudia Schiffer is getting a lot of jobs again too. Ultimately, blondes are a safer bet for clients who want to hedge their bets. Plus when we’re constantly surrounded by bad news, that blonde stereotype is zingy and upbeat.”

But why does blonde mean upbeat? And why are we supposed to feel safer/happier/less threatened by the age-old Aryan stereotype?

In mythology and fairytales BHBE characteristics are ascribed to heroines, while their enemies are dark and ugly. Blonde hair also has magic powers: strong enough to use as a rope ladder in Rapunzel and as a powerful aphrodisiac in Pelléas and Mélisande.

The traditional theory, according to Dr Lance Workman, an evolutionary psychologist at Bath Spa University, is that “men in the northern hemisphere were drawn to physical signs of youthfulness because women have a limited period of fertility. Fair or lighter coloured hair is one of these signs because hair darkens the older you become”.

Dr Abigael San, a chartered clinical psychologist, says: “Blonde hair and blue eyes are known for appealing to a lot of tastes, it’s a classically beautiful look. The association with blonde hair goes back to childhood: we associate these characteristics with forces of good, honesty and trust. We’ve recently been deceived by bankers and politicians, so the need to trust is even greater”.

The trend echoes what happened after America’s Depression in the 1930s. Attempting to woo the public back to the cinema, the big studios — MGM, Fox, Warner Brothers — set about producing escapist films. Blondes attracted maximum attention, they proved to be for the good box office, and so began the packaging of the platinum goddess. Close-up the blonde hair didn’t always look that fabulous — peroxide hair often takes on a brassy, straw-like hue and texture — but cameramen found innovative ways of lighting their leading ladies so that they were bathed in radiance and light.

“Celebrities, too,” says Luke Hersheson, the hairstylist “have much more pulling power now. That’s mostly down to advertisers who want to maximise their spend — and celebrities who visit our TV screens are perhaps easier to identify with”.

Dolce & Gabbana is one example of a brand that has jumped on to the blonde celebrity bandwagon. For a company that has nearly always featured sultry, Sicilan, “breasts-a-heaving” sirens, Scarlett Johannsson with her shock of 1940s starlet curls is a departure.

While fashion labels put this shift down to changing trends, Wichy Hassan, the creative director and co-founder of the retailer Miss Sixty, says that he has definitely noticed the blonde comeback. “Models such as Sasha Pivavora [who has strutted the Miss Sixty catwalk] and Anna Vyalitsyna have proved popular as they convey a strong, healthy look.”

Others, however, remain sceptical. Dr Gayle Brewer, another evolutionary psychologist, scoffs at the theory that the BHBE combination is more comforting, although she does say that images of healthy bodies encourage us in turn to thrive. “We also live in a predominantly brunette society — so we are naturally drawn to this look, which is seemingly exotic.”

Angus Monroe, a casting director at AM Casting, agrees that “a blonde is not necessarily any more optimistic than a brunette”. For him it’s simply less risky to choose a more approachable or attainable woman. “Perhaps the image of a woman who is more curvy and facially engaging is what people find reassuring”.

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/fashion/article6228117.ece

 

[nyc_art_style]

I don't understand why blonde hair and blue eyes is always seen as "classic". It's a phrase that irks me, and the article claims so several times. It's as though other hair colors or eye colors or races are trendy or new. yet people of all different races have been around forever, just as long as blonde hair and blue eyes. The media should be building a new idea of what's classic, not enforcing old stale stereotypes.

Also why is blonde and blue eye "safe"? I just don't get it. It there something dangerous about brunettes or redheads? What's the difference between having a blonde as the face of a company and a brunette. Does hair color really send a different message? hairstyle maybe... but color?