UK Elle August 2020 : Dua Lipa by Zoey Grossman

So damn ugly and dated. Canadian Elle did a much better reprint of this editorial.

 

Farrah really wants herself to be remembered as the EIC who brought back reprints in 2020. Her tenure has been infested with reprints. It's not cute.

I mean come on! Reprints were hardly excusable in 2007, what makes her think it's excusable now? And let's not blame the pandemic. UK Elle has been reprinting crazy pre-lockdowns!

 

The highlighted texts look awful! That looks like an old issue of Girlfriend Australia, but worse.

 

The prominent 'You've been cancelled' coverline seems very ominous on a cover starring Dua Lipa, lol.

Agreed with @crmsnsnwflks ....it looks so dated. Most of Farrah's reprints does.
She seems to love fashion so much yet we can't see that with her covers and edits. I know most of the fault is on the seemingly threadbare budget that she must make do with, but still.

 

A bad shot of a good-looking girl.

And no-one wants to know about Anwar Hadid. He's like the boyfriend everyone looks back on in their life, wondering why they ever went there.

 

There are about 12 adverts in the whole issue.

 

^ I hope I'm wrong, but I see them going Marie Claire soon.

 

It would have been better without that ridiculous hand. It looks like she's about to grab her latte from the barista at Starbucks.

 

To be fair, that's at least something. About 80% of international editions across the board, including the Vogues, are running dangerously low on ads in their July/August issues. Vogue Mexico and Latin America have zero blue-chip ads in their current issue (key advertisers are Huawei, Pandora, and native indie brands taking the occasional single page). US Harper's Bazaar have 1 double-page ad before you hit their table of contents, and though Dior, Saint Laurent, and others took single page ads, all of it came with a custom 'stay safe' message for Harper's readers, meaning they wouldn't have paid full price for it (if they paid at all!). Also bear in mind that their combined Summer issue comes in at 132 pages!

Based on the ad count I've seen in the August issue of UK Harper's (double-page pre-fall ads, from Chanel, Dior, Gucci, Saint Laurent among others), and what you've mentioned, the British luxury market is clearly in a much better position. But for how long?

 

I briefly skimmed a story in the Press Gazette recently which said UK Elle was performing very badly at the moment, both in terms of print copies and online.

Let's say you didn't care for print - Elle is a recognisable brand name, so there's value in keeping it alive, because you could use it to sell other things which do make money. But if you let the print edition die, the brand will soon mean nothing, and all those intangible but valuable associations will fade away.

Press Gazette also reminded me about the Emily Sheffield story where she talked about how she felt when she applied to be editor of UK Vogue when Alexandra left, only to see the job go to Edward instead, and she got sacked shortly after, when he installed his new regime.

 

Exactly, imo they just don't put as much effort into digital as they do with print. UK Marie Claire may still be running a website but they're better off shutting the entire down altogether because their reach and engagement numbers are embarrassingly low. Compare that to SELF, who still ranks high on SEO, and TeenVogue, who is still important and relevant. I suppose that's the one thing Americans have over all of us, they tend to invest more into their online portals but sadly their print editions suffer.

Farrah's got easy access to Alex Bilmes, why not take some pointers off him on to position Elle as a separate product from the website? Because right now there's no difference if you buy the print edition or log onto their website, and that's troublesome.

 

o v e r e x p o s e d


I’m not sure how well it did globally, but I think her new album kinda flopped in the USA. It debuted at #4 and is no longer in the top 30.

 

Is this a 2007 cover?

 

She always looks like she lacks about 12 hours of sleep.

 

I wish it was.

I've reached the point of accepting that, from this point onwards, there's probably not going to be (m)any magazines that I'll want to buy, so it's time to reduce the collection right down to a core archive of cherished issues, and invest in a display unit/bookcase where I can store them with care, so I can bring out certain issues to the front, like moments in time for me to see and remember.

 

A big titles like UK Elle releasing a such cover quite makes fashion magazines as a whole like a sinking ship.

This is a cover for the UK, her biggest market, I don’t see the problem if she’s really flopping in the USA? And Future Nostalgia is only her sophomore album, not to mention it was released during the epidemic, so she can’t really do much to build up her American audience. I think she has been surprisingly polished as a rising star compared to her debut album, so let’s see whether she can push herself further for a long run.

 

A large amount of this issue is devoted to reprinting catwalk shots from the collections - but in a variety of visual styles, and I found myself enjoying it. By itself, autumn-winter fashion is always more dramatic and interesting to look at, but whoever got the job of laying out this section enjoyed themselves. It's nothing exceptional, but at least there's the sense of someone making an effort at the magazine.

 

I'm not personally against Dua Lipa, I listened to her new album and enjoyed a few of the songs and I also like a handful of her older songs from 4-5 years ago. However, her PR team has been in overdrive for the past 2 years hyping this damn album, which is why in the past few months she's been on at least one Vogue cover, a couple of Elle covers, a GQ cover, etc. on top of the online promo and the talk show promo. And this is coming after 2019 where she again, got multiple covers. It's just getting to the point where I feel she's overexposed. For whatever it's worth, I know alot of people who probably enjoy her songs on the radio or think she's sexy, but I certainly don't know any hardcore Dua stans. Yes, I know she's very popular in the UK, but her album actually broke a record as the lowest selling #1 in history in the UK, with under 7 thousand copies sold. I'm certain she sold more than that in her first week in the US, even though she only made it to #4 and quickly dropped out of the top 30. Meanwhile the hype is that, to quote Wendy Williams, she is the moment. Before her album was released many were predicting it would be a smash, the future of pop, a Grammys shoo-in, etc. I know there's alot of "she's in control!" "she writes her own songs!" PR but to me she and her songs, as much as I enjoy several of them, feel incredibly record-label-manufactured. I don't have anything against her on a personal level, but I can't help but enjoy when someone generic is being hyped to high heavens by the industry machine and then they underperform. It helps me from getting too cynical by reminding me that despite the onslaught of press and a hype machine working overtime, an artist still needs to connect with fans the old fashioned way to build A-list success.

 

I honestly don't mind her overexposure too much. She and her team have tried so hard to fix the image issues that has plagued her since the beginning of her career. This new album is a new beginning for her, I am constantly listening to as somebody who was never much of a fan of her before. It one of the best pop albums I've heard in years. Who cares about how well her album did? I mean it sucks if it flopped, it definitely deserved to be in among the top spots for a while, but it doesn't degrade how good the album really was.