US Elle June 2019 : Indya Moore by Zoey Grossman & Celine Dion by Tom Munro

[tigerrouge]

I do like her covers - but once I get beyond that, there's nothing in the magazine to interest me.

And I used to respect US Elle, especially for its written content, and the way it made moves to address diversity long before any other American fashion magazine started using it as a sales tool (eg the Alek Wek cover in 1997).

 

[Nymphaea]

Higher & Higher
P: Andreas Sjodin
S: Carola Bianchi
M: Daphne Groeneveld


us elle digital edition

 

[Nymphaea]

Celine's L'Oreal ed in this same magazine looks so much better than her Elle ed.

us elle digital edition

 

[Benn98]

What happened to Nina? She started off strong and promising, but the quality of her magazine dipped lately. None of the issue of ELLE US (except the Ashley Graham one, even that issue as a whole is boring tbh) this year is memorable. Advertisement wise its still doing better than Vogue & Bazaar tho but i wonder how long it will last.

While I'll admit that Nina brought an air of prestige and a strong visual direction to this magazine which made the magazine all the more attractive to advertisers, I do wonder what happened to the readers who enjoyed the written content of the magazine so much under Robbie. And it used to be a sizeable amount of women who almost didn't care that they got a grey-walled cover every month, as long as the content made up for it, because Robbie's sales were oddly solid. Maybe those readers have since jumped ships and there's a new Elle reader who only cares about snippets and reprints?

She'll come out on top though, and that's all which will satisfy her bosses - how much money she can bring in. This month's double cover is proof that she can strategise. But too much ads with little to no written content, and even little original content, just ultimately gives you a lot of sheen without much substance.

 

[VanTerminator]

Quite impressive retouching job on Celine (well, the shots where they didn't cover her face) if you see what she actually looks like these days.

 

[tigerrouge]

Advertising revenue is necessary for a magazine's existence, but gone are the days when this was counterbalanced by some degree of thoughtful content.

From time to time, I see magazines giving the excuse that 'people have shorter attention spans these days', meaning there's no point in producing such content.

But I imagine a large proportion of the print readership are older women who don't wish magazines were more like the internet, and who retain the ability to read long-form articles. And who also have money for the stuff that pops up in the advertising sections between the features.

Let's say your other problem is no longer having the same budget to spend on famous contributors. In that case, the universe is overflowing with talent looking for an outlet, so make a virtue of featuring new people with fresh voices.

It feels like magazines have abandoned what remains of their readership to chase a younger generation, who have already elected to base their attention elsewhere, who don't care much for what print has to offer them outside of a repostable cover shot, but who must be appeased at all costs because... they are the audience that magazines want?

Magazines are having a mid-life crisis.