It's not only atrocious and cheap but worse of all BORING. What I don't understand is when or why Glenda decided to go so downmarket. Granted, she was never the best or most obvious choice to lead Bazaar and has been criticized from the get-go for downgrading the magazine but still, I was a fan up to a point and she did, atleast for sometime, try to produce a quality magazine.
In fact many editorials come to mind: Lindbergh's Age of Innocence with Natalia, Sorrenti's Paris collections story with Gemma, Demarchelier's Anime couture edit with Gemma, Lagerfeld's Couture story with Gisele, Sundboe's 40+ page edit of the Spring collections. Plus others by David Sims, Inez and Vinoodh, Richard Burbridge, Ellen Von Unwerth, Nathanial Goldberg etc.
I'm all for incorporating new talent into the mix but without a few prominent photographers to anchor the publication it loses its sense of direction. Not only is their photog roster depleted but so is the styling.
They use to have Katie Grand, Mary Alice Stephenson, George Cortina, Melanie Ward, and Brana Wolf. Nowadays only Brana seems to be a regular contributor and too often they use stylists I've never heard of or freelancers, which change month-to-month, which again does little to forge a magazine's identity.
Finally, I've also noticed that even their use of top models has been lacking lately. For March the biggest names they had were Magdalena and Eniko, solid models but hardly at the Natalia or Lara level. As with photographers, it's great to incorporate new talent but prominent talent must be present as well.
Despite the use of all this "emerging talent" Bazaar seems to be devoid of any actual new ideas. A book devoid of any inspiration. As with any fashion magazine once the aspiration factor is gone the magaine itself might as well be dead.
