I think I was the one who brought up the whole Carine vs Emmanuelle topic in this thread, and I get that it can be tiring but like Creative, Lola701 perfectly said we keep going back at it because VP is absolutely nothing like it use to be and yet we still expect it to turn it up every month. So maybe it's another example of all of us, tfsers, expecting great things from Fashion when it is has one of its dullest and most lackluster periods in a very long time. But I still feel like voicing it because : Firstly I'm French so it kills me that my national Vogue sucks so much. And Secondly, and most importantly, because VP really was THE magazine everybody was looking forward to for cutting edge contents
Of course Meisel and VI were the holy grail. A kind of fashion supernova but it was also unrealistic and untouchable in its excessive glamour. Even Meisel has a bit lost his touch and we'll probably never see any new eds to the caliber of "Supermods Enter Rehab" but at least he's still delivering something more thant just a pretty cover. Even when he's Jane Fonda just in front of a grey background.
French Vogue, though, has always been more reliatable while still being fascinating and fabulous. It really was so impossibly cool. Thanks to the photographers, the models, the aesthtic, that effortlessness that even resulted to its fashion editors own streetstyle being glorified and copied by everybody. There really was a French Vogue allure, an attitude that made it stand out from the other editions. Alt was Fashion Director back then and she was delivering amazing stuff. Inside and out of the magazine. I mean she's the woman who initiated the Balmain mania. The real and true Balmain mania, not Kardashian's disneyland. She's th woman who made people feel like it was absolutely normal to spend thousands of euros on ripped t-shirts and go crazy over Isabel Marrant boots. Everybody wanted to dress like her. So clearly she wasn't a follower back then.
Yet when you look at the magazine now there's nothing. And it's like the French Vogue team barely exist during fashion week or on social media. Not that I condone the validation of quality calculated on the number of instagram like but there's one thing certain. Vogue Paris doesn't make people fantasise anymore.
There's no style, no soul, no attitude, nothing ! At first I thought she wanted to calm things down a bit after all the controversies at the end of Roitfeld's reign. But now it really feels like she's just lazy or has completely lost it. Now she's a follower and like it or not ( I know I don't) Roitfeld appears more like a leader than even with her excuse of a magazine and awful HB editorials. She's still a voice.
As I said Alt was not a follower originally , neither was VP and I don't think she was following Carine when Roitfeld was EIC. There was Carine's style and Alt's style , as perfectly showcase in the amazing September issue with Anna S on the cover ( 2008 I think ?) She turned it into this mix match of US-Teen-Spain Vogue. So I agree with Benn98 that she definitely needs new get her sh*t together to install some editorial direction and hire new collaborators.
Roitfeld didn't make VP a cult magazine by herself. she was a great EIC who knew how to stimulate and structure the magazine's creativy. But what she really nailed was creating a dreamteam of contributors which was unequaled in all the other editions. Fabien Baron and then M/M at the art direction, Alt as Fashion Director, MAS as editor at Large, her assitants Benjamin Bruno and Mélanie Huynh + of course the photographers from Testino to David Sims or Mert & Marcus and I&V and all the models she discovered, supported and helped blossom. Each issue of French Vogue was pouring out of talents at the prime of their game.
That's what I want from Alt. I don't want her to recreate the same team. Though I wouldn't mind seeing some of this names back at VP ( MAS and M/M for example), what I really want is for her to to look for new talents and stop following the buzz because frankly I don't think the original reader of VP, and especially in France, is very interested in Cindy Crawford's 14 year old daughter. If there's one Vogue that should bring some new cards to the table it's Vogue Paris. And it's not like there aren't any talents waiting. There is, and as EIC of French Vogue she has the prime position to do so. Probably more than any other editor of Vogue.
Sorry for the long post
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