Jul 23, 2008 12:00 PM
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New York, 11:57 PM
Tue Feb 9
55 posts in the last 24 hours
The much-vaunted new issue of Italian Vogue featuring only black models has already been re-printed in New York to satisfy the city's creative chattering class. Of course, fashion magazines always allege that issues with black cover models don't sell well. While that's proven to be true, there's nothing like actually having an opinion and doing something interesting to generate some buzz. This reminds us even more of how staid and boring Anna Wintour's American Vogue is.
Right now, Wintour's Vouge has an overpaid hockey player as an intern, which was probably meant to be a publicity stunt, but mostly confused people. The cover girls are consistently bland, overexposed actresses (who have often graced the cover several times before) instead of fashion models. Plus, the aggressive airbrushing is almost an insult to readers' intelligence.
American Vogue's last bid for attention was its somewhat infamous Lebron James cover from April, in which the basketball player grabbed model Gisele in a King Kong moment. (Annie Liebowitz shot it.) People found this more offensive that not, however, so that sort of backfired. (The cover wasn't that interesting to begin with, and it was the worst-selling April issue since 2001. April is the month of their annual "Shape" issue, in which they pay lip service to different body types and usually get a sales boost in return.) The following cover, an over-airbrushed Gweneth Paltrow, didn't do much better.
Meanwhile, the French edition of Vogue (edited by Carine Roitfeld) is still kicking ass creatively! (Of course, it's a much smaller operation.) You remember the November 2007 issue, which featured model Carolyn Murphy with New York eccentric Andre J, bearded and in a dress. The brand-new August issue features a fashion spread of an anti-fur protest, with a fur-clad attitudinal model flipping protesters the middle finger. That's the kind of spunk we like to see!
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