Surveying September
During the ninth month of the year, it seems you can’t take two steps without tripping over a ridiculously chunky fashion magazine. September, after all, is when the retail world unleashes a barrage of new advertising campaigns, capitalizing on the back-to-work, back-to-school spirit established in pre-recession times. The make-it-or-break-it importance of the period is something the fashion industry has always known, but last year’s The September Issue, RJ Cutler’s documentary about the making of American Vogue’s fattest edition in 2007, proved that the drama can sometimes merit its own movie.
The might of the month appears too difficult to ignore. Even Nylon Guys, the most accessible of all the titles I consume, has joined the fracas. When that September installment made its way to my mailbox in early August, I thought the choice of cover dude, actor Jason Schwartzman, was somewhat capricious and therefore totally in line with their indie-hipster ethos. Time made it clear, however, that he, too, was placed there to sell something: Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, in which he plays opposite Michael Cera; and the second season of Bored To Death, the Jonathan Ames-penned HBO series.
Trumpeting a Project
A cursory glance at the other pages revealed that most of the celebrities were also there to trumpet a project. The main music feature revolved around Killers frontman Brandon Flowers, currently flying solo with his debut effort “Flamingo”. Mary Elizabeth Winstead, this month’s anointed starlet, warranted four pages because she stars in, again, Scott Pilgrim Vs The World. Man, that movie is overhyped.
While I’m savvy enough to know that publishing does not exist in a vacuum, I still find it sad that marketing tie-ins, a fact of 21st century life, are so crass and obvious. I grew up reading UK magazines like i-D, The Face and Dazed & Confused, and more often than not, they picked their cover stars — and their entire table of contents, now that I think about it — based on their cool factor; of course, cool back then meant obscurity, not celebrity. This is why, to this day, I tend to go for stealthy things, the opposite of low-hanging fruit.
Quantity vs Quality
But back to more mainstream matters. Jezebel, Gawker’s feminist-friendly sister site, recently came up with a by-the-numbers comparison of 29 September fashion issues. In the Vogue family, only the US publications, including Teen Vogue, had celebrities (Halle Berry and Nickelodeon’s Victoria Justice, respectively) on the cover. The rest, from Vogue Portugal to Vogue China, employed models.
As fall trends have turned predictable — grunge-type plaid, military, and prep-school styles yet again — so have the magazines that contain them. The least templated and most interesting in Jezebel’s roster are the relatively underground ones: i-D and Love, which wins not only for having eight covers but for being brave enough to put Lauren Hutton on one of them.
The latter may not have US Vogue’s “726 pages of sumptuous fall fashion at every price,” but that only shows that 2010’s heftiest September title, while imposing numbers-wise, may not necessarily have the most progressive ideas. It’s a classic case of quality versus quantity.
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