Lady Gaga Looks Like Ursula the Sea Witch on the New Cover of Vogue [Video]

Lady Gaga is on the cover of American Vogue's September issue. The notional news peg for the appearance is her perfume, which Vogue calls "the most innovative perfume in two decades." Yawn. But what do we think of the cover shot? It looks like the magazine was going for something different, which, hey, props for that — Vogue's usual cover is definitely not a full-length studio shot with lots of some white space. Gaga said on Twitter she reckoned she was channeling RuPaul, but, seriously, between the hair and the purple dress, she looks almost as much like Ursula the Sea Witch. And what is that weird, Photoshopped in red banner behind the logo? Is that supposed to be some kind of heraldic flag? And as regards that inside shot, when it comes to september issue photo shoots involving big, pink hats we much prefer Harper's Bazaar's with Gwen Stefani. [Vogue.com]

Speaking of which, in this behind-the-scenes video from her Harper's Bazaar cover shoot, Gwen Stefani says that while the day was her first time working with Terry Richardson as a photographer, it was not her first time meeting him: when No Doubt was gigging around L.A. in the '80s, they sometimes played with Richardson's old punk band, Double Freak. "It was...pretty freaky," says Stefani, before changing the subject to hair. As we know, back then Richardson — who has been accused of sexual harassment and misconduct by some of his models — was fond of singing songs like "Child Molester's Coming For You." Freaky, indeed. [YouTube] Christy Turlington was shot by Bruce Weber for the first cover of Du Jour, a magazine for rich people who want to buy $37,000 bicycles. Weber, notes the Times, " also shot covers for a new magazine coming from the retailer Opening Ceremony on Sunday, and Carine Roitfeld's comeback magazine, CR, planned for a September release." [NYTimes] Meghan Collison is topless on the cover of the new i-D. [FashionCopious] Lucky is launching a new e-commerce platform called MyLucky, and it's advertising it with this charming campaign. The tag-line is "Fill the void," as in: "My boyfriend dumped me via text: Fill the void," "My longest relationship is with my doorman: Fill the void," and "My 5-day cleanse is only on day 2: Fill the void." Because buying things you don't need to make yourself feel "better" when life goes wrong is such a good idea for your credit card and for the planet's resources — and totally empowering. [AdAge] Karolina Kurkova, of all people, should probably not be this desperate to be seen as sexy. [VF] Dazed & Confused Tweeted that its upcoming Azealia Banks issue has "been banned from 7 countries so far. Thank God for the Internet, huh?" Why could that be? The Telegraph reports that the cover features a photo of the rapper "with an inflated bright pink condom between her lips like a giant cigar, accompanied by the cover line 'Azealia Banks Blows Up.'" [Telegraph, @DazedMagazine]The head of Zara's parent company Inditex, Amancio Ortega, is now the third-richest man on earth. With a personal fortune of $46.6 billion, Ortega comes after Carlos Slim and Bill Gates. He knocked fucking Warren Buffett into fourth place. [Telegraph]Naomi Campbell (still) has traction alopecia around her hairline due to years of wearing wigs and weaves. (The damage was first publicly noted back in 2010.) Models damage their hair for a living, and black women who are asked to wear weaves are at particular risk for hair breakage and follicular damage. [Daily Mail]J. Crew is rolling out a new ad campaign including buys in such publications as Vanity Fair, Vogue, Fast Company and the Sunday New York Times Magazine. The company, which previously communicated largely through its catalog, says it is approximately doubling its 2011 ad budget for the year 2012, which would put its total spending at around $13 million. Tag-lines include "You speak softly and carry a loud bag," and "You notice the lapel before the label." Fine print touting J.Crew's quality of materials is also included, to emphasize "authenticity and integrity." [NYTimes]One of the challenge prizes on the next season of America's Next Top Model is a small role in a Tyler Perry movie — judged by Perry himself. Alicia Keys will also serve as a special guest for one episode. [Essence]White House Black Market repeated its spring ad theme, which featured a clever video of Coco Rocha dancing while her outfits appeared to instantly change thanks to snappy editing. The fall ad will show Rocha tap-dancing. [WWD]Feel like you're missing out on fashion's current bushy-brow trend? You can now get an eyebrow transplant of hairs from the nape of your neck. For $6,000. "Right now Kim Kardashian is hot — that is, eyebrow-wise," says a Beverly Hills dermatologist who performs the procedure. "I also get Brooke Shields sometimes."[On The Runway]Despite the fact that Ryan Lochte and fashion don't really mix — his Vogue cover stank in terms of sales, and the dude wears three-quarter cargo shorts, for Chrissakes — the Olympic swimmer has apparently fielded offers, that is offers plural, for a celebrity clothing line. [THR]People in fashion are playing tennis, you guys, and the Times is on it! Here's how Anna Wintour's instructor describes her game:

"She's like a retriever," the muscular and fit Mr. Spence, also from Jamaica, said of the powerful Vogue editor. "She's so fast. She'll chase down everything. She doesn't hit with a lot of spin, but she has an amazing cross-court forehand."

[NYTimes]

New York magazine's The Cut relaunches on Monday as something more like a general-interest women's blog with lots of fashion content. [WWD]Today in ongoing trends, accessories are the only way anybody in fashion is making any money these days:

"The accessories business is healthier than the apparel business," said Marshal Cohen, chief retail analyst at NPD Group. (Indeed, accessories and related merchandise at Michael Kors accounted for about 75 percent of total revenue in 2012, a company spokeswoman said.)

"Women's fashion, for the last 18 months, has been running negative numbers," Mr. Cohen said. "Over the last six months, accessories have been 2 percent ahead over the last 12 months. That may not sound like a lot, but in the fashion sector, that's great." Footwear, luggage, small leather goods and glasses are doing particularly well, he added.

[NYTimes]

Profits at Dillard's grew year-on-year by 76%, to $31 million, during the quarter just ended. [WWD]And now, a moment with John Jannuzzi, who writes today about the Abercrombie & Fitch hoodies he loved in the late '90s and early 2000s. You know how most first-person stories about treasured items of clothing are kind of self-aggrandizing in that incidentally-look-at-my-excellent-taste kind of way? Rarely does a fashion writer cop to knowing what it's like to love something that was formative but, well, in retrospect tacky as fuck. (No offense to teenage Jannuzzi's sartorial choices intended — in 1999, we were wearing elaborate, wide-legged homemade jeans we called "phat pants." Some of them involved reflective tape. Others, rainbow trim.) Jannuzzi writes lovingly, and with a keen understanding of the teenaged yearning to just fit in, of the hoodies he sourced from the Abercrombie & Fitch in Farmington, Connecticut, which was an "experimental" Abercrombie, "which basically means it was legendary and housed mythical track jackets you couldn't find at a bush-league Abercrombie in, say, Michigan or some other miserable state." He explains:

What did an allowance-laden youngster yearn for most from the overly pornographic emporium of shit? Was it the distressed denim, or perhaps the Baby Gap-esque shrunken polos? Nah chill, I was after the hoodies. If there was a hooded article of clothing in that store, I wanted it. Badly. All the popular kids wore them (the barometer of teenage consumer confidence), and they were all so fucking cool, I just had to have that shit. The first, let's call it "gateway hoodie," was red with a shield on it — extremely regal. I've always been a sucker for medieval insignia, especially when a brand bastardizes everything by throwing their name all over it. A few days in that hoodie and I was unstoppable. After a girl smiled at me from the back of a school bus (I was driving in my Jeep because, um, fuck yes) I decided I needed to invest the rest of my savings in A&F hoods so I could be popular and awesome.

[Four Pins]

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Nobody Bought Ryan Lochte's Issue of Vogue [Video]

We know that ladymag readership is down, seriously badly down, for the first six months of 2012. But now we know who the culprits are: the celebrities whose well-lit, smiling, Photoshop-enhanced faces have failed to open wallets in supermarket checkout aisles all across the land. Poorly selling issues of note include Vogue's Olympics-themed June edition with Lochte, Serena Williams, and Hope Solo. It was the magazine's weakest of the year so far, moving just 202,000 newsstand copies — which might have been just Ryan Lochte's mom buying the same issue over and over again. That total is 33% below its six-month average.

If athletes do badly on the covers of fashion magazines, Kardashians might do even worse: Kim Kardashian was a loser for Allure in March (which sold 7% below average) and all three sisters failed to make an impression on the cover of Glamour in January (which sold 11% below average).

Who did well? Adele, for one, handily beat Vogue's sales average. So did Kate Moss for both W and Harper's Bazaar. And Glamour's topless Lauren Conrad cover sold a whopping 18% above the title's average. [WWD]

Gwen Stefani is on the cover of September's Harper's Bazaar. At 375 pages, the issue is the magazine's biggest ever. Stefani says she started wearing red lipstick in high school in the '80s: "I remember sitting in my ghetto, beat-up Honda Prelude and putting on that lipstick in the rearview mirror and being like, 'Uh-huh, I like that. That's the shit right there.' I never stopped after that." [HB] British designer Louise Grey is launching a capsule collection for Topshop on August 23. "The dresses and tops are all totally covered in sequins and I made them to go dancing in," says Grey. [Telegraph] Cute Circuit — that's the company that made Katy Perry's light-up 2010 Met Ball dress, you will recall — wants to bring to market a t-shirt with an embedded LED screen. So that you can display, um, your favorite Tweets. Or whatever other shit you've downloaded from the Internet. Light-up and interactive clothing is not new, but it is getting more sophisticated. Would you wear this? [Atlantic] André J — the man, the beard, the legend — Tweeted a photo of himself and Carine Roitfeld on a rooftop. Hopefully this means he and Roitfeld are working together on something related to the former Vogue Paris editor's forthcoming print magazine, CR Fashion Book. Roitfeld famously had Andre J and Carolyn Murphy shot by Bruce Weber for the cover of Vogue Paris in 2005. [@AndreJWorldWide]
Meanwhile, Roitfeld confirmed that the magazine's Web site will be hosted on Tumblr. [Fashionista] Here is Lana Del Ray, a gold bar, and a kitty cat in the pages of Vogue Italia. [VI] Female French politicians are fed up with commentary on their clothing, makeup, and shoes — and even cat-calling from colleagues:

Wearing a blue-and-white flowered dress by U.K. mail-order clothing company Boden (a shirt dress named Riviera priced on the French version of the Web site at 119 euros, or $146.57 at current exchange rates, currently discounted at 59.50 euros, or $73.29 dollars), Cécile Duflot, minister of territorial equality and housing, had to endure whistles from male deputies last month as she walked down steps to stand in front of the National Assembly. [...] The high heels worn by Yamina Benguigui, a politician, and the critical length of the dress worn by [minister for small- and medium-sized enterprises, innovation and the digital economy, Fleur] Pellerin (which went above her knees when she walked the steps of the Elysée Palace in late June), also created a buzz. In July, one top journalist asked Pellerin if she got the job because she is a beautiful woman from a minority background. The question drew ire on Twitter.

"It is very complicated to be a woman in politics. If you dress up, everyone makes a comment. If you don't, it is even worse," lamented Amor Ouni, whose responsibilities include advising [first lady Valérie] Trierweiler on her wardrobe. "‘Normal chic' is what I try to achieve in terms of looks for her."

Sigh. [WWD]

Meanwhile, the purse carried by North Korean first ladyRi Sol-Ju — wife of notorious dictator Kim Jong-Un — has drawn criticism for somewhat less sexist reasons: because she's been carrying a Miss Dior handbag that costs thousands of dollars even as North Koreans are facing famine and food shortages due to the inefficiencies of their centrally planned economy. The bag is a symbol of the privileges and wealth enjoyed by the small cadre of party officials who run the country. [Telegraph]Lady Gaga really wants to unveil her September Vogue cover. "Don't worry I've been txting Wintour all morning trying to get that cover queens," she Tweeted. "Next im sending bagels to VOGUE (complex carbohydrate war)." [@LadyGaga]LOVE magazine is launching an iPad app with artist Yayoi Kusama. Users can reportedly use the app to play with polka dots, like the ones that populate Kusama's work. [WWD]Bar Refaeli says she'd try JDate "maybe if I'm still single when I'm 40." [P6]Talbots, which has been struggling, now has a new C.E.O., C.O.O., and company president. [WWD]With an annual income of $72 million, Gisele Bündchen and Tom Brady came second in Forbes' list of the top-earning celebrity couples of the year. They were beaten — though only by $6 million — by Beyoncé and Jay-Z. [Forbes]Macy's says its second quarter saw healthy growth. Net income rose to $279 million from $241 million during the same period one year ago. Same-store sales were up 3%, to a whopping $6.12 billion. [WWD]Tod's SpA net income rose year-on-year by 13.7%, to $96.5 million, during the first six months of 2012. Sales were strongest at Tod's (which was up 19.4%) but they dropped at Hogan (down 12%) and Fay (down 8.1%). [WWD]Profits during the quarter just ended at Ralph Lauren were up by 5.1%, to $193.4 million. [WWD]

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Vogue Writer Tries, Fails to Successfully Justify Fawning Asma al-Assad Profile [Mag Hag]

Forget the tens of thousands of people who've died since Bashar al-Assad started slaughtering opponents of his regime in March 2011. The real victim of the ongoing Syrian massacre is Joan Juliet Buck, the writer whose Vogue article on Assad's glamorous wife, Asma, cost her "my livelihood and end[ed] the association I had had with Vogue since I was 23." Bummer. In a new essay, Buck describes how the disastrous "Rose in the Desert" profile like, totally wasn't her fault.

In the lengthy Newsweek piece, Buck recounts what happened when she met the Assads, starting with the first call she got from her editor telling her to go to Syria.

The editor explained that the first lady was young, good-looking, and had never given an interview. Vogue had been trying to get to her for two years. Now she'd hired a PR firm, and they must have pushed her to agree.

"Send a political journalist," I said.

"We don't want any politics, none at all," said the editor, "and she only wants to talk about culture, antiquities, and museums. You like museums. You like culture. She wants to talk to you. You'd leave in a week."

Buck said she'd think about it, and proceeded to have some very deep thoughts about Syria. For example: "Syria. The name itself sounded sinister, like syringe, or hiss." (The horrific quote has already spawned a hilarious Twitter hashtag, #countriesbyvoguewriters. A favorite: "Czech Republic. The name itself sounded like what I should have done before writing that Vogue article.")

Despite her onomatopoeia-related fears, Buck decided to go for it because she'd get to see some ruins. It's not like she didn't do any research; she called some "experts" (one person who had a house in Aleppo, and an "aesthete") who told her that Asma was bright and energetic and that the Assads "really care about their people." But the real reason Buck took the assignment is that she wanted an adventure:

It was an assignment. I was curious. That's why I'd become a writer. Vogue wanted a description of the good-looking first lady of a questionable country; I wanted to see the cradle of civilization. Syria gave off a toxic aura. But what was the worst that could happen? I would write a piece for Vogue that missed the deeper truth about its subject. I had learned long ago that the only person I could ever be truthful about was myself.

It's okay in my book for a writer to admit she took an assignment because she was curious. But Buck's curiosity seems rather specific; she was curious enough to go to Syria, but not enough to think twice about some of the more ominous incidents that took place during her stay. "I didn't know I was going to meet a murderer," she says. "There was no way of knowing that Assad, the meek ophthalmologist and computer-loving nerd, would kill more of his own people than his father had and torture tens of thousands more, many of them children."

Yet, Buck spends much of the Newsweek place remembering creepy details foreshadowing horrors to come. And we don't just mean the "Mustached men [who] stood in our path, wearing shoes from the 1980s and curiously ill-fitting leather jackets over thick sweaters." (How "curious," right?) Buck describes eerily empty museums, a mysterious metal prison on wheels, her blatantly hacked laptop, and a bizarre situation in which Asma basically fucked with a bunch of kids at a youth center by telling them there was no more money to keep the center open and then saying, "Just kidding!" (Really.) Buck could tell that her hosts were hiding things from her. As she recalls:

I sat in the hotel bar with the French ambassador and asked what was really going on in Syria. He took the battery out of my Syrian cell phone and then did the same with his. This must have set off an alert, because suddenly Sheherazade [an intern/the daughter of the Syrian ambassador to the United Nations] materialized in front of us.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Aren't you sick?" I asked. "Go back to bed."

The ambassador drew maps of Syria's shifting boundaries, with dates.

The next day Sheherazade took me to Ma'loula, the village where they still speak Aramaic, the language of the Bible.

She said: "We don't want you to talk to the French ambassador." "You can't talk to me that way," I said.

Buck seems to want her readers to think that she had no idea what she was getting herself into — that she couldn't possibly have known that the Arab Spring was about to begin, or that Assad would start mass murdering his people — but that she also was hesitant about writing the story. "I watched Al Jazeera constantly [when I returned home]," she says. "I didn't want to write this piece. But I always finished what I started." She says she asked her Vogue editors to hold the story or at least discuss how to handle it once things started to heat up in the Middle East, but that a meeting was held without her and she was asked not to speak to the press. Her piece went up in the middle of Libyan protests, received heavy criticism, and was finally taken down a year later. Buck's writing contract was not renewed.

But Buck can't have it both ways, and it's kind of ridiculous to pretend she couldn't have known it was inappropriate to cover Asma's "thin, long-limbed" beauty without touching upon Syria's political strife, even if she wasn't a political journalist and had never visited the country. In one of the first pieces denouncing Buck's profile, The Atlantic's Max Fisher recounted some of the reasons why the glowing article was disturbing:

November and December of 2010 were busy months for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. He rebuffed international nuclear inspectors, rejected U.S. attempts at diplomatic engagement, stretched out peace talks with Israel (Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman accused him of undermining peace, calling Syria "the center of world terror"), ducked fallout from WikiLeaks revelations that he had attempted to arm Hezbollah with Scud missiles, and celebrated his tenth anniversary with first lady Asma al-Assad, whom he married only a few months after succeeding his father's 30-year rule and who herself spent those two final months of 2010 hosting a reporter from Vogue magazine, which on Friday published a glowing profile of her.

....

The article's fawning treatment of the Assad family and its portrayal of the regime as tolerant and peaceful has generated surprise and outrage in much of the Washington foreign policy community, which for years has viewed Syria as one of the most dangerous and oppressive rogue states in a region full of them, with the Bush administration dubbing it the fourth member of its "axis of evil." Bashar's Syria has invaded Lebanon, allied itself with Iran, aided such groups as Hamas and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, and, for years, ferried insurgents and terrorists into Iraq, where they kill U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians. But the worst behavior may be inside Syria's borders, where a half-century-old "emergency law" outlaws unofficial gatherings and abets the regular practice of beating, imprisoning, torturing, or killing political dissidents, human rights workers, and minorities.

It's odd (and embarrassing) that Buck didn't do more research before going to Syria, but it's unexplainable why she wouldn't have learned more about the country's politics after she returned, given her uneasy experience there. When you're a journalist, "finishing what you started" doesn't mean gritting your teeth and describing "the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies" even if you have a suspicion something's up. It means interviewing real experts, doing extensive research and, most importantly (and obviously), thinking critically about your profile subject — especially if your profile subject's husband is a known dictator. Buck isn't a scapegoat, and she deserves all of the criticism she's received.

Joan Juliet Buck: Mrs. Assad Duped Me [Newsweek]

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.