Magazine Review: T Magazine Winter 2007

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This Winter 2007 issue of T is surprisingly anorexic. Thin with a capital, eponymous “T”.

The ad pages are scarcier than normal and the editorials are sorrier, making the absence of habitually good fashion writers and contributors like Horacio Silva, Glenn O’Brien, Cathy Horyn and Armand Limnander (reduced to using his stock stories now on made-up words) more heavily missed in this issue.

Perhaps to compensate for the M.I.As Mr. Silva and Mr. Limnander, the remaining writers struggle for that elusive ounce of fash-journ credibility by inventing acronyms (i.e. PBW, NIP – er, what?), name-dropping (Deidre Murphy Bader – er, why?), quoting the least ideal people for their story (e.g. Camilla Morton – who?) and using one-word references that are either too obscure, or too silly, to bring immediately to mind the intended idea (e.g. Pg 46: “wah-wah-pedal”?  – huh?)

And to kick off the magazine’s “The Remix” frontrunner section, which makes vignettes and semi-cerebral essays out of fashion trends, issue editor and writer Maura Egan opens with a piece that is confusing at best, and pointless at worst.

In Egan’s “Risque Business”, she writes about the influence of 1920s cabaret chic on the current fashion and clubbing season. The debauched noir of the Weimar Republic, she says, is fodder for designers like L’Wren Scott, John Galliano and Dolce e Gabbana. Which is really a bad example because (A) she only exemplifies miserly with three designers, (B) of the three, L’Wren Scott is not even known to be an influential nor big enough a brand, (C) how groundbreaking is it to quote as examples those designers who have always been doing what they are doing?

Whether you are a political columnist or a fashion reporter, one basic rule of journalism applies to all: Dog bites man is not news, Man bites dog IS news.

How new is it that Dolce e Gabbana (who once said their designs centre around a woman in a bra and a man in a tanktop), and Galliano (whose shows often centre around a burlesque-y fictional characters like Cleopatra sexpots and chinois-chinois femme fatales in hazy 1920s Shanghai) are channeling risqué in their designs?

And it doesn’t help to that Egan quotes Ian Burama in a Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition catalogue on German portraits … from last year.

It is also confusing because Egan writes in such a way that she loads too-many-so-many adverbs, sub-words, pre-fixes, clauses, historical justifications, pop-culture observations, name-drops, references AND cross-references in each single sentence.

And all at the same time, there are the necessary punctuation marks used to organize all these different segments in a sentence. In the end, pulling away from the page, Ac.Stet cannot help but see a great number of quotation marks, hyphens and commas fighting in almost equal numbers for attention, with the words itself. Sample these:

“Eighty years later, Berlin, which Netley Lucas described as “the most lurid” of cities in her 1927 book, “Ladies of the Underworld,” is at it again with the ever-popular KitKatClub, a vice-friendly spot where Kate Moss once showed up in her best fetish wear.”

But as to what exactly Kate Moss wore on that raunchy night, Egan stops her description abruptly and goes on talking about something else. Readers of course wants to know what Ms. Moss’ fetish wear is, after all, this article is about risqué-inspired fashion, right? And while Egan backgrounds with so much information leading up to her point, she ends up forgetting the point of her build-up.

And as if that is not enough onslaught of a wordly overkill, Maura Egan engages in a spot of nepotism by employing her relative Kathleen Egan to write another pointless piece on fantastica shoes in “Heel, Girl: What Would Imelda Say?”, right hot on the heels of the immediate page.

Ac.Stet always love a fresh new way of writing and is open to different styles of conveying a point. But when there is no point and when there is a contrived style, Ac.Stet finds it difficult to remain open-minded. To Ac.Stet, Ms. Egan Jr, is another ego writer. Of the 17 sentences that make up her story, 9 begins with the word “I”. And those that don’t, are instead littered with references to “I” or “me”, or both. In the end, it does not tell you much about the Dior stilettos pictured, nor do you get educated about something of value. Although Ac.Stet must point out that the whimsical style employed by Egan Jr reminds Ac.Stet fleetingly of the ghost-written “The Intellectual’s Guide To Fashion” by Professor Gideon Carter from Britain’s Sunday Times Magazine. But if Egan Junior is trying to channel Carter, my god, she is a lo-o-ong way from home.

In the end, it’s a space wasted on a pointless column that takes up a quarter of a page. Ac.Stet weeps for the poor tree that died only to be made into such a page.

Bad writing plods on in the following pages: On Page 46, Cintra Wilson writes on “Droid Rage”, a story on … oh, actually, Ac.Stet is not sure, since the story gets rather odd and off-the-point..

Anyway, Ac.Stet thinks Ms. Wilson tries to tell us to imagine how women will function as bionic entities in the not-too-distant future, with the new NBC series Bionic Woman as news-peg. At some point, Ms. Wilson asks serially: “Is it creepy to be entirely rebuilt by your [bioethicist/scientist] boyfriend?”; … “When overcoming human frailty, robotically or otherwise, how much is too much?”; … “With technologies available to reverse aging and increase sensory abilities, at what point does a lady stop in her pursuit of perfection?”

No doubt these are interesting moot points. But Ac.Stet really hates the use of rhetoric when it is employed for the sake of fluffing up the story, or for making the writer sound cleverer-er.These rhetorics would have been justified if Ms. Wilson would at least attempt to illuminate her readers with what she is trying to say. But alas, she never quite followed up on these ideas. Instead, her story on bionic women veers off-track to talk about transhumanism, and quotes Natasha Vita-More, whom Ms. Wilson is very excited about because Vita-More is “the first female Tanshumanist philosopher”. But any allusions to a feminist take on Transhumanism stops there. Vita-More is a transhumanist thinker, and she just happens to be a woman, so let’s move on, Ms. Wilson. But no, she does not. Instead, there is a lengthy discussion about the transhumanist theory about how bionic women can get upgraded bodyparts (yeah, Ac.Stet agrees, it’s kinda Carrie Bradshaw silly) and not once does it have any specific reference to women and bionics. Ms. Wilson’s story would just have been dedicated to bionic men, as well as women, and you wouldn’t have noticed the difference.

Ms. Wilson’s story reminds Ac.Stet of Alessandra Facchinetti’s first post-Tom-Ford collection for Gucci: the ideas are there but there is obviously no strength to execute them properly.But a major flaw in this story is that Ms Wilson failed to inculcate Donna Haraway and her postmodern feminism on the Cyborg Theory in this potentially readable piece. Cyborg Theory champions the dissolution of distinctions between human and machine, and that technology is a physical projection of the material human body as a result of evolution and revolution of culture.

In her Cyborg Manifesto, Haraway maps out the way of the brave new world: biotic components will replace organism, optimization replaces perfection, modular construction for functional specialization, replication for reproduction, evolutionary inertia for biological determinism, genetic engineering for sex, robotics for labor, and artificial intelligence for mind … that would have answered many of Ms. Wilson’s piece on the New Bionic Woman, yes?

Ac.Stet’s suspicion is that it is not so much that Ms Wilson chose to ignore Haraway for Vita-More, but rather, Ac.Stet believes Ms Wilson – who is described on the contributor’s page as an author of celebrity culture – has no idea who Donna Haraway is (Hell, she even thinks her readers don’t know what nanorobotics is and has to waste time explaining it.) And this is edited and published by The New York Times, mind you.Moving on, a piece on Page 50 titled “The Party’s Over”, on how fashion parties thrown by fashion brands are not about parties but about celebrities being photographed as evidence of attendance. It is one of those off-the-point stories that promises you one thing in the preamble and then derails into something else.Writer Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni opines that fashion parties are now mere photo-ops for the stars. Instead of delving in deep with an expose of what celebrities do to hog these photo-ops (how they grab attention by dressing, showing up with entourage, fixing up arranged paparazzi, you know, all that jazz), and how those non-celebrities deal with it, Ms. Fraser-Cavassoni veers off to talk about how to throw a great party. Photo op? What photo op?The Spa feature on page 56 is an insipid section, Ac.Stet suspects it is something the editors dreamt up for their summer interns to put together. It is certainly yawn-inducing, especially since Ac.Stet just read a splendid piece on holistic spas by Judith Thurman in The New Yorker, and then sees what T has done and go like Warren Beatty, “So pussycat, what’s new?”

The very last full-page article in this issue is given to an essay about the dominance of nudity in fashion. Recently. Written by Luc Sante, it devotes nearly half its editorial space to Parisian high-fashion nudie magazines Paradis and Purple. And surprisingly, there are no images of Paradis magazine to show us what the writer really means. But really, the concept of endless miles of lush flesh in fashion and how fashion creates its own reality is nothing new. It came in accelerating spasms during the Tom-Ford years at Gucci & YSL when – among other pranks he pulled – hauled a full-frontal donged and furried male model to hawk its M7 perfume. The last hurrah was when Ford – again poster boy for tasteful nudes – fronted Vanity Fair’s nudied leading ladies March 2006 cover.

And the excuse that fashion trends come in cycles wouldn’t work here, because the story could easily have been given over to other salient trends of nudity in fashion … like maybe (1) natural nudes versus airbrushed nudes? Or (2) whether amateur nude models are giving professional nude models a run for their money, or even (3) model nudes versus celebrity nudes? … … Dunno, just a few ideas from the decidedly unfashionable Acrylic Stetson.

Thankfully, magazines, that are usually good but have bad issues, are more often than not rescued by a solid stable of dependable columnists.And this edition of T is minorly rescued by a select bevy of their regular columnists, including the ever-reliable S S Fair, who delivers (*cough*) her usual brand of shifty-eyed, lightning-punched writing for this edition.Ms Fair helms “Samurai Shopper”, a T regular that specializes in ninja-stealthed fast-fixes, rationalized with the fastidiousness of a abbottress schooled at the temples of Bergdorf, and executes fashion with the ritualistic precision of a Zen tea ceremony.

It is not easy nor is it common to unite continental existentialism with the flou-flou of cosmetic skincare. Ms. Fair does both in this issue. She channels the lesser-read Raymond Aron and para-relates his “when knowledge accumulates caeaslessly but at random, it increases the desire for a system” for her take on facial regimes.

And then she thunders on with short, sweet sentences that brings home the point: “I’ve found three skincare systems that are keepers; only climate and boredom dictate any rotations.” And “Slow and steady wins the face” and “I’m winning the battle against dull, pooped-out skin, even if I’m losing the war on poverty”.Perfume critic Chandler Burr’s piece on the civet is riveting. Although Ac.Stet already knows the perfume companies’ dirty (and smelly) secret in secreting sap from the civet’s anal glands since reading it in Michelle Kodis’ Love Scents close to 10 years ago, it is still very interesting that Mr. Burr writes from an outsider’s point-of-view, giving the readers a sense of embarking on an adventure together with him in understanding the tricks of the fragrance industry. And Mr. Burr – like one of Ac.Stet’s other favorite scribe Ms Lynn Yaeger – is free of pretension, and balances his everyman appeal with a healthy dose of Overman expertise.Following on, a great composite book review by Ms Holly Brubach on “Clean: A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity” and “The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History”. You know when someone writes like this:  ==>  “Though Smith [authoress] never makes the connection, the reader wonders to what extent this concerned attempt to banish germs figured in the genesis of Modernism, with interiors overhauled in sleek hard surfaces and objects reduced to a minimum” <==  that this is a writer who truly knows her craft and who truly pursues her passion. When that happens, there is no need for Ego’s ugly head to reign in pretentious writing. The writing shows.Another old reliable is Lynn Hirschberg with her profile on covergirl Marion Cotillard. A personal observation is that Ms. Hirschberg, formerly of Harper’s Bazaar, has somewhat cornered the market for pre-manhood, post-adolescent, half-waif boyish ingénues that includes Nina Ricci’s Olivier Theyskens, Joseph Gordon-Lewitt, Ms. Cotillard (kinda boyish, ain’t she?) and now in this issue, Jim Sturgess.Ac.Stet would actually like Ms. Hirschberg to broaden her demo/psycho-graphic repertoire to include profiles on Beth Ditto, and possibly even Louise Bourgeouise. Now, that would be interesting.For a fashion magazine produced by a mass-church newspaper, T is refreshingly esoteric.As for its esoteric status, T editors got it all figured out. Unlike other fashion magazines, T does not really have to worry about newsstand sales, nor subscription. It is tagged and sold together with its Grey Lady mothership, piggybacking all the way to that elusive delicate zone which balances both mass-distributorship with fashion insider clout. But God save you, if a fashion editor has to put out a magazine to hit 8-digit readership figures and at the same time, worry if the average New York Times reader really knows what couture parties are like(“The Party’s Over”), philosophizes beauty care with a gamut of existential theory (“Samurai Shopper”)and rolls the name of Frederic Malle of his/her tongue like a household term (Mr. Malle, a respected French perfumer, is incidentally mentioned not once, but twice – quite a huge presence in a mass paper – in separate stories in this issue. One of them is not even about fragrances).

And don’t even for one second think all New Yorkers are fashionably and stylishly savvy to understand what T tries to put out every season. Last year, when Ac.Stet was attending NY Fashion Week, The Fashion Daily published a street poll asking what certain fashion names mean. When it comes to “Anna Wintour”, one of them replied: “Yes I know her. She’s a famous designer, isn’t she?”

But even so, T suffers from a minor identity crisis. The first thing you notice is its name. Look at the confusing  magazine cover with its multiple names splashed over it. Do we call it “T”? Do we call it the Style Magazine? Or do we call it The New York Times Magazine? The New York Times Style Magazine? Or the NYT “T”?[Aside: As a chuckle-full mnemomeric, Ac.Stet sometimes use Queen Nefertiti as a phonetic reminder of N-Y-Tee-Tee.]When Ac.Stet attended the newspaper’s fete thrown during Milan Fashion Week in late September, even the PR handling the event was stuttering when she wailed: “Glad you could join us at the T-New-York-Times-Style-T-Magazine party!”

Wow, that seems like a moniker even Rumpelstiltskin would be hardpressed to adopt as a middle name. (Of course, in Ac.Stet’s then state of alcoholic high, he might just as well have misheard the first “T” as the Americanized enunciation of “The”, but whatever.).

Having gotten that out of Ac.Stet’s system, Ac.Stet must say T does spin fashion stories worth their weight in fashion insider gold. And of course, T’s fashion spreads (Kamo Katsuya’s “Mountain Do” is fab-nificent (above), but “The Witches Of Bushwick” is more cool than wicked and what witches? Ac.Stet only sees a lot of black-and-white) and product shots are always wondrous … but Ac.Stet is getting satiated and has no time to go on waxing lyrical.

Alors, T-time’s just about over.

Oh no … …

Ac.Stet is going to lose his job very soon!

Do As Church Mice and suck it up …

…Ac.Stet has ran out of money to buy recent magazines to review …… hell, all the better to extend his art-making break… 

Yet Another Rainbow Gone Too Soon … …

Heath Ledger(1979-2008)  

A Rainbow Faded Too Soon … …

Brad Renfro (1982-2008) 

A broken bird

Given wings too soon

Planted too ferocious a mind

For too fragile a soul

You love the magic powder

‘cos it makes your voice sound louder

But you then couldn’t hear those you loved

 

Who gave you the magic powder?

 When your spirit can’t weather on the outer

They ne’er should’f given you the powder

should’ve listened to your brother

 

You are a dashing vision,

but the speed’s not kind to your mission

what’s left of your ambition

is now ‘tainment on THS television 

 

what a beautiful beautiful creature

what a lovely vision in flesh

what kisses and caresses i remember

is now a spectrum

from life’s prism

too fleeting

too soon

 

what a beautiful apparition

what a lovely featherlight illusion

You were Zeus’ Eagle to my Ganymede 

and you should be a phoenix

not this broken bird

in my broken hands

 

 

 ‘fro … i will always love you

Benazir Bhutto Assasinated

After Ac.Stet blogged about why Glamour Magazine neglected to accord more significance to its Benazir Bhutto interview in its October issue (i.e. no coverline mention), the Pakistani opposition leader was assasinated, a life snuffed out in mid-sentence.Ac.Stet mourns the loss of one of the world’s top woman politician and icon of the times (isn’t that what fashion aims to be?)_____________ RAWALPINDI, Pakistan — The Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated near the capital, Islamabad, on Thursday. Witnesses said Ms. Bhutto, who was appearing at a political campaign rally, was fired upon at close range by a gunman, and then struck by shrapnel from a blast that the government said was caused by a suicide bomber.

Multimedia

Photographs

Bhutto Assassinated

Related

Obituary: Benazir Bhutto, 54, Lived in Eye of Pakistan Storm(December 28, 2007)

Times Topics: Benazir Bhutto |Pakistan

Timeline: Benazir Bhutto

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B.K.Bangash/Associated Press

Hundreds of supporters had gathered at Liaqut Bagh, a park that is a common venue for rallies. More Photos »

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John Moore/Getty Images

A bomb exploding at the rally in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, on Thursday.More Photos >

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Douglas E. Curran/Agence France-Presse – Getty Images

Benazir Bhutto in front of a poster of her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, after she won first parliamentary elections in 1988. More Photos >

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T. Mughal/European Pressphoto Agency

Benazir Bhutto at a press conference in Islamabad in November. More Photos >

Tariq Mahmood/AFP/Getty

Benazir Bhutto at an address yesterday. More Photos >

The exact circumstances surrounding the assassination were still unclear. Senior officials in Ms. Bhutto’s party said she had finished addressing the rally and was sitting in a car waving at the crowd when she was hit in the head by a sniper in a nearby building. They said the car moved on for another 50 yards before a suicide attacker blew himself up.Other witnesses described a single assassin opening fire on Ms. Bhutto and her entourage, hitting her at least once in the neck and once in the chest, before blowing himself up. Dr. Abbas Hayat, professor of pathology at Rawalpindi General Hospital where Ms. Bhutto was taken, said doctors tried to revive her for 35 minutes, but that she had shrapnel wounds and head injuries and was in heart failure. He said he could not confirm whether she had bullet injuries.The assassination raises the threat of violent protests by her supporters around the country with reports that some had already taken to the streets in Karachi and other cities. In a brief televised address, President Pervez Musharraf called for support from the Pakistani people and declared three days of mourning, Reuters reported.“This cruelty is the work of those terrorists with whom we are fighting,” Mr. Musharraf said, Reuters reported. “The biggest threat to Pakistan and this nation is from these terrorists.”Condemnation of the assassination flowed in from around the world. In a statement, President Bush said, “The United States strongly condemns this cowardly attack by murderous extremists who are trying to undermine Pakistan’s democracy.” In a statement on the United Nations Web site, Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, called it “an assault on stability.” Ms. Bhutto’s death is the latest blow to Pakistan’s treacherous political situation, and leaves her party leaderless in the short term and unable to effectively compete in hotly contested parliamentary elections that are two weeks away, according to Hasan Askari Rizvi, a leading Pakistani political and military analyst.The assassination also adds to the enormous pressure on the Bush administration over Pakistan, which has sunk billions in aid into the country without accomplishing its main goals of finding the Qaeda leader Osama bin Ladenor ending the activities of Islamic militants and the Talibanin border areas with Afghanistan.Hundreds of supporters had gathered at Ms. Bhutto’s campaign rally, which was being held at Liaquat Bagh, a park that is a common venue for rallies and speeches, in Rawalpindi, the garrison city near Islamabad.Amid the confusion after the explosion, the site was littered with pools of blood. Shoes and caps of party workers were lying on the asphalt, and shards of glass were strewn about the ground. Pakistani television cameras captured images of ambulances pushing through crowds of dazed and injured people at the scene of the assassination.Farah Ispahani, a party official from Ms. Bhutto’s party, said: “It is too soon to confirm the number of dead from the party’s side. Private television channels are reporting twenty dead.” Television channels were also quoting police sources as saying that at least 14 people were dead.At the hospital where Ms. Bhutto was taken, a large number of police began to cordon off the area as angry party workers smashed windows. Many protesters shouted “Musharraf Dog.” One man was crying hysterically, saying his sister had been killed. Dozens of people in the crowed beat their chests and chanted slogans against Mr. Musharraf.Nahid Khan, a close aide to Ms. Bhutto, was sobbing in a room next to the operating theater, and the corridors of the hospital swarmed with mourners.Ms. Bhutto had been warned by the government before her return to Pakistan that she faced threats to her security. In October, Ms. Bhutto survived another deadly suicide attack in the southern city of Karachi on the day she returned from years of self-imposed exile abroad to contest the parliamentary elections. Ms. Bhutto blamed extremist Islamic groups who she said wanted to take over the country for that attack, which narrowly missed her but killed 134 people. But she also complained that the government had taken insufficient steps to safeguard her parade.The government has maintained that she ignored their warnings against such public gatherings and that holding them placed herself and her followers in unnecessary danger.The assassination comes just days after Mr. Musharraf lifted a state of emergency in the country, which he had used to suspend the Constitution and arrest thousands of political opponents, and which he said he had imposed in part because of terrorist threats by extremists in Pakistan.With frustration in Washington growing over Mr. Musharraf’s shortcomings, and his delays in returning the country to civilian rule, Ms. Bhutto had become an appealing solution for the country. She was openly critical of Mr. Musharraf’s ineffectiveness at dealing with Islamic militants and welcomed American involvement, unlike another Musharraf rival and former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif.Bush administration officials began working behind the scenes over the summer to help Ms. Bhutto and Mr. Musharraf create a power-sharing deal to orchestrate a transition to democracy that would leave Mr. Musharraf in the presidency, while not making a mockery of President Bush’s attempts to push democracy in the Muslim world.Ms. Bhutto’s assassination immediately raised questions about whether the parliamentary elections scheduled for January will now go ahead or be postponed. Mr. Musharraf was carrying out an emergency meeting with top government officials Thursday following Ms. Bhutto’s death, the aide to Mr. Musharraf said. He said no decision had been made on whether to delay the national elections.The aide dismissed complaints from members of Ms. Bhutto’s party that the government failed to provide adequate security for Ms. Bhutto.Asked if the bombing was planned in the country’s lawless tribal areas — where Mr. bin Laden and other Qaeda members are thought to be hiding — the aide to Mr. Musharraf said “must be, must be.” Militants based in the country’s tribal areas have carried out a record number of suicide bombings in Pakistan this year.Ms. Bhutto, 54, returned to Pakistan this year at a time of great volatility in a state that has been under military rule for eight years. She was the leader of the country’s largest opposition political party, founded by her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, one of Pakistan’s most flamboyant and democratically inclined prime ministers.

Salman Masood reported from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Graham Bowley and David Rohde from New York.

FutureScent … LoveSmells … Justin Timberlake for Parfums Givenchy

Published WWD: Wednesday, December 26, 2007FUTURESCENT: Justin Timberlake could be the face of the next Parfums Givenchy men’s fragrance, according to rumblings in the market. Neither the pop star’s manager, David Schiff, nor Parfums Givenchy executives in Paris could be reached for comment. It wouldn’t be Timberlake’s first dabble outside the music world. Two years ago, he and a business partner introduced a line of women’s and men’s denim jeans, T-shirts, blazers, polos and outerwear under the William Rast label. For fall 2008, that collection will be expanded to include sportswear. Now the singer and dancer-turned-fashionista is apparently ready to try his hand at beauty. He’ll have some famous company. The roster of faces at LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton-owned Parfums Givenchy includes Liv Tyler for the Very Irrésistible Givenchy fragrance and the house’s makeup line. 

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acrylic stetson’s
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art-making
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Magazine Review: W November 2007

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Okay, as you may have gathered by now, Ac.Stet is jobless and struggling to make ends meet as a person-who-makes-art. As of last month, he has taken a vow – like some monk from some clothedom temple – to go on an austerity drive.

But Ac.Stet realized to his chagrin that November is really a demonic month to begin any austerity drive especially when it comes to his indulgence for fashion magazines.

Why? With Art Basel Miami (arguably now the most buzzy art fair over 50 states) revving up for its curtain call early next month, the magazines have abandoned their impassioned Green pursuits – a popular central theme in the preceding months – in favor of embracing the Arts as an editorial theme for their November issues.

Now, when you twin Arts and Fashion together – two of Ac.Stet’s most fevered passions – in one magazine, something’s gotta give in Ac.Stet flummoxing life. Predictably, he bought them up … and had to forgo a huge slice of his grocery money (not alot to begin with) and survive more on 3-minute noodles.

Previously, Conde Nast’s W has been a title Ac.Stet has consciously delayed reviewing. It is one of his favorite magazines, and he has been reading it since he was in his teens. But such familiarity mandates a certain distance in order to wean off whatever biases (good ones) he may have with this lovely publication.

But with this November edition – cover-lined “The Art Issue” and buffeted with a choice of nine Richard Prince covers – it is excruciatingly hard to resist not making an indecent pass at it.

It has an incredible line-up of contributors, the caliber of whom only a formidable fashion title can attract: Ac.Stet’s McDreamalicious Mario Sorrenti, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, M|M Paris and Juergen Teller, as well as resounding names in the art world, Kiki Smith and Matthew Barney.

So it was quite a minor dip in anticipation when the magazine opened with a trend story on Pg 100, “Trends: Wild Things”. The writer Venessa Lau reports on the resort trend of Africana, with Franco Rubartelli’s photograph of Veruschka-in-safari-lace-ups in mind. Now, Ac.Stet has read a couple of Ms. Lau’s work before and most of it consists of catwalk reports. Her style is insipid, a consequence – Ac.Stet prays – is only because of her youth. And it shows. Let Ac.Stet give you an example from this article:

“… Michael Kors channeled a jetset Veruschka-gone-to-Marrakesh (His girl is trading in that gun for a pair of shades and a cocktail) …”

Unfortunately, it reminds Ac.Stet of the Stone Soup bedtime story his Papa used to read him as a kid, where in the end, the pot of soup taste entirely of all the other ingredients and not of the stone. Look, if you take away Veruschka’s gun in the context of her safari garb, that iconic essence is gone, isn’t it? So why keep forcing in that Rubartelli image of Veruschka?

That is not all. From an initial springboard from the safari idea, Ms. Lau went off-point to talk about tribal influences from designers like Sigerson Morrison. So Ms. Lau not only thinks safari = Marrakesh, but also that safari = tribal. In fashion writing, one has to be focused and concise, otherwise, it becomes fluff, the stuff that people read for a laugh on a train-ride and then forget.

But the article is not entirely flawed. At the very least, the mentions of Meryl Streep’s Out of Africa (although it slipped Ms. Lau that her invocation of the term “blixen-babe” earlier in the text owes its birth to Karen Blixen, of which the movie was based) and … Cate Blanchett’s Indiana Jones And The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull caused Ac.Stet to be rather excited.

The Beauty Flash pages made Ac.Stet stop in his visual tracks. Now, Ac.Stet don’t usually read Beauty sections, since he is blessed with good complexion genes and has little use for things the fairer sex indulge in but when a paragraph in “The Acne Diet (Pg 174)” says dark chocolate may alleviate acne, Ac.Stet just about need that to justify his pralines diet while in Milan.

Sometimes, you really wonder if fashion magazines still used to be that know-it-all they profess to be, in the Age of fake-smart-fudge-all Yahoo-oogle-bility. On Page 178, the Travel Flash section recommends a list of hotels to stay in Miami for December’s Art Basel.

W may have the misfortune of having someone like Ac.Stet who knows the arts, fashion and travel (and many other fields also) to critique its publication. And he can tell you a couple of things wrong here. First of all, it is already too late to recommend hotels for Art Basel in November. Hotels have all been booked since October, some even by September. Second, even if there are vacancies, they are going to be at prices beyond the budget of your average W reader. Yes, a W reader could be a millionaire. But even millionaires don’t like to be ripped off. Third, W recommends The Albion Hotel for stays, which is an awful suggestion.

Now Ac.Stet knows Miami Beach rather well, and The Albion is located at the ghetto end of Lincoln Road, the default main tourist trawl. And let Ac.Stet warn you, it is not pretty. Check in at your own risk.

And then you wonder why places like the Hotel Victor is left out. But then again, W is traditionally weak in its travel writing. This should be considered a minor surprise.

W’s half-tome dedication of the issue to the arts begins on Page 188 with a story on million-dollar art mishaps, and ends on Page 392, Suzy’s paean to Nicolas Sarkozy, liberally lifted from L’Aube Le Soir ou La Nuit by Yasmina Reza.

In-between, there are stories on big devils who teach little devils to wear Prada (Pg 126: “Underage Fashion”), and the devils too busy fighting to wear Prada (Pg. 239: Kevin West’s “No Country for Old Men” actors’ story).

But what this issue of W really does is to teach Ac.Stet a lot about art. You know how sometimes you don’t really know what something is until you figured out what it is not? Well, W’s Art Issue is this way.

Flipping through the pages of where artists such as Richard Prince and Sara van der beek create pages and pages of art-like images, you realize that it is not art.

The worst kinds of art are those created when you are conscious that you are making art. Ms. Van der Beek’s series of images is inspired by the history of photography and collage begins on Pg 370 and runs on for eight leaves. It is a series of flat, uninspired, pretentious works that keeps saying “Man-Ray-Man-Ray-Man-Ray” over and over in Ac.Stet’s head:

In the same vein, the phototextual installationist John Baldessari is poorly used by W in a series of photographic manipulation using archived portraits and images shot by Mario Sorrenti. Sure, editor Julie Belcove explained in her Editor’s Letter (Pg 92) that Baldessari is making art because he stripped the telling facial features of models’ faces and replaced them with acid-colored blobs. But looking at it, Ac.Stet cannot help but be reminded of the bastardized Whistler’s Mom in that Mr. Bean goof movie.

Sadly, works of fashion-as-art are not art. They are mimicry, reproductions of projections of shadows on Plato’s Cave. No doubt some are good pictures, but when you slap on a loaded word like “art” on the series, you expect more. You expect something that lifts you from the humdrums of reality and change the quality of your day, not something you look at and say, oh yes, that looks like art. Something that resembles art is not art. Something that resembles art is that tomfoolery of a practice they christened “design”, so the masses can at least grasp the concept of aesthetics. Fashion suffers from an inferior complex within the socio-cultural domain it operates, in the same way that, say, interior design operates under architecture. It is a minor discipline that could. But surely, for a diamond to be formed, it takes time. Not to mention lots of critique-cal pressure.

Unfortunately, Fashion – fueled by its inherent ego and natural proclivity for showiness – likes to piggyback on hype and leapfrog into something bigger, and of which it is not properly prepared to assume. Fashion, when unchecked, becomes an expanding bubble. The air density inside remains the same but fluff and indifference expands its volume, giving the illusion that it is grander and bigger and higher and fuller, but in essence is only spreading itself ever so thin without filling itself up with the substance to keep pace with its lofty promises.

It promises Art, but no matter how many mirrors, bells, whistles and how much smoke, it delivers essentially the same thing: chiseled lines, painted faces and expensive clothes. It is a different brew of soup, no doubt, but using basically the same ingredients.

Industry players like to say fashion is an art because it offers an alternate universe. True, but Ac.Stet would like to point out that they are talking about Clothedom, not fashion.

Fashion belongs to a fantasy realm, most definitely, but like what Lacan says, fantasies are something that can be approximated but never realized, that is their paradox. It is something that drives fashion people forward, but to declare that they are already there, that fashion has become art, is ridiculous. Ac.Stet can only name a handful of magazines, people and events that have truthfully aspired toward clothedom perimeters of art (i.e. i-D, Kawakubo, Bowery, McKenna, Chalayan). While Clothedom is Art, it is difficult for fashion to be art because it is helplessly tied to clothes and commerce. How can you change the bodies and mercenary greed of men (and women) towards a realm where such human attributes has no relevance?

W certainly can be Art-like, but why should any fashion magazine want to go down this road of pretension? Magazines like POP, Bon, i-D and recently Wonderland (notice they are all European) do fashion spreads that are transcendental, but they don’t soil the atmosphere of their images with a “This Is Art” declaration; conversely, Vanity Fair and New Yorker write fashion as if it consists of a string of existential axioms, but neither label their work as “This Is Fashion”.

Even if Ac.Stet cut W some slack, it should be pointed out that W is only interested in the visual arts. And to push the dagger in deeper (and Ac.Stet is only killing with kindness here), we can say that it narrowly focuses on the most visual of the visual arts: photography chiefly, painting, collage, sculpture (under which Ac.Stet groups installation).

But dance? Performance? And where is Video Art in this issue? Where is this one salient form of the visual arts that Ac.Stet feels will revolutionize the arts in the next century? Where is Aitken, Oursler and Viola? Where’s the address of the democratizing effect of YouTube on video and filmic art?

Oh for sure, W makes a feeble attempt of acknowledging Video Art by yanking some obscure Chinese artists in your face, and an 18-page indulgence on Matthew Barney with a double-fold extension page that would make any advertiser emerald with envy. Ac.Stet attended the Matthew Barney documentary by Alison Chernick last year at Art Basel Miami at Lincoln Road’s Colony Theater and he is not convinced. Mr. Barney is not a video artist. Yes, he makes moving pictures and he makes beautiful films, and he is a performance artist in lieu of his Drawing Restraint projects. His films have a ambiguous mainstream quality of beauty and narrative to them, even though his film language is arcane. Ac.Stet don’t have the seniority in the arts nor the experience in the practice to know for sure (then again, ultimately, who can?). But certainly, Ac.Stet can tell you that Mr. Barney is hardly representative of Video Art. Ac.Stet much prefers his drawings than anything else:

He is definitely interesting, enough for W to develop a soft-spot for. But so is the pretty but vacant Mr. Orlando Bloom on the red carpet at the Cannes, but what does he do, really?

Granted, since the days of Tennant, Warhol and the reign of Weber, beauty (in place of talent) has always been fashion’s obsession. Reminds Ac.Stet of something he once read on a T-shirt: Not Talented But Connected.

Where W fails in its fashion and photographic spreads, it succeeds tremendously in its profiles of seminal movers and shakers in the art industry.

This is an unfortunate irony for a fashion magazine but one that is fitting for W’s effort for November. Not so unfortunate if W is counting on non-fashion and non-targeted people to pick up a copy just because it is an art issue. And not so ironical if you remember that parent company WWD actually has its roots in society. It cut its teeth on profiling the crème de la crème of society, falling back only on fashion as its bread-and-butter, only to evolve gradually as a fashion magazine when the world turned its back on class demarcations. You won’t find information like this anywhere anymore on the Googleverse, because most digital footprints of W Magazine’s history had been * cough * mysteriously erased. But trust Ac.Stet.

For its art stories, deputy editor Julie Belcove continues to build on her reputation as an arts writer functioning in a fashion world.

Giving her two-pence in her two piece on Charles Ray and Marion Goodman, Belcove struggles with a kind of fortitude and industry you would associate more with a college sophomore angling for some sort of favor with a grading professor. She seems to want readers to know she has some kind of upperhand in her interviews and her writer’s voice is somewhat too audible:

“The piece, [Charles Ray] insists, was born of a desire to fashion a compelling multifigure sculpture, and nothing of his true self was revealed. But if there is no connection to his own identity, why did he give each figure his face, and why on earth did he name the thing after himself? Now he’s stumped. “No …”
And again, anyone who thinks Matthew Barney is a great artist is immediately and credentially suspect. Though Ac.Stet concurs that it is a fact that Ms. Belcove writes extremely well, she is no Roberta Smith, but then again, neither is W an ersatz The New Yorker.

W forms that group of nomenclatured magazines that pride themselves with a letter for a name: O, Q, T and V (and of course, then now-defunct M). Perhaps by that minimal gesture of a typesetter’s brushstroke, they seem to say, a whole word is too much and too unnecessary to address what we have to say. So a symbol will just have to do.

Certainly, W is a symbol of fashion insider status, having found its niche as that publication that straddles society and ready-to-wear bordering on luxury.

But for an art issue, reading this month’s W is like taking an art tour in Chelsea but only perusing the goods at the Marian Goodman and no where else. It is hardly symbolic.

Instead of such onerous double duty, it could have just focus on being double-U.

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Magazine Review: GQ November 2007

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It is a common misconception — and Ac.Stet’s sorry you have to hear it from him — but GQ is not a fashion magazine.

Oh, but there is nothing wrong with that in the same way that you would rightfully point out to Ac.Stet that the tomato is not really a vegetable, and Panama hats aren’t really from Panama.

But Ac.Stet feels impelled to pick it up for a review — as he did previously with Details, Glamour, Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire — for many reasons:

1) Ryan Gosling is on the cover.
2) Ryan Gosling is on the cover with a beard
3) Ryan Gosling is on the cover with a beard, wearing pin-stripes
4) Ryan Gosling is on the cover with a beard, wearing pinstripes, in a good interview by writer Alex Pappademas.
5) Ryan Gosling is on the cover with a beard, wearing pinstripes, in a good interview by writer Alex Pappademas, who peppered the story with references to Jim Morrison and The Doors.
6) Ryan Gosling is on the cover with a beard, wearing pinstripes, in a good interview by writer Alex Pappademas, who peppered the story with references to Jim Morrison and The Doors, and said-story precedes another by Charles Bowden on the artist Fernando Botero, which is as beautifully and sensitively written as Ryan Gosling is sensitively beautiful.
7) Ryan Gosling is …
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See the power of a cover? Everything good, or bad, in a magazine begins from there. Surely, what’s good for the Gosling’s good for the ‘genda ?

November’s GQ do hold great things but only if you understand that the old soul within coverboy-coverman-boyman-youngman-oldboy-(oh-boy!) Ryan Gosling’s babyface is a hidden metaphor.

You see, GQ’s insides are largely devoted to making you forget Mr. Gosling’s youthful titan outside and to remember the senior titans in masculine pol-and-pop-culture: Godfather’s Francis Ford Coppola (68), American Gangster’s Denzel Washington (53), Fernando Botero (75), Jerry Seinfeld (53) and John McCain (71).

There is a minor disappointment – one that GQ likes to practice in its anniversary issues – the reprints of GQ articles culled from the past 50 years. Rightfully, GQ can have repeats of favorites, maybe because they feel, hey, since you like it so much, you should have it again.

On Page 66, GQ re-published food critic Alan Richman’s 1994 recollection of his culinary adventures in Vietnam. National Magazine Award-winning though it may be in 1994, it is boring by today’s literary standards: it has no war moral lesson, even fewer gastronomic reference, and to cap it off, the story is not even complete. In fact, you have to log onto the GQ website “to read the rest of the article …”

You may say this is a symptom of nostalgia. But some things are good only once. In Cooking, we call this a re-hash, so we don’t waste last night’s jambalaya. In Television, we call it a re-run, so cheap programming can fill in-between cheaper tiers for advertisers on a budget. But in Publishing? A re-print of a story with a decade-old award, doesn’t make it a re-ward.

Look, with any name, the motive of “repeating” is the same: Faves on a cheap, so everyone – producers and consumers – is happy. But to repackage old stories at 1994 costs and then serve them back to you at 2007 inflationary prices, GQ must think its readers are a dumb-assed generation of men too hazed in their Derek Jeter Driven fragrances to realize this.

But like Ac.Stet says, the decision for re-prints was a minor disappointment.

Thankfully, GQ redeemed itself with good fashion pages.

What strikes Ac.Stet this month is how close GQ approximates towards Clothedom this month in the regular diary item “Every Shirt Tells A Story” on Pg 80.

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Subject Mordechai wears a look that he hates with a passion. Why, what a lovely exemplification of Clothedom! A manifestation of clothedom is that clothes are things that are alive, like friends and loved ones. And in tandem, clothedom clothes are not plastic. Like a dear friend, you don’t always like them, but you love them most of the time. Ac.Stet has a rather regal whipsnake leather jacket from Versace which he really loves or that gold-pinned serpent vest but there are times he puts it on and parties and has moments like, What the fuck is this snake doing dying on my shoulders? It’s the same kind of self-consciousness that negotiates between you wearing it and then you imagining yourself seeing yourself wear it. It is a feeling – sometimes fleeting – that mutates from self-awareness into situational awareness and which we – like Mordechai here – disguises into a kind of persistent griping just so to distance yourself from it. After all, as a Clothedom-practitioners, we never take ourselves that seriously as to not be able to internalize all the sentiments a great fashion look can generate.

Are you lost? Ac.Stet thought you may be … but good magazines like GQ do provoke inner articulations like these – if you do love fashion deep enough to think about it – and Ac.Stet encourages you to listen to them and indulge in them as much as you want to.

On the same page, essentially how wicked is this GQ suggestion in “The Look: These Buds Are Made For You”?:

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The transhumanist in Ac.Stet only has two words to say: Technology blossoms.

Further on, there is a personality in such an esoteric discipline, that his name really shouldn’t be popping up as regularly as his does: Frederic Malle. Remember his ubiquity in T The New York Times Style Magazine? On Pg 102, GQ gives him a full-page drill on his recipe for style. It is written in a Fill-In-The-Blanks style, which is a variant of the Q&A interview format, which makes both writing it and reading it breezy.

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But like all deceptively simple things, the Q&A format of interviewing is often over-exploited and misunderstood. This format is best employed when you have a really interesting person to interview (which in this case, Mr. Malle is) and he has a unique way of phrasing his words and the laissez-faire style of Q&A practically allows him to retain his style and tell his story. But the problem with the Q&A format, as any seasoned magazine editor would tell you, is that if you are not a good interviewer, and you master no control over the session, the A in Q&A becomes gibberish. Read this from the Frederic Malle Q&A and you will see what Ac.Stet means:

Q: What exactly it is I do.
A: “I enslave noses. Perfumers historically don’t work on their own to make a fragrance. It can take a year, actually. So if you do that alone, you go completely buts. My job is to look after the perfumers. I’m like a publisher of fragrances.”

Look, which part of “exactly” do you not understand? What does “enslave noses” mean? What does “publishing” fragrances mean, exactly? Me-guess the writer Adam Sachs just let it slip by, like the whiff of a forgettable cheap perfume.

Another gripe on Page 64 when Tom Ford is asked what he feels is The Best Piece of Clothing of the Past 50 Years. Mr. Ford says: “The Blazer. It will always be iconic…”

Ac.Stet just creeps out whenever the word “iconic” is being thrown around, like a discarded panty in a frat-house party: overly-familiar, much-abused, but mostly used in inappropriate ways.

The Versace safety-pin dress Liz Hurley wore to a film premiere is iconic. The swan dress Bjork wore to the 2001 Oscars is iconic. The Chanel suit Mr. Ford later exemplifies with is iconic. The costume jewellery Iris Apfel drowns herself in is iconic. A singular style, a signature look is iconic. A blazer, as a type of clothing, is not iconic. What Mr. Ford must mean to say, is that a blazer is a staple, a classic, or is timeless. Ac.Stet only wished the subs and copy-editors at GQ would have picked up on that.

Flipping on, you realize one problem that arises whenever fashion magazines try to do features on fashion on the cheap – by the way, to aspire towards Clothedom, never expect things to come cheap – is that, they usually come off, well, cheap.

This November, GQ falls uncharacteristically into this pothole. In its “Style At Any Price” section, it recruits Foo Fighter Dave Grohl to model clothes from Cheap Monday, Target and Macy’s I.N.C. in a spread titled, well, “Cheap Tricks”. As if it felt it has not nailed in the credit-on-a-diet message, the start-page looks like a puerile Mastercard commercial targeted at kids:

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And later, in the same section on Pg 234, GQ puts hardly-clotheshorse-material actor Chiwetel Ejiofor in an ill-styled spread titled “Glam Slams”. Does anyone smell Domino’s Pizza?:

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Has it finally happened? Has the GQ graphics department and their signature acid-colored geometry finally backfired this time? Alors, look at the fashion photography on Pg 258 titled “New Rio”. It is beautiful, but there is nagging urge in Ac.Stet’s line of vision to read the “New Rio” header as “NERO”, that devil of a ruler who is destined to bring the world as we know it to an untimely demise:

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It sure doesn’t help that right from the get-go in “God is Green”, Editor-in-chief Jim Nelson primed Ac.Stet in his Editor’s Letter with a preamble on how a green crusade is spearheaded by Nero’s spiritual opposite: The Pope.

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Oh, and the NEw RiO fashion imagery do bring to mind something John the Apostle said in Rev. 13:11-14,16-18 “… [the beast] also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark”:

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Ah, but this is madness, you say. But if it is, then it is a kind of glorified dementia … a descent into the kind of madness once poetically translated in Beautiful Mind, where every image supplant a visual code.

But such is the poison of Clothedom.

You master it to free yourself from the visual codes of fashion. And then you never see your examined life the same way again.

Would you take the Red Pill, or the Blue?

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Or has your mass-market style guide already chosen for you?:

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Magazine Review: Marie Claire Nov 2007

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Marie Claire is one magazine that wears many hats.

And Ac.Stet’s not just talking about the strange hat feature it has on Page44, odd in a fall-winter season when one should really be shielding against the winds, not the sun.

 

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Why, it is a shapeshifter!

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It has so many variations in magazine styles that when Ac.Stet flips through its pages, he mentally plays a game of Magazine Charades with himself.

This is Marie Claire … as Us Weekly:

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… as HAPPY Magazine (UK):

 

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… as New York Magazine:

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… as GLAMOUR Magazine:

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… as DETAILS Magazine:

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… as Travel + Leisure, or Conde Nast Traveller:

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… as Real Simple Magazine:

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… as RADAR Magazine:

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… as JANE Magazine:

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… as National Geographic (you gotta hand it to them editors at Marie Claire):

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… and finally, as Harper’s Bazaar:

 

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So what is Marie Claire?

Ac.Stet is still not very sure.

It is the same reaction he got when he reads the piece on the Beckham’s interview by writer Howie Kahn. What is he trying to say in the story exactly? Nothing much, except we now know he got miffed because he couldn’t wrestle a good interview out of the Beckhams? And what about the perfume that triggered the whole junket? We know nothing about that too, except something arcane about it smelling like the future. And even so, it was a silly way to end a story without the writer really knowing what that means.

One saving grace of the November issue of Marie Claire is an exercise in good journalism by writer Jenny Bailey on the ugly malpractices of spa aestheticians in “The Truth About Medi-Spas” (P. 76). This is certainly a must-read if you only have time for one story in the magazine.

For other stories, you may pick up any other hybrid-clone at your local newsstand.

As the French-born Marie Claire may sometimes remember hearing: C’est la meme chose.

Magazine Review: COSMOPOLITAN Nov 2007

 

Magazines like Glamour, Allure and Cosmopolitan make you realize that there are women’s magazines such as these aforementions, and then there are women’s fashion magazines.

In truckloads, women’s magazines serve pages after pages devoted to the same theory of a woman’s ideal existence: Happiness is a state of mind as that other half. In tandem, stories are single-mindedly trained on variations of that subversion: Men, and where to find them, how to get them, how to keep them, and all that kind of unnecessary information you really should be getting by experiencing, rather than from reading.

Women’s fashion magazines, on the other hand, work on the philosophical notion of negation. As in the negation of men, and following which, negating women’s position as that other half. In so doing, fashion magazines reclaim women’s position as singular entities. Away from men, they become empowered, albeit by their desire for material supplants like fashion, clothes, accessories and beauty. This magazine group – which claim titles like Vogue, W, Elle and Harper’s Bazaar as members – has zilch stories on relationships, except those that revolves around thousand-dollar crocodile bags and silken Lanvin dresses. The unwritten ethos of these magazines is that fashion emboldens and strengthens you to be that one singular entity, bestows you that independence from men – and all the emotional baggage of bonding and coupling – once thought indispensable in order to feel complete.

Fashion, as these group of magazines seem to say, is the panacea for an existence in a pre-determined lonely world.

Ac.Stet’s Clothedom theory is that the presence/ absence of Fashion as a main focus in a women’s magazine denotes respectively, an empowerment/ a replacement, for men.

This month’s issue of Cosmopolitan clearly exemplifies this theory of Clothedom. What it lacks in fashion editorial, it more than makes up for in M-E-N. Men, Man, Guys, Boys, Boyfriends, and — that breed of men that spells the boon and bane of Cosmopolitan’s target audience of single women — Bachelors.

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November is the magazine’s annual 50 Bachelors issue where readers vote for their favorite fantasy catch – one from each American state, get it? – for the year 2007.

So really, there is no better month for Ac.Stet to review Cosmopolitan magazine than this.

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In the same way that women’s fashion magazines make life impossible without fashion, women’s magazines make life seem impossible without men.

The cover itself shows just how important its editors think the stronger sex is, and should be. Just read the coverlines: Six out of nine of them make sure you never forget who women really should be living for:

“the hottest things to do to a MAN with your hands”

“meet our 50 BACHELORS!”

“GUYS’ sex confessions”

“what’s your sex style? Figuring out yours – and HIS – will double your bliss”

“100 outrageous facts about MEN”

“I know what your BOYFRIEND did last night”

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Inside, Cosmopolitan dishes out its brand of gender ideology that just seems … oh, so natural. Generally, these are the tenets of Cosmopolitanism:

#1. You have to fetishize yourself:
“You vixen.” (Page 120) “You’re a vixen on constant simmer.” (Page 270)

#2. You have to learn to stroke his ego:
“ ‘You are hot’ That’s the top compliment a man wants to hear.” (Page 42, Cosmo Men section)

#3. You have to be dishonest:
“After … something kinky with a new guy … offer a little white lie about how it’s your first time trying that – it makes him feel special.” (Page 42, Cosmo Men section)

4. You are just the movie, but he? He is the star:
“Let HIM be your Superman” (Page 113);

5. You are his toy:
“Wham-bam and he’s a happy boy.” (Page 125)

#6. You have to like what he likes:
“Men love girls who like boy food.” (Page 36)

As if these are not enough to make one suspect that sitting at the top of the Cosmo masthead are bratty-boy Daddies with Lolita fantasies, not unlike those on Dateline NBC’s To Catch A Predator, their Fun Fearless Fashion Awards for “Most Buzz-Worthy Show” was awarded to that dude-slobberfest … Victoria’s Secret.

And as for the expose on Page 132 “Tales of an NFL Cheerleader”, Ac.Stet can almost hear thousands of frat boys pilfer copies of Cosmo from their lady dorm-mates for some sheepish indulgence.

As if how women should conduct themselves in the presence of men in their waking hours is not enough, Cosmo goes on for four full-pages to define who you are in their absence, when you are sleeping (“How do you sleep when HE’s not there?” Page 160).

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Finally, when women do make it on their own in male-dominated territory, they have to … become men. Quite literally. On Page 130 in its “Real Life Reads” section on “TV’s Newest Buzzmakers”, Cosmopolitan interviews Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas, whose brainchild Reaper on CW, means they have to re-imagine themselves as … slacker dudes.

Women, in order to preserve their worldview of dualism, also have to view men as prospects: “How Our Friendship Turned To Love” (Page 128).

You do suspect that if women can ever be sexes in their own right. So Ac.Stet flips over to the fashion spreads, and while some are well-shot (most others suffer from uneducated lighting and tired poses), they also seem to imply that women are … wallflowers.

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In “The Bold and the Beautiful” (Page 168), besides channeling the title of a soap opera built on the lives of women plagued by the mien of men, the sub-text is suggestive: “This season, you have all you need to create headturning outfits … There’s zero chance you’ll fade into the scenery – no matter how breathtaking it is.”

This reminds Ac.Stet of that time when Richard Nixon who keeps saying “I am not a thief. I am not a thief.”

Well, essentially, this fashion spread is likely to turn the viewer’s attention from the wearer to the landscape. And moreover, notice how it is written “… you have all you need to create headturning outfits …”? So, the clothes are not there for women to create their own identities, but rather, to make the clothes look good:

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In the end, women now cannot be heard AND seen, and if they do, they should be seen best possibly in a way that mazimizes their appeal to men. The visual pleasure’s rather 1970s Laura Mulvey, yes?:

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We can read it this way, or we can read it another way. But either way, you will suddenly realize that the magazine is singularly tuned to train readers to use sex as a tool.

After all, a good Cosmopolitan girl does not mean that it is imperative that you have a man. Uh-uh, No. What Cosmopolitan actually means to say is that it is okay if you don’t have a man … now. But you have to have one … eventually.

And here’s how, the editors say: Sex.

Cosmo editors make sure they teach you how to use it to snare one, keep one and keep many others hungry. The magazine is filled with body-as-weapon encouragement:

(Page 126): “You could offer really amazing sex as an incentive.”

(Page 154): “Why don’t you … Give your guy a reverse strip …”

(Page 106): “As a Cosmo reader, no one could ever accuse you of lacking in the sexual-dynamo department.”

(Page 112): “Since you are a hot Cosmo girl, you likely spend a lot of time cooking up ways to blow your guy’s mind between the sheets, which, to be clear, is a very good thing.”

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Cosmo not only asks women for sex advice, they also ask men for it so readers can better prime their sexual identities accordingly (Page 106: “What Not to do in Bed” + Page 38, “100 Things You Need to Know About Guys”, Cosmo Men section).

Ac.Stet wants to be convinced that Cosmopolitan is teaching women to reclaim their bodies from the doctrinations of men, and instead use it for their own benefit. But instead, Ac.Stet comes away believing that in lesser hands – read: doll-brained writers – women readers may just as well haul themselves back to a prehistoric time when they were mere pretty vessels for the well-laid plans of mice and men.

You may also get a strange vibe that Cosmopolitan may not really be intended for just straight women.

There are odd columns like “Bedroom Blog”, (Page 126). Boring and uninspired as it reads, Ac.Stet really wonders who really wants to read such a piece, given that the only people interested in bedroom blogs are straight men, Dateline NBC predators and lesbians.

But Ac.Stet gets a huge clue from its advertisers.

For a women’s magazine, it scores a lot of ads targeted at men: Adidas’ 0:01, Kenneth Cole’s Reaction, Stetson’s Original Cologne and David Beckham’s Intense Instinct. Even when it is not, the ads are not exclusive to women, but are targeted at BOTH women and men: Calvin Klein’s Eternity and Euphoria, Hugo Boss’ XY, Usher’s For Him and Her.

Of course, this may be due to the fact that the November issue is dedicated to its Cosmo Men Special, but a nagging suspicion is that Cosmopolitan feels that women (some already high-income individuals or equal breadwinners in their own right) are not intended to be shopping just for themselves, but also for – yah – men.

Layout-wise, Ac.Stet gets rather discombobulated by Cosmopolitan’s organization of its section headers.

What is the differentiation between the two sections “You You You” and “Totally Cosmo”?

Why can’t the stories under these two sections like tips on corporate success, home deco on the cheap and the poorly copied Diana Vreeland-ripoff column “Why Don’t You …” either (i) come under one new revamped section; or (ii) be absorbed to other sections like “Weekend”?

One suspects that the force of vision for these sections – which might have started well years ago – are faltering to a state where certain vaguely-defined sections are now treated as dumping grounds for stories that defies the mag’s categorization (e.g. the “How do you sleep when he’s not there” story on Page 160).

Ac.Stet has mentioned in an earlier post that these past two months have been the book-hawking season for magazine editors. Cosmopolitan proves Ac.Stet’s point once again, with not just a a quarter-page mention in the Editor’s Letter page penned by in-chief Kate White, but a full four-page excerpt from the book “Basic Black: The Essential Guide for Getting Ahead at Work (and in Life)” written by Hearst Magazines president Cathie Black.

Besides Ac.Stet’s difficulty reading between Black and White, he does realize that having a name like COSMOPOLITAN brings a huge burden.

From dictionary.com,

cos~mo~pol~i~tan [koz-muh-pol-i-tn] –adjective means ==
1. free from local, provincial, or national ideas, prejudices, or attachments; at home all over the world.
2. of or characteristic of a cosmopolite.
3. belonging to all the world; not limited to just one part of the world.
4. Botany, Zoology. widely distributed over the globe.–noun
5. a person who is free from local, provincial, or national bias or attachment; citizen of the world; cosmopolite.

It is an immense duty to bring the world to your reader, even American Express’s Travel + Leisure have a juggernaut of a task every month doing just that. And having read Cosmopolitan, Ac.Stet gets no sense that a person becomes more of a cosmopolite, in the sense that the reader is “at home all over the world” or “not limited to just one part of the world”.

Magazines like this really just wants women to live and die in one world: Men’s.

If this is a moral choice, there is no wrong in that. But for their sake, Ac.Stet hopes it’s in the surrounds of men like these:

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It will certainly make the descent sweeter. Oh, but what a dreadful way to live and a beautiful way to die.

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In Fashion, A Name Grants Immortality … or Less Pretentiously: “Let’s Play Jeopardy!!” (13)

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Names often fool.
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But if moneys and longevity are at stake in a fashion game of changing trends and whimsical consumer fancies, then a good name – preferably not your boring own – should be used as a talisman to tide over the capricity of the business.if you think you know your fashion history, and fashion pseudonym trivia, then let’s play Jeopardy!

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In 1971, distance runner Phil Knight founded sports shoe manufacturing company Blue Ribbon Sports with friend Bill Bowerman. Later, inspired by the Onitsuka Tiger trainers from Japan, he launched his own shoe range and renamed his company after the Greek goddess of victory:
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Nike.

Mainstream Media’s Oriental Baby Boom

As if to make up for decades of Far Eastern negligence, the media industry is now gorging on that ethnic segment long overlooked by marketeers. Thanks to that onslaught of over-represented Asian models on the New York and European catwalks since last Spring, Orientalism finally has a face in mainstream media.

And it has gone rice-white, pearl-hued, yellow-skinned, golden-toned and almond-eyed, beginning from where they should all start: infants.

Some may want to credit this to the sociological results following that China baby-adoption boom seen in the last decade.

Magazine Review: DETAILS Magazine Nov 2007

The fall months of September, October and November seem to be book-hawking season for magazine editors. This observation is not just about regular magazine features like book reviews, mind you. But full-on, blatant product placements of books usually written by staff members, or closely associated with magazine staff.

NEW YORK magazine is hawking its “Look Book: A Gallery of Street Fashion”, ELLE is mongling fashion director Nino Garcia’s “Little Black Book Of Style”, while GLAMOUR is giving ample column inches to Jenna Bush’s “Ana Story” which is photographed by staffer Mia Baxter.

This month, men’s periodical DETAILS magazine is no different from its sisters. Editor-in-chief Daniel Peres based his entire Letter From The Editor around a pitch for “The Details Men’s Style Manual”, penned by the magazine’s writers and editors. Okay, the mag needs extra dough besides the usual newsstand sales and subscription fees, Ac.Stet understands but Whao! Does it not seem like almost every magazine is diggin’ it.

Ploughing through.

On the whole, Details magazine seemed to have carved out an unusual identity for itself in the world of men’s magazines. It is that abnormality of a dick mag for the straight man who wishes he was gay, and the gay man who secretly wants to be straight.

The entire magazine has gay references that mushroom all over the pages. At times, there is almost this natural sense of symbiosis: the gay notes have a certain dependency on the straight context of the story, such as this month’smusicman profile on Duran Duran, using their homo-boy appeal to anchor the entire story of the once-seminal band’s revival.

In “Wild Boys Never Lose It”, the Duran Duran article begins and ends its story with reference to 1,000 gay men. Read it to see what Ac.Stet means.

Earlier, in its “Wise Guy” regular column on successful older men giving advice to its intended younger male readers (Um, innuendo a la ancient Greece not intended) gives space to Lee Iacocca this month. Mr. Iacocca did not say he is gay, nor did the interview imply so, but looking at Mr. Iacocca’s picture and the closeup, what are we suppose to think?

 

 

A later story spotlights an actress from Charmed, a gay man’s favorite tv series on witchy crafts, crafty bitches, and bitchy witches.

And then there is the abnormality of gay novelist Augusten Burrough’s story relating his experience of choosing a boyfriend based on said-date’s body scent. Ac.Stet wonders if a straight man is reading it, how he would relate to choosing a girlfriend based on Mr. Burroughs’ account of being turned off by a man smelling like the floor of a fratboy’s bathroom.

And of course, the diamond in the gay tiara of this dick mag is the last page of the magazine, devoted to its regular Antrhopology column, “Gay or …”. This month, it is titled “Gay or … Straight.”

Case closed.

On writing, Details magazine is usually good. This month, however, it has the misfortune of assigning a potentially amusing style story to the wrong writer.

On Page 112, Ms. Katharine Wheelock writes about the haircut every man should avoid. Hell, it was primed to be such a sensational read that the editors even decided to blurb it on the November cover.

But boy, are you in for a huge disappointment. Ac.Stet was thinking, oh wow, what haircut is this? The Mohawk that is so popular among Asian-Americans now? The half-head mop that belonged to Marylander Christian from Project Runway Season 4? A perm a la Perez Hilton? What what what?

Well, according to Details Magazine, it is a side-sweep with mandatory eyebrow-skimming fringe. The magazine christened it the “Peter Pan”. Having had this hairstyle since last year, Ac.Stet is inclined to disagree. But all’s well and good because, hey, everyone’s entitled to their opinion.

But what opinion? Ms. Wheelock, the writer, waffled her way through justifying her opinion in the entire article. She says “what a man over 30 – a man over 20 (sic) – cannot get away with is the most recent trend to emerge from the hallways of American adolescence: side-swept bangs”.

And then Wheelock goes on to say that 20-year-olds like Zac Efron is okay with that but 28-year-old Pete Wentz (Ashlee Simpson’s current squeeze) is not. Ac.Stet wonders, you base an entire story on the style mistake made within an 8-year difference?

And then she says: “The news that men are visiting their hairstylists armed with pages torn from Us Weekly is disturbing enough.”

Why exactly is this disturbing the writer did not say. It is pretty common to bring in pictures to show your stylist how you want to look like, lest your stylist and you communicate on different wavelengths and you end up walking out of the salon with a nightmare of a cut. So one can only imagine that Ms Wheelock have only so much salon experience to find such otherwise-acceptable behavior “disturbing”.

Anyway, Ms. Wheelock goes on to say: “The fact that they’re bringing in recent snapshots of Tom Cruise is chilling … Cruise’s hairstyle has always been reminiscent of a Lego guy’s but the … bangs he’s had … have been for a movie … in which he plays a mutinous Nazi.”

Er, Ms. Wheelock is engaging in fact-twisting demagoguery here. Tom Cruise’s role in the said film project is Valkyrie, where he is playing Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, a German leader of a group of German military plotters against the Nazi regime, and which culminated in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler in July 1944. And Ms Wheelock has the audacity in the capacity of a writer call Colonel Stauffenberg … a Nazi?

Besides not doing her research well and fact-twisting just so she sounds funnier or smarter, Ms Wheelock seems to have a knack for soliciting people for quotes which have little to do with adding ground to her opinion. Here are all the quotes she used:

“A lot of guys are coming in saying they want bangs,” says YYY.

“It’s usually banker guys who want to be a little more fashionable,” says XXX. “ A lot of them are coming in with pictures of Tom Cruise.”

“All the surfer kids in California started wearing … a year ago … It’s got a mod, Beatles-esque thing about it.”

“We pick up my friend’s daughter … He wasn’t into it.”

Where’s that ONE quote that even remotely says, YES, that side-swept bang is as age-inappropriate as Ms Wheelock says it is? Obviously Ms. Wheelock could not find people to support her theory … makes Ac.Stet wonder, how this piece was ever approved of and passed through editing is one of those arcane miracles of magazine journalism. This is just groundless ranting. The writer might as well save the space and join Arianna Huffington in discussing Al Gore’s undulating waistline.

If Ms. Katharine Wheelock has enough style wisdom to condemn a particular trend, she would have known that opinion leaders are really into the side-sweep style and wearing it well. Such as? The spectrum is wide, from Presidential hopeful John Edwards (who has worn the style since college), to The Misshapes’ Greg Krelenstein and Geordon Nicol, and to the characters of Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited (incidentally, was written about in the same magazine on Page 62). And all of them range from 23 to 54.

Sigh, it is all just groundless ranting. And the name “Peter Pan” is definitely a misnomer. If age is really the reason why the writer thinks the haircut should not be worn, well, there was no evidence that Ms. Wheelock could amply provide. Pity, because it shows more of the writer’s ill-informed writing, than the hairstyle she is trying to denigrate.

Anyhoos, that is just a minor flaw. Details Magazine has carved a niche for itself in bloke-vocative editorials. The stories are based on life’s garden-variety issues, with a bawdy, naughty boy spin. And they are usually Wall Street- or celebrity-led.

Like this month’s editorial on why magicians are the new celebrity toy-boys, and why opium is the new kick. Easy reading. It does serious as well, with coverage on citizen journalism and race victim-turned-millionaire Abner Louima.

Details also has the tradition of getting recently-minted personalities to pen articles. Previous inductees include Lauren Weinberger (The Devil Wears Prada) and Mark Simpson (who coined the “metrosexual” term). This month, Augusten Burroughs, who recently ran with scissors, writes about running in circles around the scents of men.

Burroughs is no Chandler Burr when it comes to writing about smells, but he does write a long-winded soliloquy in this issue about how a man’s natural scent attracts and repels … just him. Ac.Stet is hardpressed to believe that Mr. Burroughs really found love of eight years with his current squeeze only because of the way he smelt. In the end, Burroughs says that is linked to his instinct. Ac.Stet wished he wrote more about that, because the entire essay is three pages long but you get his point only in the last 5 paragraphs. Pity, cos Ac.Stet smelt a stronger point in this story.

Details also has the dubious honor of having a minor monopoly on stories on almost-over-the-hill personalities. In the past, Matthew McConaughey was a regular coverboy with his try-hard antics on being his generation’s next action star. Then there was this past feature on Michael Douglas as an ageing Lothario. Carrie “Princess Leia” Fisher used to write tediously self-indulgent pieces about, well, nothing.

The November issue seems a culmination of such almost-been-ism. The cover stars Bennifer survivor Ben Affleck, and the inside story paints him as an actor-turned-producer struggling for credibility. It moves on to Alyssa Milano, one of those half-baked celebrities who never really seem to reach A-list status. And then there was Duran Duran, gushing about their collaboration with artistes half their age (i.e Justin Timberlake) and how hopeful they are about their impending album.

Can Details not get beyond this habit of snickering at has-beens and almost-beens? Or are male heroes for of-age-men really that difficult to come by, as Ac.Stet has written about before?

Strictly speaking, Details is not really a fashion magazine.

After all, who dares to call itself a mens’ fashion magazine, given that the fashion market for men is so limited? The best performing men’s magazines are those that deal with current affairs, business, automobiles and sports. Fashion is often treated as a side-dish in men’s mags, like in Men’s Health. Even Men’s Vogue steers clear of men’s fashion issues, preferring pages that are not fashion-driven, but personality or celebrity-driven. Some mags don’t even bother to market themselves as men’s fashion but for the benefit of earning ad dollars from both menswear and womenswear brands, they make it known that they do men’s fashion, e.g. i-D and Surface. So far, Ac.Stet can only count upon “T” The New York Times Style Magazine as doing men’s fashion really really well, but even so, the Men’s Style edition comes out half-yearly.

And coming back to Details, its fashion pages are mindfully straightforward, and clothes are captioned, posed and shot in the same model-please-stand-sit-there style, similar to the way Men’s Health does it. Yes, it is predictable and yes, it is routine. But the flip side is, it is uncomplicated and the target-market – magazine-reading Wall Street, straight men – get it.

Notice how Details always makes fashion seem extremely approachable? Even the style of a real-life style arbiter (i.e Socialista’s Jeffrey Trunell), such as the formidable doorman at an intimidating dance club, seem accessible:

Having said that, Ac.Stet must say that the layout and order of the fashion pages in Details are a study in how a men’s mag should be put together. To the uneducated eye, the mish-mash of the fashion pages – some here, some there, but never grouped together the way most men’s magazines do it for the sake of this strange concept called “organization” and “categorization” – seemed haphazard and all-over-the-place.

But, to those in the know, such pagination is a brilliant exercise in educating men – especially those who either don’t understand fashion or has no patience for it – about the ways of fashion.

This is how Details orders its fashion features:

It usually begins with the style column in “Know + Tell” section starting on Page 66, following that are feature-feature-feature, and then another story on style (the badly written “Lose The Peter Pan Haircut”) on Page 112, and then sandwiched by feature-feature-feature, next comes “The New American Bespoke” on Page 122, again feature-feature, and then more fashion product spreads in “The Details” Page 147, story-story-story, and then even more product spreads in “The Best Suits In The World” Page 170, and then again cover-story-story-story, and then like a jack-in-the-box, more fashion spreads in “How To Wear A Vest” on Page 184, and “Outsider” following that.

This way, like coaxing a wayward child to eat his green veggies, you mix it up with his favorite foods so that he laps up the whole damn bowl. Fashion information gets absorbed into the system one way or another. See? Simple but brilliant. But not many magazine editors get it.

Speaking of fashion stories, the “The New American Bespoke” feature on bespoke and made-to-measure (MTM) clothing is one of the finest articles on tailoring Ac.Stet has ever come across.

A stab-in-their-own-foot is that the article header “The New American Bespoke” is squeezed so small at the start of the article that you could easily have missed it. The result is a page that turns so suddenly into the story that it takes a moment before you realize it is the start of a six-page feature.

A minor gripe: On Page 128, the magazine offers places to buy bespoke and MTM. Ac.Stet is puzzled why Ermenegildo Zegna – an Italian heritage brand built on menswear tailoring and whose factories actually helped to produce Tom Ford’s label (which was actually given full-page visual in the same story) – is not mentioned. C’mon, those who know menswear fashion will acknowledge that its Su Misura service is legendary. Instead, other Italian brands like Armani, Jil Sander and Versace – all more fashion than heritage brands – are mentioned instead. A prior arrangement with the brands PRs, peut etre?

Another minor gripe: On Page 170, “The Best Suits In The World”, some gaffe on French suits: “With their high, notched lapels and angular cuts, French suits have the artistic gravitas of an installation at the Centre Pompidou.”

Wonderful analogy, except that the Centre Pompidou is not really French.

It was designed by Italians, one of them being the brilliant Renzo Piano.

For this magazine, the Devil must have given Details the slip.