Magazine Roundup

A few things from the April magazines really caught my eye and got me thinking. (Also I am procrastinating from doing dissertation work so this is a great excuse to be doing something else which is still productive!)

Vogue and Tatler both had an interview and spread with French actress, model and style icon Clemence Poesy as a key feature. I think it is ironic that two of the top women's lifestyle/fashion publications ran a feature with the same person in the same month's issues. Admittedly Clemence had an enviably casual yet intriguing sense of style and with the first part of the final installation of Harry Potter coming up later this summer she is probably trying to advertise her role but still...This situation really minds me of the magazine rivalry in '13 going on 30'.

Vogue (left images) kept the styling very simple with a key theme of masculine tailoring and very relaxed hair and make-up- loose waves and very little eye-make up. The accompanying text claimed that Clemence was very particular about her choice of outfits, discarded anything with eye-catching patterns or an affected 'worn' look  and kept on her own boots. True to her own conception of self but still 'fashionable', and just check out the lighting of that beauty shot (bottom left). Stunning.

Tatler (for whom Clemence was also the cover girl) somehow, in contradiction to the text of Vogue, got Clemence to wear a brightly patterned and embellished Louis Vuitton skirt (cover shot) and styled her in extremely feminine lace and even a quite provocative Lanvin dress with polka dot tights (middle image).

The difference in the two shoots is very interesting. It shows the differences you can achieve with alternative styling, lighting and photography.

This is more of a recommendation for those who haven't yet delved into the wider world of non-mainstream fashion publications. This is Lula, a fairly new magazine, only on its tenth issue. The overall look is of a young girl's dream. Very feminine styling, intimate and quite simple photography, clean layouts with black text on white background, next to no advertisements and with a focus upon interviews rather than first person articles. Definitely worth checking out if you haven't heard of it.

On to the collections! These publications typically cover the extent of the main worldwide fashion weeks- London, Paris, Milan, New York- and as such they are more expensive than your average magazine, but definitely worth it if you want the tactile experience of looking at the Spring/Summer collections rather than witnessing them online on sites like style.com.

Paris Vogue collections. By far the most expensive but also the most comprehensive and accessible. There is a double page spread for each designer with good quality images of some of the best looks, plus a small review (in French and translated into English). The layout is simple but for sheer ease and clarity it's great. You can look at one spread and get a general idea of what that designer is trying to encapsulate in their Spring/Summer collections, as above with Vivienne Westwood. You also get really detailed spreads of accessories (as above with Lanvin) which is SSOO good, because quite often with British Vogue and Elle collections the accessories are in a jumble of photos on the models themselves and you can't get a clear conception of what an individual designer is trying to achieve.

Lastly, Elle collections. Without a doubt Elle's best publication to date. The spreads are really great for encompassing the experience of fashion weeks as a whole, rather than just focussing purely upon the clothes. You get details of the catwalk productions, who sat front row, what the editors and models were wearing backstage, what the make-up looks were- and most importantly the work of all designers from different fashion week shows are combined to provide you with a run-down of what the key trends are from theme, shape and colour.

Although all of the images and spreads were great, what really impressed me about this collection was section 5-'Manifesto- the substance of style: there's more to fashion than clothes'. This segment had four thought-provoking articles written by notable journalists on key topics such as the weight debate, feminism, blogging and male journalists in the fashion industry. This type of writing is what I aspire to. People who can identify a relevant and interesting topic, research it thoroughly and then produce an article which both answers and provokes questions. I totally agree with the epigraph- there IS more to fashion than clothes.