Alexandra Shulman’s Notebook
Yes, the way to a woman’s heart really is shopping!
WHEN I was given the job of editing Vogue back in 1992, it was because the owners needed someone with more journalistic than fashion experience to go into battle with Marie Claire, the recent magazine import from France then becoming very successful in the UK.
Its mix of fashion and sexy human interest stories – ‘I slept with my boyfriend’s twin!’ – was winning over readers and advertisers, some of whom had shifted their loyalty from Vogue.
How times change. Last week sadly, the print version of that once impressive magazine was closed down, another supposed victim of the digital revolution.
But hang on a minute. Might it be that it is not only digital that is taking a wrecking ball to the print landscape? Might it not also be that magazines are publishing less and less of what their readers honestly want? And the clue here is in the ‘honestly’.
One of the main attractions of that original Marie Claire was a fashion round- up called 101 Ideas. It was brilliant. It was stuffed with affordable clothes to buy and clever fashion tricks and it was what most people bought the magazine for, although they wouldn’t admit that. They’d say they bought it for a feature on female genital mutilation. 101 Ideas was killed off years ago but if I were starting a magazine I’d bring it back to life immediately.
Magazines have to strike a balance between content with aspirational lustre that readers think they ought to enjoy and stuff that genuinely i nterests t hem. I remember legendary Tatler editor Mark Boxer hiring cookery writer Elizabeth David so people could say that was why they read the magazine when we all knew what they really wanted was to pore over posh party pictures. Of course magazines also need to reflect their times which is why currently so many are filling their pages with fewer glossy products and replacing them with endless articles about woke initiatives. To do otherwise would be to show yourself lethally out of touch, in particular with a younger readership preoccupied by climate change, the desire for diversity and the environmental challenges of materialism. Just look at the interest in the Duchess of Sussex’s September Vogue. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t an appetite for magazines that help find a great new dress for your cousin’s wedding. Or a pair of boots for winter. A print magazine which you can refer to again and again and vitally, discover, what the late GQ Editor Michael Vermeulen called ‘neat s**t to buy’ certainly deserves to exist. Yes, we can admire how an influencer teams her snakeskin boots with her Jacquard print overcoat on Instagram, and we can find vast amount of product on e-commerce sites, but they don’t have the filter or resonance of editorial on a physical page. I once had t o design an imaginary magazine at some corporate bonding exercise. My team came up with an outline for a weekly magazine filled with page upon page of clothes and clever styling tips. That was all it would have. It was unashamedly about shopping. I still think it was a good idea. Few magazines in the current landscape would feel c o mfortable bei ng so unapologetically consumerist in content. But they could be missing a trick.
Darn it – I’m sick of my man’s holey socks
WE WERE getting dressed for dinner when I spotted the holes in David’s socks. ‘Those have got to go,’ I said. ‘Why?’ he replied. ‘They’re riddled with holes.’ ‘So? Men don’t mind such things,’ he continued – presumably unaware that Paul Wolfowitz who lost his job as the head of the World Bank shortly after being caught in a Turkish mosque with his toes poking out.
‘Well I mind. They look sordid.’ I persevered. ‘That’s rich coming from someone who shuffles around the place in a housecoat,’ was his rapier-like coup de grace.
I think he was referring to my elegant dressing gown but whatever, he’s certainly not a fan of it or many of my favourite clothes. Obviously they can’t be put into the same disgusting category as his socks but I guess love is having to put up with someone’s sartorial idiosyncrasies.
Or are there couples out there who find everything in their partner’s wardrobes a delight?
I’ve seen the future of TV – The Archers
THE emerging trend in TV is bitesized viewing, such as the BBC’s State Of The Union written by Nick Hornby in ten-minute segments. Meanwhile in the US, Quibi an app that will stream specially commissioned dramas like this, is being lauded as the new Netflix.
At first I thought the short form idea was crazy. Who would feel satisfied by watching something so slight? But then I realised the format was just like The Archers – a tiny fictional fix that takes hardly any time out of your day but keeps you coming back for more. And look how long that’s survived.
It’s a PC nightmare at the museum
WHAT is a museum? That was the question posed to bosses at a conference who were asked to vote on a motion that would enshrine ‘championing human dignity, global equality and planetary well-being’ in the definition of a museum’s purpose.
Phew! You’d t hink t hey had enough to do simply maintaining them as cherished places filled with marvellous objects. Clearly the delegates felt the same as, rather than voting the motion through, they voted to postpone the decision for another three years. Talk about our indecision is final…
007’s revealed my top holiday secret
MEXICO City, Venice, Udaipur – all f amous settings f or Bond films. And now… Sapri. You might not know where that is. But I do. It’s a small southern Italian seaside town near the holiday home of my oldest friends where I have eaten many a pizza since the age of ten. And it’s where Daniel Craig et al have just been filming the new 007.
One of the region’s delights is that tourism has been mainly confined to Italians. But after the release of No Time To Die the charms of this Mediterranean gem will go global. Bad news for my friends but no doubt a welcome economic boost this still primarily rural area.
Wrinkles? Just get your face liquef ied!
I KNOW we are meant to be zen about our age, but let’s face it there are wrinkles and there are wrinkles. So when I was having a photo taken the other day I suggested to the photographer that we apply my maxim of moving the lens further away for each decade of the subject’s life. ‘ Not to worry’, she replied, ‘I’ll just liquefy’, which is apparently the latest Photoshopping technique. Sounds fantastic.
I only hope I emerge as a pool of glory rather than a dirty puddle.