Ageless Glamour
The usual sound of scrabbling as the postman tries to get Vogue, Private Eye, the LRB and a number of communications from credit cards through my letterbox in one go. When I open the Vogue plastic cover (not very stylish, I'm sorry to say, but a drab grey) I pause. This doesn't look right. The issue is called 'Ageless Glamour' and the cover shows Uma Thurman 'Facing forty with glamour'. This sounds a little to me like 'Facing cancer with courage', which doesn't seem to be the right tone for a supposedly celebratory issue.
There's something altogether un-Voguish about the whole issue. I like the magazine for its beautiful photographs of gorgeous people in unfeasible (and unfeasibly expensive) outfits. It's the one woman's magazine that I buy because it doesn't conform to the dreary round of articles about health scares and orgasms. What writing it contains is generally ok, but the clothes are the thing. Pieces on how to dress as you get older, an interview with style-icon Lady Thatcher (spare me) and details on where you should shop when you are in your 30s, 40s etc, do not belong in the Vogue I enjoy reading. To those of you who would say that it serves me right for bothering with something so frivolous, I would quote Linda Grant, 'you can't have depths without surfaces'. Dear Vogue, please don't turn into Good Houskeeping.
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If you are looking for something 'Vogue-ish', the very last place you should be looking is in UK Vogue. The publication is at its creative nadir currently, a pale imitation of its glory days in the late 1970s when Terry Jones (i-D founder) commissioned Newton, Toscani and even Bailey to create audacious, erotic shoots for stunning spreads. Or indeed when Anna Wintour first commissioned Stephen Meisel in the mid 80s and Liz Tilberis created beautiful, albeit Bourgeois imagery at the start of the 90s.
The problem is that the current team have been there too long and that their agenda was based on bringing in high-street advertising at the end of the 90s. No wonder it looks like a glorified broadsheet supplement. The imagery is underpinned by hackish ideas rather than astute visual sensibility or ambition.
If you're looking for pure Vogue visual pleasure, Ellen, take a look at Paris Vogue or particularly Franca Sozzani's current Italian Vogue, which this month has published an all-black model issue. And she's been in post for yeeeeears: what's Alexandra Shulman's problem? Redeploy that Belgravia housewife to Condé Nast traveller, Mr Newhouse, please and get someone in the job that actually wants to make great pictures!
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It is called "metamorphosis".
This magazine should have its own transformation to fit in the new age.
So, let's face the age with courage.
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I agree with Brideshed using the term "metamorphosis". Let's take our body hair as an example. Decades ago, nobody bothers about it but nowadays it seems that everyone is into laser hair removal and even shave their nether region. Metamorphosis? Indeed!
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