I love magazines and spend all my very meagre disposable cash on them. Elle comes in the post though and doesn’t cost me anything. In my view it’s the best women’s magazine in the market at the moment – look at the new edition that just arrived. It has fun, high-quality artistic direction and a semi-feminist message. I follow Lorraine Candy on Twitter and I really rate her as an editor. It’s not many major mainstream magazine editors who would put a feature on feminism or abortion at the front of the magazine instead of celebrity news. Plus everything in it looks really shiny and neat. Its pages often end up on the walls of my room.
But once Elle is read and everything of worth torn out and blu-tacked up, I do run out of options a bit for the rest of the month. I get Look for a treat but even Vogue these days leaves me a bit blah. I think they lost me forever with the More Dash Less Cash silliness. We live in the era of the high-street Voguettes, we don’t have to make hats from rubber gloves. Clearly I am a philistine who doesn’t appreciate Vogue’s artistry.
I’m always on the look out for new magazines to consume. I’m not interested in magazines like Dazed and Confused, I need words as well as pictures sometimes, preferably spelled correctly and laid out in a coherent order. I haven’t yet motivated myself to go up Selfridges to get the last Lula magazine, and not sure where else I can get hold of it, so much as I long to, I cannot pass half-formed opinions on it yet (thank goodness blogging gives me an outlet for these).
Ploughing a Lula-esque furrow is new online magazine Betty. It has a vintage-y twee vibe and very nice visuals. I think it could become better in future issues as it is still a little stilted copy-wise: the first words out of the magazine’s mouth are about an “exciting new jewellery label”. I don’t know what it would take to get me actively excited about jewellery but some scrolly metal on a chain isn’t it, I have learned. I do applaud the effort that has gone into the vibe of the magazine and the fact that it is independent so it gets two very enthusiastic thumbs up. Fine holiday fun.
S
