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Abstract
This paper examines four international fashion magazines – Elle, Harper's Bazaar, Marie Claire and Vogue – published in five countries around the world. Based on content analysis, publishers’ marketing data, and interviews with editorial and publishing staff, the paper argues that the field of magazine production is structured by a double- or multiple-audience property which leads to structural homology in the fields of media production generally. Precisely because fashion magazines are simultaneously commodities and cultural productions, in which the not-entirely-separate interests of advertisers, the fashion world and readers come into play, all kinds of contradictions emerge to affect their contents. Focusing on international edition launches and magazines markets, the paper also engages with the meaning of journalistic independence and gives its own Gallic twist to globalisation theory.
Notes
1. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the (former) Danish Institute for the Advanced Study of the Humanities and the Danish Research Agency for providing the funds to enable much of the research on which this article is based, and the Strategic Research Council of Denmark for enabling the completion of the article itself.
2. Only Cosmopolitan (which is not classified as a fashion magazine) has a larger worldwide circulation: 6,765,174 copies.
3. The titles discussed here all publish monthly issues worldwide, with the exception of the French edition of Elle, which comes out weekly.
4. A succinct description of who does what in magazine publishing may be found in McKay (Citation2000, pp. 26–27).
5. But see Moeran (2006) for an instance of conscious design manipulation by the editor-in-chief of Vogue Nippon.
6. The exception is Marie Claire, whose staff in both publishing and editorial work are predominantly women.
7. Art and graphics tend to be dominated by male, rather than female, employees in a publishing company.
8. Interview with Katie Breen, International Editor-in-Chief, Marie Claire, France, 29 August 2002.
9. Interview with Claire Landrau, Deputy Director, International Editions – Asia, Marie Claire, France, 27 August 2002.
10. Interview with Fabrizio lo Cicero, Director of International Publications, Hachette Filipacchi Medias, 26 February 2003.
11. Interview, Landrau.
12. Interview, lo Cicero.
13. Interview, Landrau.
14. Interview, lo Cicero.
15. This may be more in theory than in practice if a local publisher is as large a concern as the head office of the international magazine. In November 2001, for example, the Hearst Corporation arranged for the transfer of the extremely successful editor-in-chief of Marie Claire, Glenda Bailey, to oversee an ailing sister title, Harper's Bazaar, apparently without too much consultation with the Marie Claire head office in Paris.
16. Interview, Landrau.
17. Interview, Breen.
18. Interview, Breen.
19. Interview, lo Cicero.
20. Interview, Breen.
21. To give an extreme example, when Elle was launched in India in the early 1990s, it was positioned as a Cosmopolitan-style sex and relations, rather than strictly fashion, magazine.
22. Although subject to ABC audits in some countries like the USA, magazine circulations elsewhere are often exaggerated (in order to attract advertising) and tend to refer to the number of printed (rather than sold) copies. Actual sales in Japan (information based on research interviews) are probably closer to three million copies.
23. Readers’ profiles for the Hong Kong editions of both Elle and Marie Claire use the same criteria to define their target audiences!
24. Similarly, the reader profile for Elle Hong Kong reports that 82% of its readers fall in the teens to mid-30s age group. The average reader's age is 29 years.
25. We might note that the marriage age in Japan is also higher, at around 27½ years for women, and rising.
26. This is an issue that has aroused the contempt of many a woman writing about women's magazines in general (see, among others, McCracken Citation1993).
27. According to an industry brochure, Elle Worldwide, put out by Interdeco Global Advertising (the advertising arm of publisher Hachette Filipacchi Medias), Elle was the world leader in advertising space in 2001 with 41,940, followed by Marie Claire (22,095), Vogue (21,980) and Harper's Bazaar (10,865), pages.
28. Interview with Philippe Guelton, Managing Director, Hachette Filippachi Japan, 29 January 1998.
29. Interview with Olivia Wong, Editorial Director, Marie Claire, Hong Kong, 27 April 2001.
30. Interview, Guelton.
31. Interview, Wong.
32. Interview with Xaven Mak, Editor-in-Chief, Harper's Bazaar, Hong Kong, 27 April 2001.
33. Interview, Wong.