“[If] Michael Jackson represented the ecstatic and the untouchable; Whitney Houston was always human, along every axis. Her triumphs felt like things you could imagine, just barely. The peak of “Whitney” was “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” which forms a perfect companion to Jackson’s “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” his expression of loss of self within the joy of dance. Houston’s spirit never made her seem distant, so it was plausible (the pliable listener wanted to believe) that she might dance with us, though by the time she got to the chorus she might easily be anywhere, with anyone.”

‘Whitney Houston’s invincible voice’ by Sasha Frere Jones

The wedding aisle was an alternative runway for designers this year as Lily Allen, America Ferrera, Charlene Wittstock - the Princess of Monaco, Kate Moss and Kate Middleton all made their way to the altar.

A romantic and feminine silhouette in French lace was a common theme across all gowns. The Duchess of Cambridge and Lily Allen paired long, lace sleeves with classic sweetheart necklines on their gowns.

Read more of my story on wedding couture at vogue.com.au

HRH Catherine Middleton / the tailor’s stories

“New Zealand is known for its edgy fashion exports such as Kate Sylvester and Zambesi, but a retrospective exhibition reveals a lesser known secret: the land of the long white cloud once had its own Vogue…”

See the rest of my article for vogue.com.au here

Echoing what I’ve long thought about the mag industry, the industry of my childhood dreams that is sadly disappearing:

—

Falling advertising figures. Falling sales figures. There has never been as much interest in the ins and outs of the fashion industry, and yet the public no longer seems to turn to traditional fashion magazines in their search for fashion news anymore. (own italics)

Are we seeing the end of glossies? Will the next generation’s idea of fashion journalism be totally different from ours? Most likely, and the Internet isn’t the only one to blame.

At the moment, in addition to subscriptions to six different UK magazines,  I buy on average ten publications from my local newsagent every month. There are 347 RSS feeds on my Net News Wire reader. I don’t believe that magazines will disappear, both because I really really don’t want them to, and because they do offer an experience which is different from the one given by the Internet.

The challenges faced by the fashion press at the moment are not overly different from the challenges faced by the rest of the media. Broadsheets and hacks in general are increasingly accused of being unreliable and self-interested, which is mirrored by the criticism that glossies are not in touch with their readership.

News is expected to be free and immediate and every magazine now has, sometimes reluctantly, a website covering the latest collections. Buying a magazine will cost at least £2. Surfing the web for fashion news does not cost a dime, not even on the publications’ websites. It will be interesting to see if any of the big publishing houses, Hachette Filipacchi, Condé Nast, IPC or Bauer Media will follow Murdoch’s plan to charge for online news.

The rise of blogs, as well as the increasing reliance of the media industry on people writing for free, has lead to a false idea that journalism is not a trade worthy of money or payment. After all, how hard can it be to give an opinion on yet another white button down shirt? Turns out that it is quite hard.

Blogging is amateur in the best sense of the term: it’s often interesting, entertaining, well-informed and well-written (we’ll ignore the bad blogs, they rarely survive or gather enough following to be of threat to magazines anyway). However, bloggers hardly ever have the kind of access or expertise Suzy Menkes or Hilary Alexander have.

Fashion magazines do provide many things no blog or online publications can. Despite numerous magazine disappearances, which began long before the recession with Sassy or Jane, new magazines keep appearing. The success of those new publications is due to their difference from the big titles. They are not perceived as sold to advertisers’ budgets and have a more whimsical and intellectual approach to fashion.

At a time where everything is digital, magazines need to make the fact that they are tangible an advantage. Whereas you’d rarely print out a photoshoot from Fashion156.com, no matter how good it might be (and they ARE good), you can forever archive and keep a W editorial. Glossies could play on the paper they use, perhaps go landscape rather than portrait. Magazines could develop a more book-like approach to content, make the publication something you’d like to keep forever.

I don’t believe the Internet will kill the fashion magazines. It will force them to undergo a much needed and expectable change. Appropriating the Web is a notoriously hard task, but fashion, thanks to its fast pace, is perfectly suited for it. What magazines will be like in five-year time, how many of them will still exist, is anyone’s guess. It’s hard to imagine a world without Vogue.

Original article here by Lucie Goulet, published in Running in Heels, June 30, 2009. Edited by Annette Lin

Kate Moss back in the day. Image via fashion toast

When Kate Moss speaks, people listen. It’s not just that she is a living icon, perhaps the most famous British woman on the planet bar the Queen and the Duchess of Cambridge. It is that, in a world where celebrity self-promotion is king, she chooses to speak so rarely.

She is the most super of the supermodels; her face has sold billions of frocks and perfumes and handbags across the globe and yet you cannot put a voice to it. To pass up the chance to interview her would be like turning down an opportunity to discuss the whereabouts of Lord Lucan with Elvis Presley while riding on the back of Shergar.

“You can’t tell anyone,” says my boss, “but it’s something to do with Mango”. I call the PR woman at Mango, a high street fashion store which started in Spain. She, too, tells me I can’t tell anyone. I ask what Miss Moss is doing with the company; perhaps a collaboration similar to the one she did with Topshop? “Well that’s the thing,” says the PR woman. “We don’t really know.” I ring off with the curious knowledge that I am not allowed to tell anyone about something I don’t know.

Here is what we do know about Kate Moss: she is 37, from Croydon, and was spotted at JFK airport when she was just 14 years old. She started the whole waif look, and ended up missing school at 16 because she got so drunk on whisky after a John Galliano show in Paris. She bathed in champagne with Johnny Depp, had alleged threesomes with Jude Law and Sadie Frost, and got caught snorting cocaine with her then lover Pete Doherty.

In between, she had a daughter, now 8, with magazine journalist Jefferson Hack, and is about to get married to Jamie Hince, who is a musician and - in common with all her boyfriends - looks a bit grubby. Some people believe she never gives interviews because her sarf London accent spoils the effect of her fabulous face. Another theory is that she simply has nothing to say, or that everything she has to say is so outrageous and decadent it simply cannot be said. Thus, the quotable Kate Moss is short and mostly inane, including such gems as “I’m passionate about clothes” and “I’m sure there are [photos she wishes hadn’t been taken of her] but I can’t think of one right now”. The last time they let her speak she repeated the dim observation that “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”.

Whatever the case for Moss’s silence, it has turned her in to a riddle wrapped in an enigma inside an Hermes bag. We are to meet in the Ritz in Paris - the glamour of Croydon’s Whitgift Centre, where she surprised residents with a rare return visit earlier this week having landed on the roof in a helicopter to film an advert for Rimmel, far behind her. Our interview, I have been told, will come with restrictions. Of course it will. I will have only 20 minutes with her, and I will have to share those 20 minutes with two other journalists, from Turkey and Portugal. I will not be able to ask about her forthcoming wedding, her daughter, or her private life, and I will have to send all my questions over for her to approve.

This is a shame. She must have some tales to tell; a reporter who snuck into her 30th birthday claimed it appeared to have turned into an orgy. Still, I send over some questions about style tips and fashion - 20 minutes with Kate Moss is better than none at all. The questions come back. She doesn’t want to talk about where she will be in ten years’ time, or how she feels about the prospect of turning 40. I sit on the Eurostar chewing my nails.

I have bought her some presents in the hope she might warm to me: a packet of fags, and some jam (apparently, she loves jam). I arrive at the Ritz and am told that Kate is running late - “she is having ‘er make-up done,” as the harassed looking PR girl puts it. I am led to the world’s most glamorous holding pen - a suite overlooking the gardens - and wait with journalists from as far a field as Russia, America and China, who have travelled all this way in the hope of hearing Kate Moss speak. “Fifteen hours is my flight!” says the glamorous woman from Chinese Vogue, neatly pointing out how big a star the girl from Croydon has become.

We are told she is going to be 30 minutes late. Half an hour passes and there is no sight of her. People twiddle with phones. A waiter hovers with tea and chocolates. Nobody touches them. “She should be here in five miniutes,” says the PR girl. Those five minutes tick by agonisingly slowly. A couple of us go for a turn around the garden. “I am getting very nervous now,” says the journalist from Portugal. Manicured nails drum on marble surfaces.

And then, the unmistakeable shrieks of a south Londoner echo around the Ritz lobby outside. Kate Moss walks through the door, all Brigitte Bardot hair and skinny jeans and blazer and t-shirt. “Hello!” she beams. “I’m Kate!” She’s Kate! I am standing in front of Kate! And her voice… well, it’s much huskier than I had expected, with shades of Mariella Frostrup.

I give her my presents. I am scared. There are eleven effortlessly cool fashionistas in the room and then me, handing her some… “jam! I love my jam. I’ve just had a batch of it come through, I’ve been making it,” Kate Moss makes jam? Now that is interesting.

The Turkish girl and the Portugese woman ask their questions first. “I’m doing a commercial for Mango with Terry Richardson,” Kate explains. Is she wearing Mango? “Yeah”. Did she choose the clothes she wears in the commercial? “Yeah”. Does she know any Turkish people? “Yeah,” she says, looking a bit bemused. “But you know, I haven’t spent that much time in Turkey…”

Does she think she’s an icon? “No! Liz Taylor’s an icon. I’m just normal.” What goals hasn’t she achieved? “Well I wasn’t in [George Michael’s] Freedom video… I just missed it. That would have been amazing.”

And then it is my turn. I take a deep breath. What does she think of the other famous Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge? “Oh I love her! She was so chic and seamless . And just beautiful, it was just as a royal wedding should be.” Where did she watch it? “In the country, with loads of friends and kids who were all crying. There were tears. We were like “ok, you can marry Harry!” Might she one day be Prince Harry’s mother-in-law then? “Nah! No!”

Would she like to be made a Dame for her services to the fashion industry? “Ha ha. Can you imagine? I’m too young to be made a Dame. A Dame’s for old women. Like Margaret Thatcher.” I say she’s a Baroness. “I’d prefer to be a baroness. I’d quite like to be Lady Kate. But I’m happy just as I am.”

And that is that. My time with Kate is over. “Thanks for the jam!” she beams as I head out of the door. As I leave I remember a question the Turkish journalist asked: what’s her favourite bit of her body? Her eyes? She thought for a bit. “My mouth, I think that’s what other people would say.” And I’d agree. I just wish she’s use it a bit more. - Bryony Gordon

Originally published in the Telegraph (UK) here

Originally published in the Sydney Morning Herald, November 7, 2007 

Music these days .. OK, so I love Justin Timberlake. I’ve never even met the guy and yet I feel the strange desire to marry him. Why? Hmm, let me think, could it be because he’s not only hot and an incredibly good dancer, but he also has musical integrity and somehow seamlessly integrates emotion into pop? That’s skill, man.

I’m your typical generation Y-kid. If it has a hot beat and a pleasant melody/chord structure, I will turn it up and pump it obnoxiously through my car. I’ll listen to Top 40 and groove to it shamelessly in my private karaoke-bar-meets-nightclub while other drivers around me shake their heads and worry about what the world is coming to. I’ll embrace cheesy pop and say, “Yes, it’s not what I’d call brilliant music, but who cares? It’s fun!”

But I have a limit. I may even be joining those people shaking their heads around me. Because I’m sorry, but I don’t think it counts as love/affection if you strip and your partner is willing to pay you no matter what, all because they can handle you the way you are. Oops, sorry, the way I’m are. Must stop using correct grammar.

I’m not stupid, no matter what I act like. And I know others aren’t, either. Most people won’t take the song mentioned above seriously. But what worries me is that singers are running out of things to sing about so quickly, that they have to sing about the need to take their clothes off. They have to sing about themselves. Surely, as influential artists, one could be doing a little better than spelling out one’s name and adding ‘licious at the end? Or how about lyrics? “La, la, la, la, la, la, la.” I can’t believe a band I respect and like, who shall henceforth be known as the Band Who Shall Not Be Named, used that as a line. Like whoa, don’t exhaust your vocabulary there or anything.

But seriously. Does anyone else feel like they’re emotionally unfulfilled when they listen to music on the Top 40? I know Top 40 is mostly crowd-pleasers but what happened to pop music that was pleasant and fun, yet full of emotion, interesting and intelligent, too? Just because you’re in the genre doesn’t give you the licence to act like you have a brain the size of a peanut and the emotional intelligence of a marshmallow.

A good beat does not disguise all your sins. It probably only highlights it, as more people are likely to listen to your song and hence the lyrics. Which, on average, are about a fulfilling as staring at a wall.

So shape up, please. I want to party, everyone else wants to party. But please don’t tell us love is about stripping.

Original article here