By MAUREEN CALLAHAN
Posted: 4:17 am
August 12, 2008
VOGUE
Pages: 798 (down from last year!)
Price: $4.99
Hits: Interview with mad fashion genius Alexander McQueen, with five pages of looks from his new collection inspired by the super-knotty 16th century elm tree on his property. He's a kook. Meredith Yates' defiantly unglamorous essay on her husband, the opiate addict: "He is in pain, nauseated, sweating profusely
. . . his eyes roll back in his head." The Keira Knightley spread is inoffensive and glam enough (though her hair on the cover: huh?). Jane Fonda ruminates on the unlikely impact her louche '70s hooker-chic "Klute" look is having on the current collections. Plus: a well-deserved if unenlightening essay on reclusive, cultishly worshipped Belgian designer Martin Margiela, and a small blip extolling YSL's deathly cool black lip gloss for fall.
Misses: In her editor's letter, Anna Wintour informs us that Vogue is taking this recession v. v. seriously and has edited "the collections with value for money in mind." So we get a two-pager on Fendi's new 24K fur and pictures of unsmiling socialites wearing couture in their drawing rooms, with small children and pets as the usual props. Is anybody over there proofreading this thing? Jeff Koons painted a yacht for some rich people. Marina Rust tries electrocuting her waist to lose some inches; her doctors tell her to stop it. We get an excerpt from "One Fifth Avenue," Candace Bushnell's latest exercise in poisonous fairy-tale hackery masquerading as feminist frippery. Someone else writes a truly tasteless account of partying in LA in the '70s with friends-of-friends such as Roman Polanski at the very home where "his wife, Sharon Tate, had been killed earlier this year." Revolting.
News You Can Use: Berlin is the current art capital of the world, in case you didn't know. Smoky eyes are in for fall - to quote Wintour's doppelganger in "The Devil Wears Prada": "Florals? For spring? Groundbreaking."
Rating: 2 LIPS
- Maureen Callahan
ELLE
Pages: 636
Price: $4.99
