St. Joseph launches Title magazine, replacing its Men's Fashion

St. Joseph Media is launching a new magazine called Title which replaces the former Men's FASHION. It will appear on newsstands in November and be mailed to selected subscribers of FASHION, Toronto Life and will be distributed to select postal code areas and business locations across Canada. It will also be available poly-bagged with FASHION at select Shoppers Drug Marts throughout Canada on November 20. 

There will be three seasonal issues: fall, winter and spring.  Some digital content will be available online at thetitlemag.com starting November 14.

“The launch of Title is part of our ongoing strategic plan to position our media brands as the most competitive in the market and to target the luxury consumer,” said Jacqueline Loch, VP & group publisher, women’s brands at St. Joseph Communications. “We strategically designed the Title brand to feature high quality multi-platform content that will resonate with our readers. Like our strategy with FASHION, Title will also focus on innovations in technology and editorial integrations to provide quality content that delivers for our advertising partners and engages audiences across all our platforms.”

FASHION magazine celebrates 40 years with specially commissioned "tulle" portrait cover

Fashion magazine is celebrating 40 years of style publishing with a specially commissioned cover for its November issue. It is a tulle portrait of Canadian model Amber Whitcomb by celebrated London, England, artist Benjamin Shine.

The artwork, valued at over C$30,000 is to be auctioned at a private event with the proceeds to be used to support emerging fashion design talent at Ryerson University.  

The print edition of the magazine will be on newsstands October 9 in Canada and on October 24 in the U.S. at selected Barnes & Noble locations.

The cover shoot includes access to a cinematic short film by Erik Swain. In the film, Witcomb recites Lord Byron’s famed poem “She Walks in Beauty,” which is the theme for the cover and the cover feature. A 19-page fall fashion shoot with Witcomb highlights the season’s defining looks; and a special 20-page feature includes archival images as well as interviews from past contributors. Behind-the-scenes anniversary-related content is available at fashionmagazine.com/fashioncanada40.

“This has been an epic experience,” said Noreen Flanagan, editor-in-chief of FASHION [in a release]. “I was taken with Benjamin’s work when I saw the tulle piece he created for Maison Margiela earlier this year. I was intrigued with the idea of him creating one for our cover because tulle is such a celebratory fabric. It’s traditionally worn at the most significant moments in our lives. Turning 40 is significant—whether you’re a woman or a magazine!”

Shopping site Style.com shut down by Condé Nast after only 9 months

Barely nine months after it launched Style.com, Condé Nast has closed the online e-commerce site into which it is said to have invested $100 million. According to a story in the New York Times, visitors to the website are redirected to Farfetch, an online marketplace for high-end boutiques into for which Conde Nast was an early investor.

"The move is a stunning strategic backtrack by the publishing empire,"  [said the Times story] "which first announced a multimillion-dollar rebranding of Style.com, formerly the encyclopedic digital home of all Condé Nast runway coverage, in 2015. It also reflects the current turmoil in the glossy magazine industry, which has struggled to adapt to the digital age. 

“Our experience with Style.com taught us that content is a powerful driver of commerce, and the combination of great editorial with a great shopping experience creates a great user experience and revenue upside,” said Matt Starker, the general manager of digital strategy at Condé Nast. He acknowledged, however, that the skill sets required to create content and those required to run a seamless shopping site were different.

FASHION creative director named

St. Joseph Communications has announced the appointment of Brittany Eccles as creative director, FASHION. As such she will be responsible for design across all platforms -- print, digital, social, video and branded events.

Eccles was art director at ELLE Canada for four years and during her time there, the magazine won multiple awards, including being named Best Magazine in 2015 by the Canadian Society of Magazine Editors (CSME) as well as a Gold Medal in Fashion at the National Magazine Awards.  Before that she held senior design positions with FLARE and Today's Parent and still earlier had worked at the magazine and FASHION 18 as an associate designer.

ELLE Canada has its first Alberta fashion shoot

ELLE Canada goes back to the paleo age in its first fashion editorial shoot done in Alberta, with the dinosaurs at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller as the setting. Ironically, the issue theme is "looking toward the future".



The cover story is an interview with the controversial Australian rapper Iggy Azalea. The cover image was chosen by the readers.

Chatelaine fashion shoots are part of northern Ireland tourism strategy

Fashion and beauty editor Catherine Franklin and photographer 
Alvaro Goveia  of Chatelaine flank Claire 
Keenan of the Northern Ireland Tourist Board

Wooing the media with air fares and accommodations is standard operating procedure for tourism marketing boards. A good example is the recent promotion by Tourism Ireland and the Northern Ireland Tourist Board that led the Canadian magazine to do two fashion shoots in northern Ireland. The result, according to a story in Ballymoney Times, will be two, 8-page fashion features shot at places such as the Causeway Coast, the Carrick-a-rede Rope Bridge, Mussenden Temple and Dunluce Castle.and the gardens and grounds of Glenarm Castle, to run in issues later this year. Plus videos will be shared on Chatelaine's social media platforms. 

Jayne Schackleford, Tourism Ireland's manager for Canada, says

“Both articles will highlight our beautiful scenery and our wonderful castles and gardens – encouraging Canadian holidaymakers to come and experience the destination for themselves.”

FASHION launches enhanced, interactive tablet version with summer issue

FASHION magazine from St. Joseph Media is launching a new, enhanced, interactive tablet version. The summer issue, featuring Elle Fanning, is an expansion of the previous digital version of the magazine.

 “We want to give our readers the best user experience possible and, for us, that means offering them an all-access pass to FASHION,” said Bernadette Morra, editor-in-chief “The new digital edition will engage users by making them feel like they’re side-by-side with our editors – whether that be shooting in Bora Bora or here in Toronto.”

The new tablet version features four behind-the-scenes videos.  According to a release, the new cover layout with fading effects as well as hyperlinks that will allow users to jump from the cover directly to featured content. In addition, photo galleries have been converted from a static product page to full screen product imagery; with a tap of the finger, readers can pull up captions, information on merchandise or bookmark their favourite page.

Precedent tells its readers what it takes today to be "polished" at work

Precedent magazine has always prided itself on its sense of style. It has just published a six-part guide for its lawyer readers telling them what it means and takes to look polished today. It's a little bit different than in years past.In one part of the guide, a group of Bay Street lawyers sat down to say what it means to dress for the job. 

Among the other things we learn from their conversation that there is a lot more casual dress, particularly among senior partners, that women don't have to wear high or the highest heels anymore, that colour is not only allowed but more frequently seen, and that "nice, neat" beards are OK on men. 

In another part of the guide, the distinction is drawn between fashion and style at work.

“As with everything, you should dress for your audience,” says [Will] Stewart, [a consultant with the public relations firm Navigator]. “Know your clients, understand how they would view you with too much or too little emphasis on your attire. Dress as an extension of your work with them.”

 The case is also made for buying custom-made shoes, the kind that will set you back about $1,500. 

ELLE (Canada and Quebec) share model Jessica Paré for March covers

ELLE Canada (L); select cover (middle); ELLE Quebec (R)

Transcontinental Media's ELLE Canada and ELLE Quebec have, for the first time, shared a model for their cover -- Jessica Paré of the television hit Mad Men. Their March 2013 issues feature her from a shared shoot in Toronto at the Four Seasons Hotel. The March covers of ELLE Canada cover is on newsstands Feb 18; ELLE Quebec's  Feb 22. (A third, separate collector's cover, is being published for select subscribers of ELLE Canada.) 

“No television show has quite captured the fashion world’s imagination quite like Mad Men,” said ELLE Canada features editor Kathryn Hudson. “Once Paré’s character Meagan Draper joined the show, the fashions began to mimic her free spirited attitude with shorter hemlines and bold patterns. She’s been a film festival darling for years and it’s time she gets the global exposure she deserves.”

The skinny on Vogue's new policy about healthier body image

In what may be a tipping point in the fashion publishing industry, Vogue publisher Condé Nast International has announced a policy promoting a healthier body image in the pages of its magazines and in the wider fashion industry.

According to a story in Women's Wear Daily, Health Initiative applies to all 19 international editions of Vogue and the editors have all signed a six-point agreement focussing on promoting a healthier approach to body image: translated, they may use models who look more like real women.

 Among the points that form the pact are that the editors will not knowingly work with models under 16 or who appear to have an eating disorder; that they will ask casting directors not to knowingly send underage models to their magazines; they will help structure mentoring programs so that more mature models can advise their younger counterparts; they will encourage designers to “consider the consequences of unrealistically small sample sizes,” and that they will encourage show producers to create healthy backstage working environments for models.

Eighteen of the 19 Vogue editions will run features about the initiative in June issues; Vogue Japan will do so in July. British Vogue, for example, will run a feature in its June issue that examines women’s attitudes to nutrition, and polls models including Stella Tennant, Lily Cole and Adriana Lima on the subject.

Jonathan Newhouse, chairman of Condé Nast International, said in a statement: 

“Vogue believes that good health is beautiful. Vogue editors around the world want the magazines to reflect their commitment to the health of the models who appear on the pages and the well-being of their readers.”

The wording of the pact is somewhat imprecise, but should still have a major impact since Vogue is such a thought leader in the industry. However, we should wait and see if size zero mannequins become an endangered species on the runways and on the pages of magazines.
Last month, Israel banned models with a body mass index of less than 18.5 unless they have a doctor's note. 

Faux nudity vexes Canadian supermodel airbrushed by Elle Brazil

A Canadian supermodel, Coco Rocha, is seriously steamed about being made to appear nude or nearly so on the cover of Elle Brazil. The 23-year-old model wears a see-through dress, but says she was wearing a flesh-coloured body suit underneath, a garment which was airbrushed away to make her appear nude. This was done, she says, in direct violation of her contract which specifically bans airbrushing and nudity. 

As described by British fashion magazine Grazia's site Graziedaily.co.uk:

"Ooh! Take a look at Coco Rocha looking utterly ravishing on the cover of Elle Brazil's May issue. Her burgundy hair has been pulled into a tight centre parting, her cheekbones are looking sharper than ever and her ample assets are peeping through a blue sheer dress that could be mistaken for nothing but a fancy body tattoo."

 A Canadian Press story quotes Rocha saying 

"This was specifically against my expressed verbal and written direction to the entire team that they not do so," she writes. "I'm extremely disappointed that my wishes and contract was ignored.

"I strongly believe every model has a right to set rules for how she is portrayed and for me these rules were clearly circumvented."

The fashion magazine for style nerds: WORN gets the feature treatment

Upstart indie fashion magazine publisher Serah-Marie Mahon and her team at WORN Fashion Journal get a starring role this weekend in a Globe and Mail feature by Robert Everett-Green. Not bad for a twice-yearly, quirky and idiosyncratic title with a small, but impressive circulation.

“We were just unhappy with the prescriptive nature of most fashion magazines. We wanted to inspire people not just to go out and spend money, but to use what’s already around them in creative ways,” said G. Steglemann, the managing editor, who describes herself and the WORN family as "fashion nerds".

 The feature chronicles how WORN began in a vintage clothing store in Toronto's Kensington Market and, after moving to Montreal,  how Mahon decided the best way to change the discussion about fashion was to start her own magazine, even though she had no experience. Later, after a fine arts degree, she moved back to Toronto.

Eleven issues later, WORN has correspondents in a half-dozen cities, an increasingly polished look (the first art director came on board last year) and distribution in Chapters Indigo. Although it sells about 60 per cent of its print run abroad, it had to pass up a European distribution deal because it couldn’t afford to print the minimum 4,000 copies the distributor demanded. WORN’s dependence on magazine sales rather than ad revenue, however, turned out to be a blessing when the economy faltered.
“The recession only did good things for us,” says McMahon. “People were still willing to pay six dollars for a magazine that a lot of them find they want to hang on to, not throw away.”

Warmer and fuzzier; writer Leanne Delap parses Canada's big 3 fashion mags for their character

"Fortunately, being a bitch is so last season."

 With that, former Fashion magazine editor-in-chief (2000 - 2003) and Globe and Mail fashion writer Leanne Delap has created a profile of the Canadian fashion magazine industry in the National Post, painting a picture of fashionistas who are warmer and fuzzier than their American cousins (think The Devil Wears Prada). 

Here's how she characterizes the largest Canadian fashion titles:

Flare: "Flare bills itself as “Canada’s fashion authority” and waves the flag highest. It also has a girl-next-door wholesomeness because while the fashion spreads are sophisticated, the pieces singled out in the shopping pages are more budget-conscious than in competing titles. This is the girl you invite to your dinner party knowing you will get a thank-you note the next day.

Fashion: "The title has editions in Montreal and Vancouver, and the online identity is much more service-oriented than the national publication. This is the aspirational title of the CanCon three. If she were a dinner party guest, [editor Bernadette]Morra’s Fashion would be seated to the right of the host."

Elle Canada:  "Elle is an international brand and there is less leeway to invent a new identity, but the Canadian Elle girl is a sassy and irreverent dinner party guest, comfortable discussing her sex life and veering to the more youthful fashions at any age."

Tricks and treats of the makeup trade

In honour of Hallowe'en, a friend directed us to the New York Times women's fashion blog, Model-Morphosis, which shows some awesomely attractive models before and after the makeup artists are through with them. Photographer Greg Kessler captured the transformation during Paris Fashion Week. When you go to the Flash images, move the orange bar to see the before and after. Most of the befores look better...and some of the afters look like Hallowe'en-ready zombies.

Photo: Greg Kessler

Toronto Life creates some fashion buzz about high-end battle between The Bay and Holt Renfrew

There's some buzz among fashionistas about an article by Leah McLaren in the upcoming Toronto Life (on newsstands October 14). It's about the battle for high-end fashion supremacy between the traditional top dog, Holt Renfrew, and The Bay, resurgent under new ownership and leadership.

McLaren says of Bonnie Brooks, The Bay's president and CEO:

"Brooks' strategy -- boosted by a well-received Olympic collection -- did not involve selling more stuff to more people but less stuff to the right people in the right markets. She was going after an urbane, fashion-savvy shopper -- the kind of woman who doesn't shop at The Bay unless she's sending her personal assistant to buy a new toaster. The kind of woman, in other words, who shops at Holts."

Curiously, while the story gives as Brooks' background that she started in women's fashion at Fairweather and worked at Holts before moving to Hong Kong to run the Lane Crawford Joyce Group,  it doesn't mention that she started out as editor of Flare magazine from 1994-96.

Paul Rockett, magazine fashion photography trendsetter, dies at the age of 90

Paul Rockett, a magazine and portrait photographer who changed the face of fashion and magazine photography across North America, has died in Vancouver at the age of 90. According to a story carried by the Canadian Press, Rockett brought a European sensibility to his fashion shoots, capturing models in motion and with naturalistic lighting and attitude. Toronto Life at one time dubbed him "Canadian photography's only star" with the exception of Yosuf Karsh.

He started as an office boy in the darkroom of the Toronto Star, went on to be a photographer for the Royal Canadian Air Force and eventually shot more than 100 magazine covers. However he is perhaps best known for his series of Glenn Gould portraits, now on display in the National Gallery. He also took many photos of national and international celebrities.
Photo: Elliott Contemporary

Will it be the law to disclose that a magazine has airbrushed its cover model?

We won't hold our breath about seeing it in Canada or the States, but there is an interesting proposal in Australia that would require magazines to carry disclaimers about their fashion photos being airbrushed and Photshopped. (This is not the first country to consider it.) According to a story in Marie Claire's U.K. website, the Australian government unveiled a new strategy to deal with women's body image problems and eating disorders.

Kate Ellis, the Australian youth minister, admitted that the principles were small steps, but would help to end glamorisation of unhealthily thin women.

'Body image is an issue that we must take seriously because it is affecting the health and happiness of substantial sections of our community' she said.

Under a new code of conduct for the fashion industry, magazines must agree to refrain from heavy retouching of body parts, including the common practices of leg lengthening and trimming of waistlines. The new code also demands that altered photographs must now carry a disclaimer.

Related posts: 

• Sure we airbrush, but so what? This isn't journalism, says Self editor
• French law would require disclosure of degree of magazine airbrushing
• Perfect female cover models make men feel insecure
• UK women's editors to draw up voluntary code for use of airbrushing, size 0 models

Women encouraged to dump fashion magazines that make them feel bad about themselves

A campaign by the National Eating Disorder Information Centre (NEDIC) is aimed at getting women to ditch their fashion magazines because they make their readers feel fat. The transit ad (there are also greeting cards, T-shirts, print ads, garment tags and a petition) is on a shelter at Queen Street West and Soho Street in Toronto. It has a slot where readers can dispose of their fashion magazines, with the line "Shed your weight problem here". The organization's website elaborates:

If you don't believe that beauty is synonymous with ultra-thinness, now is your chance to send a message to those who do. It's all part of a new campaign by NEDIC that takes aim at the fashion and marketing industries, the over-arching message being: Cast responsibly. Retouch minimally.

The campaign was developed for NEDIC by communications agency Zulu Alpha Kilo.

[thanks to Melissa Kluger for the tip]

These things add up, you know: tallying the price tag for U.S. fashion mags

The blog Jezebel deployed two of its interns to plow through the September issues of fashion "ladymag" magazines published out of the U.S. and tally up what the price tag was for the "expensive shit" that was contained therein. Their best guess is as follows:

Most Shameless September Ladymag: Elle. Total Shit: $73,566,063

Runners-Up:
Glamour. Total Shit: $1,511,568
Vogue . Total Shit: $1,183,357
Harper's Bazaar. Total Shit: $1,043,716.53
W*. Total Shit: $731,843
Marie Claire. Total Shit: $515,291.67
Lucky. Total Shit: $274,502
Allure. Total Shit: $232,172.47
Teen Vogue. Total Shit: $74,458
Cosmopolitan. Total Shit: $27,636.64

[We have no idea what this means, gentle readers. We invite those of you with time on your hands to do the same for Fashion, Flare, Fashion Quarterly and Elle (Canada and Quebec). We don't have interns.]