So What, Who Cares (vol 3, issue 30)
Hello!
Because of feedback that yes, the HTML layout in this newsletter is wonky when I throw in images, I will be sending this one out Futurama-caps free.
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Read enough of the same types of stories and a pattern begins to emerge. One pattern I'm seeing in the fashion and beauty media is the belated, vaguely shocked recognition that American women are no longer merely passive consumers, content to nod along to the latest edicts from a women's magazine and shop accordingly. Two of my favorite quotes:
"There was a time when magazines and magazine editors would declare something to be a 'trend' or a 'look,' and the product would sell out ... Now, [it favors] the voice of the consumer, the user, the influencer." -- Former Allure editor in chief Linda Wells
And:
"Beauty is changing at the speed of light because anybody is able to get into the game. But it’s a moment where the consumer — not the brand — is at the heart of the conversation." -- Estée Lauder president Jane Hertzmark Hudis
To acknowledge the inversion of the power dynamic here -- nearly 20 years after Teri Agins first reported on it in The End of Fashion: How Marketing Changed the Clothing Business Forever -- instead of going along with the usual model of appropriating street style and acting like you're doing it a favor by noticing it? That's a big deal. It also speaks to a radical upending of editorial content across a lot of pop media. Whereas in the beforetime, magazines were dispatches from the front lines of soon-to-be mass culture, now they're straining to catch the attention of audiences that know they don't lack for media which reflects their tastes.
So what? "Curation" was a compelling selling point for a lot of magazines: the not-always-unspoken promise was "We have your taste (or the taste you aspire to) and we'll sort through an ocean of consumer offerings to bring you only the treasures."
Curation only works if the audience detects three qualities in the curator: aspiration, affinity and authority. Yes, a lot of magazines had the token hot-mess columnist whose pseudo-candid narrative about adorable gaffes was meant to forge an emotional connection between reader and brand. However, most magazines present their staff as Doing Life Better Than You but gracious enough to share what works. (There's a reason Martha Stewart's calendar still runs in every issue of her eponymous magazine, yes?)
The rise of social media as a primary publishing platform certainly helps with the affinity part. What's now up for grabs is are the aspiration and authority part. The bar to online publishing in any venue is practically non-existent (see also: this newsletter); there is no bar to putting yourself out there as a legitimate voice in any topic you'd care to discuss or a legitimate apex to which to aspire (conspicuously avoids mentioning this newsletter).
The old days of editorial properties being able to speak ex cathedra about the hot hemline of the season or the song of the summer are done. Everyone who has an opinion is free to express it -- and grab a portion of an audience that is feeling very empowered by the abundance of choices they have to see their own opinions reflected in their media.
Who cares? Well, we've seen a few of ex- and current magazine editors who are sort of put out that they won't get to be the Maggie Prescotts of the 21st century. Some of the "magazines are dying" exit interviews read a little like a Gloria Swansonesque "I am big -- it's the pictures that got small."
But just as silent pictures succumbed to talkies, so does any form of media learn -- and relearn -- that media has never been a static industry. Newspapers had to learn how to live with the rise of radio, and radio in turn had to handle the incursion of television. The glossy-magazine boom of the 1980s collapsed in the onslaught of the 1990s website boom, and that morphed into the 2000s-era blog boom. And now we have Instagram influencers, who provide a recognizable human face for brands (check out the outdoorsy Instagram scene some time to see how many brands are fronted by distinct personalities) or provide brands with access to a younger audience. And soon, something else will come along and grab eyeballs.
But you notice, in that recitation of media, that nearly every type of media introduced is still around. And in many cases, they've been able to co-opt and adapt the best of another media form. Podcasts have been very good for National Public Radio's audience development. Although television networks may be freaking out over progressively smaller audiences, the rise of streaming services means that production companies and networks can both focus on additive sales (networks plus streaming services) as a revenue model. Some newspapers have managed to make blogs work for them. Some blogs have figured out how to leverage the image-heavy appeal of Instagram. And on it goes.
As for the authority question: Editorial authority is no longer pushed top-down from publisher to audience. Instead, it trickles up to the people and publications that make authenticity and transparency two hallmarks of how they do what they do. And where the authority goes, the aspiration and affinity will follow.
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Your pop culture recommendation for the day: I have two follow-ups for you.
Circling back around to the norskeblürb (vol 3, issue 26), I forgot to mention that I filled in one of the holes in my comic book collection with Brian Wood's Northlanders; I had been missing vol 5 and now I have a trade paperback including a Viking noir mystery, what passes for Scandinavian magical realism, and a cynical look at the explorers who never come home. Read it if you're into comics but not necessarily tights-and-flights stories.
And circling back to Friday's recommendation (vol 3, issue 29), when I was reading the Vanity Fair interview with Ane Crabtree and she referenced both Prada and military uniforms, I thought immediately of a favorite book that augments and extends that insight. Read William Gibson's 2010 novel Zero History, which examines the feedback loop between military uniforms and the fashion world's conception of achievement-oriented masculinity:
“Young men who dress to feel they’ll be mistaken for having special capability. A species of cosplay, really. Endemic. Lots of boys are playing soldier now. The men who run the world aren’t, and neither are the boys most effectively bent on running it next."
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