Tuesday 25 May 2010

Oh spare me dot com

As print media continues its agonizing shuffle down the green mile, online magazines have been popping up faster than Tiger Woods' mistresses. And while those of us who work in the industry are grateful that the web can provide a sufficient afterlife, there's no doubt that we are dealing with a different beast. For starters, we'd might as well start eulogizing the feature story because most people aren't going to put the time into reading a 1500-word treatise on the floral print on their computer or iPhone or Kindle or whatever other crazy contraption they're using today to read Perez. Furthermore, online fashion magazines have pretty well put to rest the traditional editorial shoot and birthed the celebrity Today I'm Wearing column to replace it. Alexa Chung, Olivia Palermo, Daisy Lowe and Daisy de Villeneuve, to name a few, have all enriched our lives with a daily photo and rundown of their outfits that reads like an early Tom Wolfe stream-of-consciousness novel. I mean seriously, who rolls out of bed on a Monday morning and throws on a 3.1 Phillip Lim blouse, Current Elliot cut offs, Wolford tights, American Apparel tube socks, Church's patent leather oxfords, a vintage military jacket from a flea market in Tokyo, a scarf stolen from a mother's closet and which was bestowed upon her by Mick Jagger backstage at Altamont, a Chanel 2.55 bag and Pete Doherty's trilby? Dude. (Just to clarify, none of the aforementioned celebrities have actually appeared in this outfit. I've just taken bits of each girl's signature style and put them together to create one massive celebudouche. Although I'm fairly certain that exact outfit has already been spotted on the streets of Brooklyn once or twice. Do let me know if you've seen it.) 

Now, I'm afraid to report, the online magazine-celebrity column affair is turning into a serious relationship. Agyness Deyn, the androgynous British model famous for her platinum blond crew cut and her inability to walk in Burberry platforms, is launching an online magazine with her friend Fiona Bryne, a journalist who has worked with pubs like NYLON and New York. They're calling it NAAG.com, which is kind of what I feel like doing to Aggy when I see her in outfits like this:



and this:

and especially this:

Asked about the editorial direction of the publication, Aggy replied succinctly: "It's just going to be stuff we think is rad." I'm pretty sure that's short for radon. Because only the ingestion of a radioactive chemical like that can explain these fashion choices.

2 comments:

  1. I am keeping my fingers crossed in hopes of a Jefferson Hack online fash mag intervention.
    I fear he may be our only hope.

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  2. Marilisa: I know everyone assumes that online must equal short, but I'd offer a few counter-examples. One from outside your world, but the most successful Internet sports columnist, by far, is a guy named Bill Simmons at ESPN. And he writes LONG. Like 3,000, 5,000, 10,000 word long. I'm also thinking of the dooce, Heather Armstrong (who lives here in Salt Lake) who also has a tendency (at least sometimes) to write long. I'm not saying you're wrong -- you're obviously mostly right -- but I do think the online world will continue to have a place for long-form writing.

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