I was recently chatting with a writer friend about the state many magazines are lying in. It’s indeed impossible to deny that too many publications have watered down their contents.
Fashion magazines are sad cases apart, worlds in which adverts have become more important than the actual content. Most women’s magazines also seem to have forgotten the impact feminism had on the world population and keep on considering their readers as people that can be filed under the "Bridget Jones" or "Carrie Bradshaw" categories. Tragic.
While putting some order into my notes about the Parisian menswear catwalks, I decided to have a break and tidying up a bit.
Now, I’m not the tidiest person in the world, in fact I’m probably one of the messiest human beings that ever lived on planet Earth. 
My main problem is that I manage to generate random piles of notes, magazines, books and other assorted materials in a just a few hours’ time even in a room where I’ve never been. I have a sort of Pig Pen (the character out of Charlie Brown’s) syndrome, only I don’t have a little cloud of dust following me, but a pile of stuff. It was while tidying up and thinking about the subject of my chat with my friend that I found an old issue of Harper’s Bazaar from July 1950 that I had left buried somewhere.
I started leafing through it and suddenly realised what is missing in nowadays’ publications, intelligent and stimulating content.
Yes, you’re right, even then there were lots of ads about clothes, stockings, lingerie and perfumes, but there were also school and fashion academy directories. Again, you’re quite right, we don’t need these things in print when fashion academies nowadays have their own pages on the Internet, yet what about having (every now and then) an analysis of the best fashion schools around the world and of what they offer?
After a few ads and the content page, the magazine officially opens with a few photographs by Karen Radkai, portraying picnickers, families and friends, resting during their summer Sundays. Rather than being an excuse to show what the people in the images are wearing the photographs are compared with paintings showing similar scenes, such as Manet’s "Dejeuner sur l’erbe". It looks like an interesting idea considering that the only paintings and art objects you see in contemporary magazines are used to illustrate 150-word news pieces about supposedly trendy exhibitions.
The fashion photoshoots that follow, featuring also a summery frock by Valentina, are alternated to essay-like articles. There’s an engaging and rather dreamy travelling piece about the Feria in Seville, accompanied by beautiful black and white pictures of the local girls in their ample costumes; a longer piece about the constant spiritual search human beings go through that also touches upon the theme of depression; an ironic piece on the history of cocktail parties and a short story.
The magazine also includes a photo section about journalists, critics, actors and conductors meeting up in pubs and a few ideas about men’s fashion, while it also features the latest trends about velvet dresses and hats and silk shirts.
You could argue that some of the longer articles featured in the magazine were obviously taken from books that had to come out at the time, but nowadays (shorter) book extracts are mainly published in the supplements of just a few dailies and now in the pages of monthly magazines.
Most contemporary magazines are more interested in vapid articles and images of the latest accessories rather than in philosophical conundrums. But, I wonder, if 60 years ago women engaged themselves in reading philosophical essays, why couldn’t we do it now?
I may be wrong, but I honestly think that the poor sales of some magazines, depend from the fact that they haven’t managed to offer their readers engaging contents, but insist on giving us ‘how to wear it’ columns that enc
ourage you to buy, spend and be happy with your ‘shape’, while taking care of the latest trend spotted in the street.
Luckily fashion, and women above all, can't be just reduced to shapes and trends and it's about time that some publications started realising it.
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