4 posts tagged “condé nast”

Not that I surf to the competition’s sites much but I tried to access this page today:

http://www.vogue.co.uk/vogue_daily/story/story.asp?stid=51215

only to have a spyware ad—and probably a spyware application—seize up my browser. I’ve been able to repeat it on two computers. The site was xpantivirus.com, and clicking ‘Cancel’ to the forced spyware scan won’t make the program go away. Check it out at your own risk.
   We have been victims of this sort of stuff, too, but I like to think we find out about it much more quickly than Condé Nast has (so far, it hasn’t). It’s seldom the site’s fault but a problem with the ad network. I’ve emailed Condé Nast UK about it, though there’s that sneaky part of me that wants to see the error continue!

Condé Nast Portfolio November 2007

Every now and then, there’s a magazine that captures my imagination. In 1988, it was Autocar; by the early 1990s, it was Wired, then Fast Company by the end of the decade. Now, the magazine (other than any I publish!) is Condé Nast Portfolio.
   I’m annoyed that, like Business Week, Portfolio is next to impossible to get in New Zealand, though Advance can count on me as a subscriber now. As a business magazine, it is intelligently written and beautifully presented: think of it as Business Week meets The Atlantic Monthly. Design-wise, it’s a tad over-ornamented and olde worlde American, but that text typeface is beautiful and I could read it all day. It is intelligently written, but not in an inaccessible way—like the Atlantic.
   Lucky Yanks can subscribe for a dollar a month whereas I have to pay the full US$60 to get them Down Under, but at around NZ$7 an issue, it’s not a lot to ask. Postage alone won’t cover that seven bucks, and I should know.

Vogue India cover

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[Cross-posted] As someone who has long championed the Asian subcontinent—and Lucire has been linking Indian and Pakistani sites as they came to light over the years—I was happy to see that Vogue India has made it on to newsstands. The new magazine is a milestone in the rise of the subcontinental fashion industry, which arguably has had a longer tradition than anything in the occident. It also signals a rise in global luxury brands entering India—something which I hope will soon be more of a two-day street.
   The cover, too, addresses concerns that I expressed in a blog post last week, on the ubiquity of the white model on catwalks. There has been some chatter about why Gemma Ward, a blonde, blue-eyed model, occupies a third of the cover, but the answer is fairly simple, I thought: Vogue India is evidently a magazine that appeals to the global nature of the Indian consumer. Her presence suggests that in a shot. But the international girl is usually quite desirable from a publisher’s or licensee’s eyes, too.
   As a man, I have to say that my eyes went to the other models first: Bipasha Basu, Priyanka Chopra, Monikangana Dutta, Preity Zinta and Laxmi Menon grace the cover and gatefold, photographed by Patrick Demarchelier. Perhaps it is the ubiquity that I wrote about, but the south Asian models are stunning.
   The domestic cover girl is very important, as we learned with Lucire Romania. The original cover girl—Karen Carreño—made less of an impact than the first Romanian to appear, Monica Gabor. 
   South Asia is a region that I am keen on getting in to with Lucire. My best wishes go to Priya Tanna and her team at Vogue India.

Condé Nast tells me that the September Vogue has 840 pp., 727 of them ads.
   I know folks love the thick September issues, but do readers believe there is an ideal ratio between content and ads? I usually go for five to three, but this next Vogue is one to seven.
   The mag will weigh 2·07 kg (4 lb 9 oz) and is the record-holder for advertising pages in a consumer magazine.