Details a Trendy Comer Among Fashion-Conscious Periodicals
In the beginning, 18 years ago in New York, there was Interview, Andy Warhol’s now venerable celebration of celebrity and fashion. Today, in Los Angeles, there are L.A. Style and Exposure. In San Francisco, Equator. In the Windy City, Metro and Inside Chicago. So many cities sport Interview knockoffs that AdWeek felt obliged to coin an ungainly word, celebrifashion, to describe them.
Though they range in size--from the 4x6-inch British import, the Fred, to the Manipulator, a Gargantuan 27 by 19 inches--and design--most favor high-quality graphics though New York’s the Paper is in funky black and white--they have common characteristics: a self-conscious hipness, a fevered obsession with fashion, a fascination with the club scene, a superficial interest in culture, a passion for unlikely celebrities and an appreciation of style over substance. The current trend-setter is Details magazine, which was purchased in January by the S.I. Newhouse family’s Advance Publications, owner of Vogue, Vanity Fair and the New Yorker. The price was more than $2 million, an extraordinary sum for a publication whose circulation hovers around 100,000.
But then again, the periodical has extraordinary demographics, according to Jonathan Newhouse, the new publisher. The median age of a Details reader is 29 1/2 with a household income, usually in a one-person household, of $56,000.
Details got its start in 1982 when former fashion editor Annie Flanders called a meeting of veteran staffers of the newly defunct SoHo Weekly News. Operating Details on a shoestring, Flanders had to struggle to stay ahead of creditors despite the fact that from the beginning the monthly carried a full complement of advertising. In 1984, to save the publication from bankruptcy, Flanders sold a controlling interest for $300,000 to a British publisher. He in turn unloaded it in mid-1987 on a New York entrepreneur.
Flanders met the proposed sale to Newhouse with foreboding. The previous owners had attempted to alter the publication’s editorial approach in the hope of broadening its appeal. Certainly Advance, an industry giant, would do the same.
“We would be crazy to change Details,” said Newhouse. “Annie Flanders has produced a superb magazine, with a vibrant, passionate audience. We don’t plan any changes in the editorial product.”
Like most fashion journals, Details is read as much for its advertisements as for its editorial copy. In the April issue, which went on sale this week, the reader passes 61 pages of ads, mostly for hip designers and boutiques, before encountering the first spark of editorial life, the popular column in which the monotoned Stephen Saban gives the details of an existence measured out in press gatherings, media events, fashion shows, private parties and club hopping.
In this instance, Saban’s column is the opening sally in Details’ assault on California, and the parties he visits are at familiar locations in Los Angeles. After some typical ultrahip profiles--Dito, the lead singer of N.Y.’s Gutterboy; David Sylvian; Guns N’ Roses; the British R&B; singer Rick Astley; actor Marcus Flanagan; cover boy Bryan Ferry--the Details team settles down to 14 pages of capsule looks at shops on Melrose Avenue and eight pages showcasing the work of nine San Francisco fashion designers. Although Details has maintained an L.A. office for two years, the California coverage has a pronounced out-of-towner flavor.
The April highlight, however, is the series of 50 or so reviews of L.A. and Bay Area restaurants by Hal Rubenstein, not because he offers many surprises, although he does make you reconsider some familiar places, but because he is accurate and funny (“Tofu,” at I Love Juicy on Melrose, “belongs in Barbie’s futon collection”).
Also not to be missed is the regular column “Knifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” in which people share their experiences with surgical stretching, tucking, sucking, implanting, reducing and lifting. This month one Liz describes the painful, expensive and time-consuming removal of a tattoo from her upper arm.
Newhouse believes the average reader is “someone who is interested in fashion, particularly directional or avant-garde fashion, people interested in the hip downtown scene or who just enjoy the offbeat point of view that Details provides.”
Newhouse said Details was a logical acquisition for Advance.
“I conceptualize our strategy as a pyramid,” he said. “Vogue is at the base of the pyramid. Vanity Fair is in the middle. And Details is at the pinnacle addressing the most fashionable advance guard of fashion.”
More than half the advertising in the April issue was placed by stores and designers in California. The publisher is shipping an extra 20,000 copies to this state, so it shouldn’t be hard to find. A single issue of Details cost $2.50, a 12-month subscription $18.97 (P.O. Box 7645, Teaneck, N.J. 07666-9879).
Republic’s Unrest
It appears that Banana Republic’s new travel quarterly is seething with as much intrigue as one of the parent outfit’s namesakes.
Perhaps it comes from knowing that three of the four top editors quit within hours of the first issue’s arrival, but an atmosphere of insecurity surrounds Trips, the spinoff introduced last week by the folks at the Banana Republic Travel Clothing Co.
“This magazine provides an alternative to the slick, sanitized stories and post-card photography of other travel magazines,” writes editor-in-chief and Banana Republic co-founder Mel Ziegler in a press release accompanying the magazine. “What Trips offers is a new vision--one that goes beyond the gloss of tourism to uncover the diversity of cultures on the planet.”
And in the magazine: “Now you probably won’t find that sort of advice in the glossier travel magazines. . . .” And: “Our brand of travel journalism will show the world as it truly is.” Etc., etc.
They protest a bit too much. Actually, with the possible exception of Mark Jacobson’s “Greetings from South Africa” (which could have found a berth at Rolling Stone or a dozen other publications) and some dubious advice about exchanging money on the black market, it is not difficult to picture the articles in the Trips appearing in Traveller or Travel & Leisure. As for slickness, Trips has color illustrations on nearly every page and is full of ads for things like BMWs and Tanqueray.
Although the company’s publicists were busy last week spinning the tale that her leaving was long planned, sources close to former top editor Carolyn White say her departure was unexpected. The Rolling Stone and Lear’s veteran was reported to have skirmished with Ziegler throughout her tenure at Trips, but she was at work on the second issue just before she left. White will only say that her leaving was caused by “creative differences” between her and Ziegler.
White and Ziegler are reported to have clashed repeatedly over editorial content. Ziegler is said to have rejected several articles White developed for the magazine and to have become angry at White’s heavy editing of his own contributions to the publication. White protested the inclusion of a 17-page insert advertising Banana Republic fashions, which makes the magazine remindful of the clothing store’s catalogue.
In addition, Jennifer Farber and Kathryn Goetz, two of the three associate editors, also left.
Ziegler, who is not famous in the business for his accessibility, was not taking calls, but his press aide Kristin Joyce offered assurances that the second issue was “going ahead as planned.”
Several of the magazine’s excellent contract writers are not so sure.
According to a writer still active: “Most of us are taking a wait-and-see attitude. We hope it will keep going and we get our money, but we’re not expecting anything.” Another expressed fear that the diminishing popularity of the “safari look” could spell financial trouble for the company.
“The staff doesn’t walk out if things are going well,” commented an industry observer.
Among the highlights of the first issue: humorist Lewis Grossberger’s visit to “Fabulous Bulgaria”; Marguerite Del Giuduce’s introduction to indigenous Hawaiians, “The Forbidden Island”; and “The King and, Well, I,” in which Charlie Haas bicycles with the portly King of Tonga.
The slightly smaller-than-average size is comfortable to handle, and the art direction by Roger Black, despite occasional clutter, is generally attractive. All things being equal, it would be sufficient to welcome another competent travel magazine.
Bits and Pieces
In “The Private Eye of Steve Martin” in April’s HG, a.k.a. House & Garden, art critic Robert Hughes introduces the First Amigo as “an extremely serious, not to say fixated, collector” of contemporary art. “Martin stalks his quarries one by one,” Hughes writes. “His ideal is connoisseurship rather than stamp collecting.” And you thought he just played the banjo. . . . Club Med it’s not, but for growing numbers of citizen diplomats, the Soviet Union is becoming a popular travel destination. The current Nuclear Times ($3 per issue; six bimonthly issues, $4.95; P.O. Box 39996, Washington, D.C. 20077-5095), published cooperatively by various peace organizations, features “To Russia, With Love,” a sampler of tours by Miranda Spencer. . . . In the March 21 New Yorker, Richard J. Barnet of the Institute for Policy Studies, the liberal D.C. think tank, joins the debate on the future of American foreign policy with a first-rate essay calling for a rethinking of the concept of national security. He argues that the domestic costs of the Cold War have become intolerable and must be altered to meet the demands and limitations of an internationalized economy. “The irony,” he writes, “is that unexamined national security policies, designed to protect the people of the United States from foreign coercion and interference, have the unintended effect of weakening the quality of life in America.”
