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The logical end of fashion - naked clothes horses

Nedahl Stelio

by Nedahl Stelio

03 Feb 05:45am

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Filed under: Celebrities, Fashion, Magazines, Sex, Women

17 comments

Talk about a grand marketing plan!

A starkers Kate Moss on the cover of Love Magazine.

Last weekend, Love magazine, run by former Pop! Magazine Editor (and fashion industry icon) Katie Grand, started releasing their Issue #3 covers. The nude shots of Lara Stone, Kristen McMenamy, Daria Werbowy and Jeneil Williams were let loose on the internet, and didn’t the bloggers have a field day.

I blogged about it. I got emails from friends to blog about it. I saw it on at least three other websites all marvelling over how we were getting to see these girls practically in their birthday suits. Fashion blogging land was in an excitable hoo hah. Naked supermodel? You’ve got to be kidding me! I’ve never seen that before.

You can imagine then, the absolute palaver it caused when Love Magazine released to their database four more covers last night: Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Natalia Vodianova, Amber Valetta. Cue more blogging, more hype, more anticipation for the onsale date of a magazine. I haven’t looked forward to buying a mag so much since the launch of Madison five years ago.

Did I mention the mag’s not out yet? Goes on sale today.

This is a great way for magazines to use the internet - the very medium which is one of the major causes of mags dropping circ - to actually drive sales. Australian magazines take note. Hype builds hype. Hype drives sales. Hell, I’ll be dropping everything to scour the city for a copy of Love and I’ll probably buy a few (again, naked supermodel? Collector’s item).

But the nakedness. On a fashion magazine. It’s a little ... out of place, isn’t it? Fashion is essentially about the clothes, right? What one is wearing. That’s what fashion mags use to sell their magazines and it’s what women worldwide are obsessed with.

Clearly, that’s not enough anymore. As the prima donna of fashion mags, Katie Grand is proving, even the fashion magazines need some help from that old sexual chestnut, nudity.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. When Kate Moss sells her fashion range in Top Shop, it’s usually with no bra on. Miranda Kerr hasn’t been shot for a magazine with clothes on in what, five months now? And even pre-pubescent-looking Aussie superstar model, Abbey Lee, is all over photographer Terry Richardson’s website sans top.

Clothes, it seems, have had their day. For now.

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17 comments

Show oldest | newest first

    • cam says:

      06:03am | 03/02/10

      Great to read an article not banging on about the exploitation of women on covers etc etc. Also delighted to read someone not crapping on about ” is the photo re-touched” blah blah blah. And isn’t it refreshing to read an article not rabbitting on about female stereotypes and ” no wonder young girls are sticking their fingers down their throats and chucking up “, well done and well written !!

      Reply

    • xiaoecho says:

      06:15am | 03/02/10

      Kate hasn’t looked that good in years

      Reply

    • Rob says:

      07:11am | 03/02/10

      Let me introduce you to a magic word: Photoshop.

      Reply

    • Fed-up Frank says:

      02:41pm | 03/02/10

      You goose!
      That’s like trying to be all msart about a well written article by saying “editing”.

      Seriously, give it up.

    • T.Chong says:

      07:23am | 03/02/10

      Another great piece of advertising, congrats to varios PR spruikers and ad. marketers. Very similar to the Hawkins cover that had so many fashion followers hot and bothered.
      This company wanted publicity, and got it thru another fashion “controversy”
      BTW fashinistas and followers you do realise that the inane stupidity and shallowness shown in Zoolander was parody, and not actually a doco ?

      Reply

    • Marina Go says:

      08:52am | 03/02/10

      T.Chong: I love that you never change. My exact thoughts re: Hawkins cover. The difference is that the brilliant Katie Grand and co are being totally transparent about their intentions - they have amazing photos of the world’s best-looking people and want us to need to own them by purchasing the magazine. They haven’t felt the need to attach a politically correct message to this. It is what it is.
      BTW a bit insensitive of you to announce that Zoolander wasn’t a doco without any kind of warning.
      Nedahl: Madison was really the most exciting magazine launch for you in the past five years? I should send some copies of UK Grazia your way immediately…

    • clementine says:

      02:52pm | 03/02/10

      Actually Marina, Katie Grand’s ‘intentions’ are somehow to celebrate diversity - the catchcry of most magazine publishers justifying the portrayal of naked women on covers these days. From a Vogue interview:

      “For this issue of LOVE, we took eight women who are generally acknowledged as the most beautiful in the world, got them to show off their bodies - widely regarded as the most perfect in the world - and photographed them all in exactly the same position for the cover,” LOVE’s editor-in-chief Katie Grand told VOGUE.COM. “We did this to show how much they differed physically from one another, which is why we also printed their measurements.

      “The point is that ‘perfection’ is not fixed, timeless or transcendent,” Grand - who put Beth Ditto on the cover of the first ever issue of LOVE - explained. “It varies, as the measurements of our cover girls show.”

      These models’ measurements are already available on their wikipedia pages. And the comparison of them only leads one to this conclusion, by Jezebel.com:  “Yes. Beauty varies. Apparently by a whole inch or two.”

      I don’t know about you, but I don’t see a whole lot of obvious physical differences in the models above.

    • Andrew M says:

      04:37pm | 03/02/10

      Brilliant comment! No one can take these magazines seriously after watching Zoolander!

      Sexuality is usually the lowest form of advertising… It shows that no one would buy your product (e.g. this magazine) without sexing it up.

    • Bill says:

      08:37am | 03/02/10

      Thanks for the tip…googles ‘Love Magazine’!

      Reply

    • Hawt says:

      09:31am | 03/02/10

      Anything that gets hot women to get their kit off should be encouraged.

      Reply

    • EJ says:

      11:28am | 03/02/10

      That photo is really unattractive (and no, I’m not fat)

      Reply

    • Eric says:

      04:22pm | 03/02/10

      Yes, the censor bars really spoil it for me.

    • Drop says:

      12:21pm | 03/02/10

      She’s wearing shoes so she’s not completely naked. Personally, it doesn’t bother me. A lot of stink about it on Daily Mail. I’m a woman myself and don’t find this offensive, it’s expected of them.

      Reply

    • shabangabang says:

      01:09pm | 03/02/10

      I’m sure they at least had the radio on.

      Reply

    • stephen says:

      05:18pm | 03/02/10

      I buy a couple of books a year to do with fashion and social culture, and bought Hadley Freeman’s new tome. (Cost me 70 bucks)
      Don’t buy it. I learnt more about nazis and lamp shades than ‘personal architecture’.
      Fashion’s nice - makes us feel good when we got it on - just needs better commentary.
      (I left the book on the floor expecting the cat would do the ‘right’ thing. It chose TV Week instead.)

      Reply

    • BT says:

      06:07pm | 03/02/10

      I’m female and stopped buying these magazines long ago - firstly because they are rubbish, and secondly, because I am not a lesbian who wants to ogle women all day. Where have all the men gone from women’s magazines? I demand a nude Clooney NOW!

      Reply

    • pfffffff says:

      01:32am | 13/09/10

      Humans against human body…. and if nude, they break all…. Mmmm, interesting, very interesting…. And they, moral fascists, want to be echologist and… naturals and… what more?

      Reply
 
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