Grade: B+
I recently took back-to-back redeyes from Boston to San Francisco (and back again!) The redeye back I lurched into a ball of unconsciousness, but on the way out I had a bit of time. As usual, I stood before the Airport Store stand o’ massive magazines and tried to pick one. I’ve reviewed Instyle and Glamour, twice.
This time I picked Marie Claire. This isn’t one I’ve ever read before, so I didn’t know what to expect. Would it be horribly upscale? Trashy? Fancy?
Here’s what I learned:
Of course it’s sold out at a mere $1,875.00
So Marie Claire includes women of color, plus sized women, working women and non-straight women. Why doesn’t it get my top ranking?
A few things really pulled it down for me (and that was before I visited their obnoxious website):
– The incredible cost of practically everything they showed. For anyone who is trying to, you know, not go broke… there’s hardly anything shown than you could BUY.
– A very, very busy layout with confusingly intermixed ads. It was harder than usual to tell content from ad.
– A lack of guidance. I felt like they had a lot of themed pages like “Designer Dossier” or “Survivor Mode” that showed themed clothes to buy… but that you had to be pretty sophisticated to be able to use their pieces. Safari themed high heeled pumps could go drastically wrong in (say) my wardrobe. Instead of explaining how something worked with current themes, or how it could be built on they had collections of extremely expensive pieces that would be risky for a neophyte to try.
So…. good (for a fashion magazines) articles, risky fashion advice.
This isn’t unique to Marie Claire, but I’d like to shout-out to Amazon.com for a series of ads that show a professionally well-dressed African American women with the tagline “Smart is Beautiful”. There’s nothing not to love in that!
Technically Pretty 