Addicted to Vogue

Like my fellow fashion blogger at Final Fashion, I love fashion magazines. A copy of the latest Vogue, W, or Elle will make my day, and I can't resist the siren call of those shiny new glossy pages on the newstands. That said, although the blogosphere and other digital media has been sounding the death knell of the glossies for a while now (and in internet time, that means days or weeks), traditional print magazines aren't dying - but their place and relevance in the fashion world is changing.

The print magazines cannot be as fast as the internet, and they can't provide as much information from as many different sources. But what they can do is provide gorgeous images and editorials; they can be a tangible object of desire, kind of like a pair of fabulous shoes (except for only a few dollars, they are a lot more accessible). We buy fashion magazines in order to capture a bit of the glamour that they portray. Magazines like Allure and Harpers Bazaar depict a truly fabulous lifestyle that's probably at least a bit unrealistic and impossible, but what's the harm in imaging it?

In order to maintain their status (and perhaps their very existence), fashion magazines need to let the internet do what it does best, and then continue to do what they do best: give us beautiful images and inspired fashion editorials. No website can be quite as satisfying as flipping through a crisp new copy of Vogue - even the ads are stunning. The print media is still just as important as the Net, but the glossies need to focus on the positive, on what makes them different, instead of merely trying to compete.