But these American shores may not be hospitable

By Jennifer Cox

     The war between American high fashion magazines has long been what military strategists call a "low-intensity conflict."
    The major territorial battles have largely subsided; offensives now take the form of talent poaching, gossip mongering and page-count one-upsmanship.
    Now along comes a newcomer with plans to shake up this somewhat ossified world.
    Jalouse, a new high fashion magazine published by Editions Jalou, the French publisher of L’Officiel, is attempting to jump into the American fashion magazine market with its premiere March issue on newsstands now. 
    With an emphasis on the most modern styles and an approach that’s distinctly European, Jalouse would like to carve out a place for itself alongside Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar and W.
    It won’t be easy.
    For one thing, the title is launching into an advertising market that seems to have struck a soft patch, its first in years.
    Newsstand success, too, has become ever more elusive as titles offering style coverage continue to proliferate, forcing established fashion magazines to compete with titles they never even considered before.
    Perhaps worst of all, the magazine appears to be ill-adapted to its chosen American market.
    Like W and Vogue, Jalouse is for hardcore fashion connoisseurs, not housewives looking for what length skirts to wear this season.
    The fashion spreads are bold, in keeping with the magazine’s tag line, "Fast Forward Fashion." The cover features a model with bangs covering half her face wearing a white leather corset and black bra by Gucci--a brash, even offputting look, for the cover of a premiere issue.
    Inside the spreads teeter strangely between downtown chic and upscale couture, including a funky fashion tribute to '80’s pop-queen Belinda Carlisle and a more traditional layout of a blonde waif wading in a river clad in thousand-dollar fashions.
    The features in Jalouse primarily focus on up-and-coming film and fashion stars. The magazine creatively couples independent film director Sofia Coppola and fashion designer Stella McCartney for a transatlantic phone conversation, which readers get to listen in on. 
   The dialogue is mildly interesting but sheds no new light on these increasingly high-profile famous daughters.
    Other celebrities will be less recognizable to American readers, enough so that some may wonder on which side of the Atlantic Jalouse expects to find its audience.
    Features about French personalities and events take up nearly a third of the magazine and include a Q&A with controversial photographer Bettina Rheims, an interview with film actress Sophie Guillemin and an eight-page wrap-up of Fashion Week in Paris.
    Of course, all fashion magazines must cover Paris’ substantial influence on the fashion world, but while reading Jalouse it is apparent the magazine views France as the center of the world, period.
    But perhaps just as troubling for the title as its overly Continental content is the current advertising market it has entered. After a long stretch of stellar ad gains, all four of the top fashion magazines have been among the first monthly titles to reflect the downturn in the national advertising market.
    According to the most recent figures from the Publishers Information Bureau, Vogue’s year-to-date advertising page totals are down 11.4 percent to 288.47. The magazine’s advertising revenue has decreased 9.97 percent to $19,754,556. W’s year-to-date ad page totals are also down 14.2 percent to 154.79, and revenue is down 0.1 percent to $9,398,374. Harper’s Bazaar is down in ad pages by 15.2 percent to 169.84 and in ad revenue by 11.5 percent to $10,310,328. Elle’s ad pages are down 15.7 percent to 145.61 and the magazine’s advertising revenue is down 5.97 percent to $10,597,911.
    However, numbers are not yet available for the March issues, traditionally one of the biggest of the year for fashion magazines.
    Meanwhile, the fashion books have also been struggling somewhat on the newsstand.
    Single-copy sales for Elle were down 3.0 percent to 302,873 in the second half of 2000, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Harper’s Bazaar dropped 7.4 percent to 174,308, Vogue decreased 14.6 percent to 457,065, and W was down 0.3 percent to 61,784 in the same period.
    The slackness in newsstand sales is certainly due in part to the industry-wide newsstand shakeout that has affected the majority of major titles.
    But the sluggish sales may also have to do with the recent trend of non-fashion magazines adding more and more style-based editorial pages. Inspired by the runaway success of InStyle, entertainment and celebrity magazines like US Weekly and Premiere now provide a celebrity-rich, accessible alternative to Vogue and its sisters.
    Jalouse will be published bimonthly this year, with an initial circulation of 100,000 to be distributed in New York, Los Angles, San Francisco, Chicago, Miami, Boston, Houston and Dallas.

-Jennifer Cox is a staff writer for Media Life.

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