In praise of the Condé Nast customer service

I received my copy of the March issue of UK Vogue yesterday. The cover was badly damaged. Since the wrapping paper was in a perfect state, I was pretty sure it happened at the printers.

I called the subscription hotline and explained my case. They immediately and very nicely offered to send the magazine again.

I had already called Condé Nast during the postal strike last autumn. My Vogue hadn't arrived, three weeks after hitting the news agent shelves. They sent me another one, most likely making up for a defective postal service. Of course I am sometimes kept on hold for an unnecessarily long time. However, the helpfulness of the subscription customer service is I believe a real sales argument, which is currently under exploited.

I've had quite a different experience with the French subscription hotline. The few times I've had to call them (four times in a row, all about the fact that money had been debited from my account but I wasn't receiving the magazines), the staff was rude, incompetent. They really should consider emulating their British counterpart.

Yours,

Mlle L

Quote on a Monday: on journalism

"Un journal, un bon journal, quel que soit son contenu, c'est une somme d'énergies tendues, aimantées vers un objectif qu'incarne plus ou moins celui qui le dirige. Un bon journal, c'est une passion."

A newspaper, a good newspaper, no matter its content, is the sum of tensed energies, aiming towards a goal more or less represented by the person in charge.

A good newspaper is a passion.

"Personne n'a envie de se défoncer pour un groupe financier"

No one wants to work really hard for the benefice of a corporation

"L'écriture ne s'apprend pas, elle se travaille".

You can't be taught how to write, you have to work on it.

'Le romancier est de tout le hommes celui qui ressemble le plus à Dieu"
Mauriac, 1939

Of all men, the novel writer is the one closest to God.

Mauric, 1939

"Il nous paraît en effet que le reportage fait partie des genres littéraires et qu'il peut devenir un des plus importants d'entre eux".
Sartre, 1945

We think reportage is a literary genre and that it could become a very significant one.

Sartre

Le journalisme "c'est là où bat le coeur du monde"

Journalism "is where the world's heart beats"

Ils croient se mettre à la portée de leurs lecteurs; mais il ne faut pas supposer à ceux qui vous lisent des facultés inférieures aux nôtres; il convient mieux d'exprimer ses pensées telles qu'elles sont conçues. On ne doit pas se mettre au niveau du plus grand nombre, mais tendre au plus haut terme de perfection possible: les jugement du public est toujours, à la fin, celui des hommes les plus distingués de la nation."
Germaine de Stael

All quotes from Profession Journaliste, Françoise Giroud (Livre de Poche, 2001)

Sunday definition: Darts

Are extremely important to the cut of a dress, but it is bad to use too many. It is not by putting in a dart that you will correct a bad fitting.

A good fit must be obtained in the first place by the way you use the grain of your material.

Darts are only necessary to fit your bodice. Generally two or four darts are enough to give you an excellent fit. Avoid making them too big: it looks ugly.

Nicely cut clothes must be cut with the fewest possible seams.

Never choose a frock or pattern with many darts and seams. They are difficult to make; and they will not necessarily wear well. When you are designing a frock, pay special attention to choosing a design with few darts and few pattern pieces for the main part of the frock.

The Little Dictionary of Fashion

Christian Dior

First published 1954

V&A Publishing, 2008, page 31

Picture from The Power of 5

Magazine writing: Cosmo decodes our sex fantasies

In its March 2010 issue, UK Cosmopolitan decodes "your sex fantasies". From the Bible's apple to fig leaves, there are many easy and effective ways of talking about sex through fruit-related comparisons. Cosmo's choice of words to discuss threesomes (or as they put it "when two becomes three (or even more)") however seems particularly poor and unnecessary:

Sex is like breakfast - cereal monogamy gets very samey. But throw in a banana or a soft , fuzzy peach and suddenly it seems mouthwateringly delicious. Fruity fantasies about sex with more than one person - male or female - are very common.

Footwear: red or turquoise?

Don't mind the celebrities or the dresses, what I like in this picture is the sole of the shoes.

Red and turquoise, Louboutin and YSL, showing once again that coloured soles are so superior in term of style and interest to black - or even worse, brown or beige - ones. A coloured sole brings a flash of coulour to your outfit. It shouts, though sometimes wrongly, luxury shoes. I say wrongly because I have bought footwear from River Island which had a red sole. Louboutin never trademarked the colour, which is why any company, including Versace, can copy him.

Picture from the Daily Mail

Sunday definition: Cosmetics

Cosmetics play a very big part in the secret of beauty, but they mustn't show. Too much make-up is now very old-fashioned. You don't have to be under strong lights like an actress on a stage, so there is no need to be made up like one.

The most natural make-up is best, and except for lipstick it must not show. Brightly coloured nail varnish is all right if you like it, but personally I prefer natural colours.

The Little Dictionary of Fashion

Christian Dior

First published 1954

V&A Publishing, 2008, page 28

Quote on a Monday: The Thinker, David Baddiel on style icons

I find this paragraph, from Baddiel's column in the September 2009 issue of Esquire specifically appropriate on the day after the Golden Globes.

There are a number of women like Chloë Sevigny - I don't know their names: Alice Dellal? Caroline Sieber? - who The Culture has just decided are style icons. The awarding of style icon status will come with an awful lot of guff about how the said woman - who will always (a) employ a stylist, and (b) be given most of her clothes free by designers - is so always herself, how her personality shines through her fashion choices, how she defies conventions blah blah fucking blah.

He could have added (c) can afford any clothes they want thanks to their bottomless budget (d) can get designers to modify dresses for them - see Sieber being a Chanel brand ambassador, though no one really knows what it means.

Image courtesy of La Mimi

Sunday definition: Boning

With the simplification of life and of fashion, the boning of dresses has come into use - and this does away with the heavy corsets our grandmothers wore. When you wear a strapless dress, boning is absolutely essential.

The Little Dictionary of Fashion
Christian Dior
First published 1954
V&A Publishing, 2008, page 17

First things first: definition

This blog is meant to be a fashion memex, a place for me to share interesting fashion facts, book reviews and general observations.

Although I don't plan on releasing my name, I don't believe in anonymity on the Internet.

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Commençons par le commencement: définition
Je vois ce blog comme une memex pour la mode, un endroit où je pourrai partager mon intérêt pour la mode, des critiques de livres ou bien des articles plus généraux.

Bien que je ne pense pas rendre mon nom publique, je n'ai aucune illusion sur la possibilité de rester anonyme sur Internet.