http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9504E6D81E38F93BA25752C1A9659C8B63
As you know, there are two kinds of women’s magazines in the world, nonsmiling and smiling. In the nonsmiling magazines, which tend to be upscale, the models in the photo spreads wear these blank or haughty expressions because, you know, happiness is so middle class.
One model will look as if she is contemplating the meaninglessness of existence in her Helmut Lang dress. Another will look catatonically bored in her Givenchy gown, driven to this unbearable state of ennui either because she is forced to live in a world of people less perfect than herself or because she is in the advanced stages of collagen poisoning.
In some of the photo spreads there will be groups of models staring despondently into space, looking like Sylvia Plath and the Methadone Sisters. Other models will be done up like psychologically damaged Lolitas, their lips pouting and ready for depressed sex. Still others glare out at the camera clad in, say, Ungaro, wearing the fierce expression Lorena Bobbitt must have adopted moments before she gave her husband that extreme circumcision.
A man would have to wear Kevlar if he ever wanted to approach these women. Sometimes it seems there is something about wearing haute couture that makes you want to suck on the gas pipe.
Interestingly, though, the magazines that are thriving these days have an entirely different sensibility. This is the golden age of the smiling magazine. O, the magazine named after the historically important first initial of Oprah Winfrey’s name, is so relentlessly encouraging it is like being hugged to death by the Care Bears. InStyle, the celebrity and fashion magazine that is now as thick as Vogue, is an ink and paper version of Prozac Pop-Tarts.
And the hottest new magazine in the land is called Lucky. It’s so peppy and chipper it makes going down the Hallmark card aisle in the drugstore feel like a trudge through Germanic philosophy.
Lucky’s success isn’t due only to its sensibility. The founders realized that they could do away with some of the things that clog up other magazines, like articles. There are almost no articles in the magazine. There’s no advice about relationships. No celebrity profiles. In fact there are almost no celebrities. The models are normal-looking women, and often are in fact Lucky magazine staff members.
Instead there is stuff. Lucky bills itself as ”The Magazine About Shopping.” There are pages and pages filled with pictures of shoes, lipstick, perfume and handbags. It’s a hybrid between a magazine and a catalog: a magalog.
Reading it is a commercial bonding experience. It’s you, the editors and your imagined fellow readers going through all this cool stuff. Look! Matzo design wrapping paper! Faux zebra skin flip-flops! Bright pink Kate Spade gift tags! Peppermint scented bath soap! It’s as if we slipped through some cosmic portal and entered Barbie’s universe.
Lucky now has 900,000 readers, is pulling in ads by the bucketful, is spawning imitators and was named last month as Advertising Age’s Magazine of the Year.
Some critics see the magalog’s success as a sign of the end of civilization. But Lucky succeeds because it applies an aggressively democratic sensibility to the world of fashion.
The nonsmiling magazines are all about exclusivity and status. They feature cutting-edge designers and authoritative editors (such as Diana Vreeland or Anna Wintour) filling you in on the latest trends among the cognoscenti.
But in the world of Lucky, there is no beau monde. There is no fashion hierarchy. There are no authority figures, nor any social elite (that’s why there are no celebrities). There’s just the happiness of the local mall.
There aren’t even any trends. Anything can be cool if you want it to be. Moreover, the distinction between upscale and downscale is exploded. Lucky exhibits $500 pants side by side with stuff you could find at Wal-Mart. Lucky appeals to the modern sort of shopper whose consumption patterns don’t conform to her income level. She’ll shop at Dollar General for stuff she doesn’t care about and then rocket up and buy $400 boots at Neiman Marcus to feed her shoe fetish. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote a rather important book on how, in America, the democratic personality supplants the aristocratic personality. The democrat smashes hierarchies. The democrat is interested in everyday happiness, not lofty excellence. The democrat simply does not acknowledge the existence of social class. Nobody is above me and nobody is below me. We are all equal, and we are all Lucky.