“You’re going to court,” my editor told me on my second day as a National Post intern. “You need to leave now.” I was all nerves as I threw my recorder and notebook into my shiny, black purse and sprinted to the elevator. I was off to the sentencing of wannabe Toronto rap star and convicted killer Mark Moore. Christie Blatchford had been covering the case, but she was out of town on assignment, and I was the undeserving—but lucky—available person. As the elevator slowly dropped to ground level, I became consumed with anxiety knowing that Blatchford would likely read the piece. I scanned my outfit: a pleated, cream-coloured sleeveless blouse, a pair of fitted, cropped black pants and two-toned, leather-heeled sandals. Despite my panic, I felt confident about my choices; I looked put together. I’d spent the previous night picking out an outfit to convey that I took my stint at the Post seriously. My degree in fashion helped me realize that my personal style allows me to assert poise. Dressing well is as important as showing up to work on time. As the elevator doors opened, I took a deep breath. “As long as you look like you know what you’re doing,” I told myself, “people will think you do.”

The next day, senior writer Peter Kuitenbrouwer visited me at my desk. He was holding the paper, opened to my court story on A3—my first byline for the Post. “Nice work,” he said. “But I think you meant to write ‘peace’ instead of ‘piece.’” My confidence sank, but I adjusted my handcrafted necklace—a reflex I assumed was the female equivalent of straightening a tie—and thanked him.

The ability to convey confidence through clothing is something freelance writer Rea McNamara knows a thing or two about. During times of uncertainty, the former style columnist “glamouflages.” One time, when she felt particularly challenged, she wore red lipstick every day for a week. “I just needed to feel confident,” she says. “And if I didn’t feel confident on the inside, I needed to project that I had my shit together.”

I, too, like to glamouflage. Dressing up gives me an instant boost and makes me feel like I have control—even if I don’t. The way you present yourself sends the outside world a message. “Your sense of style,” says McNamara, “should be reflective of the life you lead.”

We construct identities as we select pieces of clothing. “When you make these conscious decisions about your own personal aesthetics, it feels like you have a sharper take on the world around you,” says Shawn Micallef, co-owner of Spacing and a dapper dresser known for his bow ties. He understands the powerful relationship between clothing and confidence and gets a kick when he leaves the house dressed up. Yet, when working at home, the stylish journalist dresses “terribly.” Unlike Gay Talese, who worked from home dressed to the nines, Micallef doesn’t need a uniform to be productive.

Talese’s style became part of his identity as a journalist. In Rachel Tashjian’s 2015 Vanity Fair article, Talese credits getting his first job at The New York Times to the three-piece suit he wore to the interview. “I was polite, well-dressed,” he said. “I just know, though I never got any confirmation, that I made a good impression.” Tashjian also notes how Talese’s obsession with clothing intertwines with his writing. “When I write stories, it’s like making a suit: the pieces hang together, and you sketch,” Talese said. “The whole process: handwork.”

An effortlessly cool persona makes Joan Didion a style icon in and out of literary circles. French fashion house Céline made her the face of its spring 2015 campaign. “Didion might be the ultimate Céline woman: brilliant, creative, vaguely recalcitrant,” Vogue wrote. She kept a detailed packing list—which included two skirts, cigarettes, a mohair throw and a typewriter—taped inside her closet. “The list enabled me to pack, without thinking, for any piece I was likely to do,” Didion wrote. “Notice the deliberate anonymity of costume: in a skirt, a leotard, and stockings, I could pass on either side of the culture.”

While some writers want to blend in, others stand out. Tom Wolfe’s uniform—his legendary white suit—became synonymous with his work. “Wherever he went, he was the outsider,” Micallef says. “Everyone knew he was the writer.”

During my last week at the Post, I wore gold-stained leather clogs I bought at a flea market after bargaining with a vendor for 20 minutes. Each time I slipped into them and reflected on the victorious price adjustment, they gave me confidence. As the heavy carved heel of the wooden soles hit the newsroom tile, I passed Kuitenbrouwer. “Nice shoes!” he said. I smiled, satisfied that he’d complimented my writing—and my footwear.

As a studio arts, fibres and material practices student at Montreal’s Concordia University and having worked in the fashion industry, Serah-Marie McMahon wasn’t able to find the insightful fashion writing she craved as a reader. While skimming through newsstands, she found nothing she could relate to in traditional fashion magazines. So she created Worn Fashion Journal. “I was experimenting with what I liked,” says McMahon. “I said to myself, ‘I can make it and don’t have to wait for someone else to create it.’” For 10 years, as editor-in-chief, McMahon documented what fashion could be—focusing on reporting, not just trends.

But last November, Worn ceased publication after 20 issues. McMahon says it was her choice to shut the doors. The magazine’s longevity depended on factors such as time, funding and resources. But while its print run of 5,000 was small, the dedication of its readers proved that some people want an alternative to mainstream fashion publications.

Fashion journalism covers clothes, style and trends in both service pieces and analytical features, but Canadian magazines have relied heavily on how-to lists and glossy centrefolds. This means readers get little analysis—adding fuel to the classic debate about whether fashion journalism is real journalism. But today, despite the closing of Worn, tried-and-tested formats are being challenged. Some determined fashion writers are trying their hand at heavily-reported cultural trend pieces that blend fashion and current events. VICE, for instance, reported on what it’s like for minorities to work in the industry. And in November 2014, Flare Magazine ran a controversial online piece about how appearance affects impression in Jian Ghomeshi sexual assault case. These publications are trying to lead with balanced service journalism and solid, well-written articles, but the formula hits a roadblock when magazines still feel the pressure to appeal to consumers.

Creating an in-depth fashion magazine isn’t easy because editors and writers still have to cater to advertisers. A concern for what sells can overwhelm a publication. “There needs to be more of a separation between advertisements and editorials because of how melded they are together,” says Sabrina Maddeaux, fashion and design editor at Now Magazine. “It all comes down to how independent the publication is.”

Editorial content can seem like promotions in disguise. Even a series of photographs with a narrative and a theme can reinforce the stereotype that the genre relies on sell-heavy visuals. “Editorials are not taken seriously, it’s no surprise,” says Nathalie Atkinson, culture critic and columnist for The Globe and Mail. The images are a huge part of the problem, but the visual content gets the most recognition. At the National Magazine Awards in 2013, Flare won gold for fashion and silver for best art direction for its November 2013 issue. ELLE Canada won gold for best beauty shoot, and Fashion Magazine won silver for still photography. The majority of the awards these magazines won went to the visual content rather than the writing.

But according to ELLE Canada features director Kathryn Hudson, fashion journalism is undergoing a shift. Photography will still have a place in fashion magazines, but it will have to share space with stories that deserve equal attention.

Meanwhile, there is a “serious or not” debate between bloggers and journalists. Bloggers are a vital part of fashion coverage, but readers see them less as journalists and more like social media gurus. As fashion magazines try to adopt a more serious tone, though, bloggers have been left a platform to establish their voice and keep fashionistas informed, blurring the ethical lines by producing both good pieces and PR-related content. Both serve different purposes and borrow from each other, although it can be hard to tell them apart. “It’s become a question of, are you a fashion journalist or not?” says Atkinson. “Bloggers want to call themselves journalists and have to behave with journalists’ standards. They’re not less than fashion journalists—they’re just different.”

Elio Iannacci, features editor for Fashion Magazine, says the industry is too exclusive. “We have fashion television shows, good and bad, discussing fashion and great magazines and blogs,” he says. “That whole old world thinking is outdated and unfashionable, it doesn’t make any sense to think that way.”

Fashion publishing has been depicted as a harsh industry in popular movies such as The Devil Wears Prada. This world is full of well-dressed people who will do whatever it takes to get to those higher places. “The fashion industry is portrayed as cruel, cold and soul-crushing, and something our heroine has to overcome,” says Haley Mlotek, a former Worn publisher. “That idea has seeped into our real-life interpretation of what fashion journalism is.”

But today’s journalists are trying to push past these stereotypes and return to the standard investigative style that Worn started. Its last issue hit stands in November but it remains an example of how fashion magazines can be a hybrid of both beautiful visuals and quality storytelling.

Illustration by Harrisson Joseph

By Karizza Sanchez 

It’s the September launch party for Sharp magazine’s Book for Men, a hardcover offshoot filled with glossy images of luxurious cars, men’s fashion, and exotic destinations. The ballroom at the new Shangri-La Hotel in downtown Toronto is crowded, lit with purple lights, and filled with loud music playing—a little reminiscent of a nightclub. The male guests are all carbon copies of one another: handsome, impeccably dressed in suits, and seemingly successful. They are the men Sharp wants reading its magazine, and the men Sharp’s advertisers want to reach.

Some of those advertisers are at the party. Near the back of the room, in an area dubbed the Editor’s Lounge, there are displays of luxurious Chanel and IWC watches, and bespoke shoes from Treccani Milano. There are also complimentary shoeshines from Walter’s Shoe Care and hand massages from American Crew. Nearby is a bar stocked with drinks courtesy of Glenlivet, Absolut Elyx, Peroni, and Havana Club.

“It’s the one event where Sharp brings everything we think men are interested in to the men we want,” says the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Jeremy Freed. The coffee-table Book for Men is a biannual publication, one of Sharp’s newer projects under the aegis of parent company Contempo Media. Contempo’s founders, publisher John McGouran and editorial and creative director Michael La Fave, had the idea for the oversized book when they first launched Sharp five years ago, but decided to wait a few years before starting it in 2010. “When you launch those things,” says McGouran, “they’re very expensive and probably won’t make money on the first issue, and it did not.” But it is meant to take Sharp to greater heights, he says. “We wanted that kind of product out there so that people know, Hey, these guys are very serious about what they’re doing and that they have the capability. If there’s one point I would look to that kind of really jumpstarted our fortunes, [it] was when we launched that.”

The Book for Men is sold for $16.95 on newsstands, with total sales amounting to about 9,500 copies, and roughly 10,000 copies are distributed at special events throughout the year. A portion of the leftovers that don’t sell on newsstands (around 10,000 copies) is used for other events and specialized distribution. Readers will sometimes order the book through the magazine’s website; about 7,000 are purchased by companies in bulk to use as handouts. “Sometimes it’s a premium to their customers because it’s a prestigious product,” says McGouran.

The Fall/Winter 2012 edition of The Book for Men is essentially a 268-page guide to the hottest men’s fashion trends and products, including a 32-page “MANual” full of how-to pieces on etiquette, health, travel, and even survival. The content is not far from what can be found in Sharp itself, which is also home to style and grooming manuals.

Flip through any issue of Sharp and you’ll see fashion layouts, service pieces, and plenty of product write-ups. While there are celebrity profiles, travel stories, and car reviews, most of the editorial focuses on Sharp’s idea of the best of what’s out there. “It’s almost like it’s glorified advertising in a way,” says Chris Lachine, a Toronto-based painter and Sharp reader.

Still, Sharp has a great reputation among Canadian men who appreciate the lavish lifestyle, maintains Rob Cribb, a Toronto Star investigative reporter and former columnist. Sharp is smart, he adds, because there’s a sensibility that it’s been able to capture.

Since launching in April 2008, Sharp has courted affluent men aged 25 to 54—and those who aspire to join those ranks—and it’s been able to stay in business in a men’s market where other efforts have failed. The most recent Winter issue is Sharp’s biggest so far—198 pages of editorial and ads, plus an insert of Time & Style, a watch magazine, well up from the 130-page average.

Published six times a year, Sharp is distributed through the National Post in Toronto, the Vancouver Sun, the Calgary Herald, and The Gazette in Montreal (a total of 100,000 copies), as well as through events (10,000), newsstands (20,000 to 30,000, with a cover price of $5.95), and subscriptions (2,500). Copies are also supplied to Air Canada Maple Leaf lounges and VIA Rail Canada, and mailed directly to members of the Cambridge Club health club chain in Toronto and Montreal. Though a majority of its circulation of 146,500 is controlled distribution, Sharp’s subscriptions are increasing, says McGouran. And in 2011, the title landed just outside of Masthead Online’s ranking of the top 50 Canadian magazines according to total revenue, chalking up an estimated $2.3 million.

Much of Sharp’s content is similar to that of other men’s lifestyle publications, such as GQ and Esquire—in theory, at least. Certainly it aspires to be as good as, if not better than, those titles, and thinks it fares well against them. “You can take our products for the year 2012, six issues of Sharp and two issues of The Book for Men, and compare those to any leading men’s lifestyle magazine and say, Hey, this is on par with them in terms of quality,” says McGouran.

But is Sharp really as good as it claims? Does it have the same quality and scope of content that GQ and Esquire offer? Or is it more focused on landing advertisers than serving readers with the best editorial possible?

For a company that touts the look of its magazine, Contempo Media’s head office—on Queen’s Quay West near Spadina Avenue in Toronto—is surprisingly plain. There are off-white walls, black shelves separating desks, and a lone bookshelf holding other publications used for inspiration, but not much else. La Fave’s office is similarly low key. His inner sanctum has few decorations, other than some items from PR companies. His desk features no photograph of his wife and son; there is only a computer monitor beside his MacBook, an empty glass, loose paper, and a copy of British GQ’s October 2012 issue. “In our opinion, the world’s standard for a men’s magazine is British GQ,” says La Fave. “This is obviously the pinnacle. That’s what we aspire to.” Though he seems private about most things, La Fave is honest and open about this goal. He knows men’s lifestyle magazines like Sharp need to be just as good as GQ and Esquire to compete.

Few, if any, would disagree that those two titles are the big dogs in the men’s lifestyle market. Both award-winning magazines have a good mix of celebrity news, serious journalism, fashion, service pieces, product reviews, and literature. As David Granger, editor of Esquire, told The New York Timesin 2004, “Men have range! There’s no man interested only in sports, only in women, only in electronics.” GQ and Esquire balance the different things men are interested in. Take Esquire’s November 2012 issue, for instance. Inside, there’s a feature on the presidential election, while a topless Mila Kunis adorns the cover.

As for GQ, it serves a younger demographic (the average reader is 34 years old; Esquire’s is 44), yet also offers serious narrative journalism. Even its reputation as a fashion magazine hasn’t stopped the editors from publishing excellent writing and earning multiple U.S. National Magazine Awards nominations and prizes in the feature writing and reporting categories. “It’s an important part of the editorial identity of those big American magazines,” says Cribb, “and frankly, it brings a level of credibility that I think Sharp doesn’t have journalistically.”

For his part, McGouran says he’s subscribed to GQ since he was 18, so starting a men’s lifestyle magazine was not so far-fetched for him. Prior to co-founding Sharp, he worked as the director of advertising and sales at Hockey News for five years, and later as the director of sales at Quebec-based Auto Journal Group, which published Motomag, Automag, Auto Journal, Québec Tuning, Auto Passion, and, starting in 2004, Driven. It was at Auto Journal Group that he first got to know La Fave, who would become Driven’s editor-in-chief.

It was actually La Fave who first approached Michel Crépault, the owner of the Auto Journal Group, in 2003, Crépault says, with the idea of starting a Toronto-based men’s lifestyle magazine with an automotive core. “He told me more, and quickly I said yes, because lifestyle was definitely in my court,” says Crépault in his thick Québécois accent. “Also, starting in Toronto was an interesting challenge for me, so I said yes.”

The now-defunct Driven was published six times a year and distributed through The Globe and Mail. Crépault appointed McGouran—someone he describes as the best sales guy he’s ever met—as the magazine’s director of sales. La Fave’s previous business partner and friend, Laurance Yap, became the artistic director, and with McGouran they made up the core of Driven, which at the time had a staff of about six people.

In mid-January 2008, the Auto Journal Group faced challenges—namely, the recession and the crippled automotive sector. But Crépault would come across even tougher times. The core team of McGouran, La Fave, and Yap was leaving Driven, and tendered their resignations, effective immediately. “I was in despair,” says Crépault. Almost four years after the fact, you can still hear the grief in his voice. “I was completely taken by surprise.” There was no explanation provided for the departure, not that one was needed to make sense of the situation. “I knew that if they were leaving together it was definitely to start something,” says Crépault.

“In hindsight, it’s clear the reason they left,” says Johnny Lucas, who took over as editor-in-chief of Driven the week after La Fave departed. “They wanted to do their own thing. I just thought the way it was done was not my idea of what was proper.”

Crépault says he sent McGouran a letter in 2010, about a year and a half after Driven and the Auto Journal Group folded, saying he finally understood why McGouran had left, although McGouran denies receiving it. In 2007, a marketing consultant from the Auto Journal Group advised Crépault to hire a director of sales for all the magazines the company published. McGouran wanted the position, and while Crépault thought highly of him, he didn’t feel he was right for the job—he didn’t speak French (Driven was the only English magazine in the group), and he didn’t live in Montreal. “I understand that he was, rightly so, disappointed,” says Crépault. “Maybe pissed off. Maybe at the time that was the button I pushed, without realizing it, that contributed to the three of them leaving.”

As for La Fave, Crépault says he could always sense he wanted to do something bigger, and he kept his door open for him. “But unfortunately, he took his decision without talking to me first, the way I would have wished that things could have happened.”

McGouran and La Fave simply say they left Driven, and took Yap with them, because they wanted to go in a different direction from where the magazine was heading. Both men wanted to start a Canadian-made publication modeled on GQ and Esquire—something they thought was missing in the market.Sharp would grow out of ideas discussed over a casual lunch at Vox on Adelaide Street East in Toronto—although they didn’t meet with that purpose in mind. “It was fate,” says McGouran. They launched Sharp four months later, after starting Contempo Media, which now also publishes the custom magazines Volkswagen, Audi, Time & Style, S/Style & Fashion, and M/Men of Style.

Fate aside, some questioned the pair’s decision to launch a men’s lifestyle magazine, especially in the heat of the recession. “I don’t know that anybody thought it was going to be an easy ride for them,” says the Star’s Cribb. Canadian men’s general-interest magazines have struggled to stay afloat over the past decade—Toro folded in 2007 after just under four years in print, followed by Driven. According to Toro’s former editor, Derek Finkle, the pool of potential advertisers was shallow, especially compared to what was available south of the border. Then with the recession in 2008, advertising dollars overall were down. Any magazine that didn’t have deep enough pockets to help ride it out until things improved was in trouble.

Were McGouran and La Fave concerned about this? They funded Sharp with their own money, so they were taking a big risk. “Absolutely,” says McGouran. “Sleepless nights. But at that point there was no turning back. It’s sort of like swimming halfway across the lake and saying, ‘Oh, I can’t make it, I better turn around.’ That was never really an option. We just had to find a way.”

A large part of that way was to concentrate on fashion. Indeed, Sharp has been able to attract male readers with its heavy fashion content, largely thanks to a growing interest in the subject. Simply, men are no longer as diffident as they were in the past about grooming and style. “Men have always cared,” says Henry Navarro Delgado, an assistant professor at Ryerson University’s School of Fashion. “It’s just a matter of publicizing that care.”

Enter Sharp, whose readers say they look to the magazine for style advice and ideas. “I would say that I wasn’t [a fashionable man],” says Ira Brenton, a business manager and reader of Sharp, “but I’m making more of an attempt right now, and Sharp is a good tool.” The accessibility of the brands and products featured in the publication has also helped build readership. “I know it’s Canadian,” observes Brenton, “so I know that a lot of the stuff will be Canadian-centric.”

But simply offering Canadian content may not be enough. “You can’t rely on that because I’m not sure enough people care,” says Finkle, adding that magazines need to offer comparable editorial to what can be found in the big men’s publications.

Back in 2008, Sharp’s inaugural issue featured Leo Rautins, a former Canadian basketball player and head coach of the Canadian men’s national basketball team—a national celebrity, but certainly not a George Clooney, Denzel Washington, or Leonardo DiCaprio, the Hollywood stars who would appear on subsequent covers. While products and style guides were evident in early issues, there were also full-length features covering such topics as child soldiers, counterfeit fashion, brain injuries, and the Beijing Olympics. Today, however, long-form investigative features in the magazine are scarce. While Finkle says he thinks Sharp has improved and has made genuine attempts in the past, he does wish it had “more stuff to read.”

Nonetheless, La Fave says the magazine has done well over the years. “We’ve had a number of pieces that I’m very proud of and that I think are definitely noteworthy,” he says. He’s entered features, such as the brain injury story, into the National Magazine Awards, albeit without success. “To not even receive a nomination had us wondering, Are we on the outside of this community or something?” La Fave says Sharp would love to publish stories that could be picked up by CBC. They’re on the lookout for great writers, he says, and want to make more space for features. They also recently commissioned award-winning writer Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall to contribute a fatherhood column. But, La Fave adds, with a hint of uncertainty in his voice, “A lot of the things we’ve done haven’t necessarily attracted attention within the writing community. Perhaps it’s just a case of Canada. Perhaps people are more inclined to go to Maclean’s or someone else with those types of stories.”

Certainly that wasn’t the case with Toro, which leaned heavily toward strong magazine journalism. The men’s lifestyle glossy was generally well regarded by readers and the industry, and was a frequent National Magazine Awards nominee—and winner. The content was witty, honest, intelligent without being overly intellectual, and at times unabashedly sexual. In one issue, you could read a serious, long-form feature on the Canadian Mafia and then a more humourous piece on the 24 pick-up lines that never work. While not all were award-winning articles, they sparked conversations. “If you went into a news meeting after Toro would come out,” says Cribb, “inevitably, somebody would say, ‘Hey, did you see that piece in Toro?’”

Sharp sparks a different kind of conversation. The publication does a great job of capturing the lighter side of the market, says Cribb, but adds, “I worry a little bit about the relationship with the advertisers and to what extent editorial is influenced by advertising.” In its September 2012 issue, Sharp ran a feature titled “Sharp’s Guide to Effortless Italian Style,” with ads from the Italian brewer Peroni. The fashion spread, shot on location in Italy, included a photograph that showed models drinking Peroni’s Nastro Azzurro beer. “We were in Italy and we thought it was appropriate to have Peroni there,” explains La Fave flatly.
The separation of editorial and advertising has long been a concern for editors, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to uphold as advertisers make greater demands for reader engagement. But the advertising-editorial guidelines, created by a Magazines Canada task force to help editors, publishers, and advertisers maintain a distinction between editorial and ads, state: “Advertisements should not be placed immediately before, within or immediately after editorial content that includes mention of the advertised products or services. Exceptions are allowed for listings and contests.” So, was Sharp’s piece about Italian style more advertorial than actual editorial?
Other conversations have revolved around the ads on Sharp’s covers. In the April 2010 issue, an Audi ad was visible beneath a transparent plastic cover. Some argue this contravened one of the magazine industry’s key guidelines: “No advertisement may be promoted on the cover of the magazine or included in the editorial table of contents, unless it involves an editorially directed contest, promotion or sponsored one-off editorial extra.” Then in the September 2011 issue, there was a BMW ad that incorporated cover flaps that revealed the company’s tagline “Shape the Future”—one flap turned theSharp nameplate into “Shape” while the other revealed “the Future.” Again, Sharp arguably contravened the guidelines.
But Todd Latham, publisher of ReNew Canada, says the ethics of such covers are debatable. “It depends on how it’s done,” he says. As with other publishers and editors, he suggests the lines of editorial and advertising are blurred only when the ad is directly on the cover; flaps and gatefolds are similar to ads on the back of the cover, so those are okay. Consider: Cottage Life has published a “peel and reveal” cover featuring Corona beer andMaclean’s featured a “trapdoor” ad for the Audi Q5 on its cover.
Still, D.B. Scott, president of Impresa Communications Ltd., a magazine industry consultancy firm, says covers should not include ads, referring to such “flapvertising” as gimmicks. “It sends the message that everything in the magazine, including its brand and its cover, is a commodity and it’s for sale,” he says.

So, is Sharp more focused on landing advertisers than building its readership? A source close to the magazine says he worries that sometimes it “doesn’t care enough about the reader” and it’s concerned “more about creating that beautiful environment and creating a nice premium package.”

As Sharp marks its fifth year in the market, the questions are beginning to pile up. Will it finally win a National Magazine Award in something other than the beauty category (Sharp won gold for “Fragrances,” a visual spread that ran in the Fall/Winter 2011 Book for Men)? Will it once again give readers more than a look at the best new suits and manly gizmos? And will Canadians ever recognize Sharp in the same way they do GQ or Esquire?

On the cover of the December/January issue, Ryan Gosling wears a red lumberjack jacket and holds a flaming bottle. Across the page, in bold letters: “Ryan Gosling Is a Better Man Than We Are (and We’re Okay with That).” Would Sharp say the same if it were comparing itself to the heavyweights in the American men’s lifestyle market? More likely it would say, “GQ Is No Better Than We Are.” But to convince some industry observers of that, Sharp clearly still has some work to do. “It’s a catalogue of things to buy,” concludes Johnny Lucas, La Fave’s successor at Driven. “Is that a magazine? Meh.”

Photographs by Darrin Klimek

When Nancy Jane Hastings was asked at her admissions interview for Carleton University’s graduate journalism program in 1981 what kind of writing she was interested in, she said fashion. The interviewer laughed. Nevertheless, Hastings was not only accepted into the program, but was the first one in her class to get a job-at Toronto Life Fashion.

Like the Carleton interviewer, many journalists believe the words fashion and journalism don’t belong in the same sentence. Consequently, the field often doesn’t attract good writers, nor does it receive adequate support from many publishers, who try to produce it on the cheap. The result is coverage that is heavy on service, press-release journalism and thinly disguised advertorial while light on in-depth, well-written stories. Hastings, who went on to senior fashion positions at such magazines as Flare and Chatelaine before going freelance one and a half years ago, sadly admits: “There is a level of professionalism missing here in Canada.”

David Livingstone, fashion reporter for The Globe and Mail who has worked as a fashion journalist since 1977, feels there is another explanation for why fashion journalism doesn’t get much respect: “The first thing people like to say about fashion is that they don’t know anything about it, because to indicate otherwise would be to give the impression you’re too concerned with superficial matters.”

One reason fashion journalism is viewed as frivolous is that some practitioners treat it that way. Jeanne Beker, the host of FashionTelevision, for instance, wrote of her show in the November issue of Flare: “We never saw ourselves as fashion journalists, but rather as entertainment reporters. That mind-set probably accounts for much of the program’s success.” This attitude annoys Hastings: “There is so much fabulous history and art to fashion that to dismiss it as entertainment is wrong.” Trisse Loxley, a freelance writer and beauty columnist for The Globe and Mail‘s Fashion & Design section, identifies three types of fashion journalists. The first are writers such as Livingstone. “The man is a walking fashion encyclopedia, and his work is the work people will read 200 years from now to get a clue as to who we were,” she says. His writing reflects an extensive knowledge of the history of fashion along with an intellectual, yet unpretentious, view of fashion’s importance. Typical of his style is this observation on the spring collections in Milan: “Dolce and Gabbana have mined Italian cultural history, and in the process, proven themselves to be major players on the global scene, and of an influence on female dress in a way greater and more consistent than having made some hot duds worn by Madonna.” Livingstone, although a defender of fashion’s legitimacy as a subject, has a sense of proportion. “It is serious, but if that were always the case, I’d be worried that I’m going to open my sock drawer and think I’ve got enough to write about,” he says.

While the journalists in Loxley’s first category chronicle what’s going on, the second group, in which she includes herself, ask why, often in a tongue-in-cheek manner. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, pink is hot. Why is pink hot? Who cares if pink is hot? Who’s wearing pink? Or, let’s took at the social impact of pink.” Tim Blanks, the host of Newsworld’s Fashion File, does a good job of this in his regular back-page column for Toronto Life Fashion. He had this to say about the skintight clothing on the runways in Paris last vear: “At the Paris couture shows in January, outfits were so tightly tailored as to add a millennial gloss to the notion of clothes to die for. As visions of control tops redux tortured commentators, there was inevitable talk of the New(t) Conservatism.”

The last are the who’s-wearing-what writers. They include the many compilers of best- and worst-dressed lists, although there are more sophisticated examples. Here’s freelancer Serena French in a Globe column on a party after the opening of Sunset Boulevard: “The affable R&B diva Patti LaBelle, decked out in a red satin Moschino suit, signature nails, but uncharacteristically tame hair, enthused about her friend Diahann:’She thrilled me-the only reason I didn’t cry was that my eyelashes would have fallen off and I don’t have any glue.’While she tried to give good sound bite, LaBelle teetered on one Manolo Blahnik pump as The Hollywood Reporter ‘s George Christy attempted to drag her off.”

The problem is that much fashion”writing” doesn’t fit into any of Loxley’s three categories, but, rather, is more like catalogue copy than journalism. For example, the November 1995 Test-Drive section of Flare was a one-page piece entitled “Lips: The Great Light Way” featuring 18 lipsticks. There is a small paragraph with instructions-no kidding-on how to put on lipstick, but the rest of the text consists of copy blocks listing the products’ names and manufacturers. “Who needs to write anymore?” Hastings says of this approach. “It is all about pictures and cheap and nasty cutlines and no copy.”

Bonnie Brooks, editor of Flare, defends her magazine. “We are not a catalogue in the slightest,”she says strongly. “We don’t promote vendors’ products. We are the only magazine that I know of in North Airierica that has something called Test-Drive where we pay people to test products.” Joan Harting Barham, editor ofToronto Life Fashion, also denies that her magazine lists products in an undiscriminating way: “A catalogue means, this is everything we have at Talbots. We’re saving, here’s some of the best stuff and here’s where to get it,” she says. “A good fashion portfolio doesn’t need many words. You should get from the portfolio what the idea is and what the news is.”

Bernadette Morra, The Toronto Star‘s fashion editor, identifies other flaws of fashion coverage: “The stuff I read on the wires from cities all over the United States and other cities in Canada is really quite weak reporting. It’s ill informed, or it’s written in a very patronizing way, or it’s just so mean it goes over the edge the other way,” she says. Hastings also deplores the poor quality of much of what she sees: “It is really dreadful; most of it is absolutely junk. I recently saw an article in a cosmetics publication that was basically a rewrite of the press kit that I had read just moments before. It’s just so sloppy and so lazy-and it happens all the time.”

So why are the reporting and writing so bad? Partly because journalism students are seldom pushed in that direction by their professors, who preach the merits of more “serious” subjects. This attitude can also mean that journalists who try fashion writing don’t value the topic. In some cases, strapped-for-cash writers think they can whip up a couple of fashion pieces to pay the bills while on their way over to Saturday Night. As Morra says, “You need an interest and you need what a lot of journalists might not have and that’s a healthy respect for the industry.”

It’s not just freelancers who sometimes fail to respect the industry. Joyce Carter, who retired from the Globein 1994 after 31 years on the fashion beat, raises another concern, particularly in relation to magazines. “The lines between editorial and advertising are lost and that’s probably the root of the problem when you think about fashion writing,” she says. “There’s very little that I call writing in the magazines. There are reports of what they’ve seen and very little else. There’s no interpretation or speculation as to why. I don’t know of any fashion magazine that writes good fashion copy, because they don’t want to irritate their client base. It’s dishonest. That’s why I don’t pay any attention to the magazines. I only look at the pictures because I know where they’re coming from, and with that skepticism I can’t believe in their judgement,” she says.

A former editorial assistant at one fashion book says that when she worked at the magazine she quickly learned that editorial is the poor relative. “Yes, we had to recognize our advertisers,” she says. “It was a decision where if you have one product from one company and one from another, the natural thing would be to choose the advertiser, whether you wanted to or not. “

Joan Harting Barham is emphatic that this doesn’t happen at Toronto Life Fashion: “When we do advertorials they are very clearly marked,” she says. “Advertisers suggest it [that their products get editorial mentions], but if they’re really serious about it we’ll say, ‘How about an advertorial that will say special advertising section? ‘ ” Bonnie Brooks also denies any slippage between editorial and advertising at Flare, although she alleges that it’s commonplace at a third fashion title. Certainly Patrick Walshe, vice president at Harrison Young Pesonen & Newell, a media management company, doesn’t subscribe to the idea of compromised editorial: “I’ve been schlepping a lot of media over a lot of years over a lot of product categories and I don’t know anybody who has tried to demand editorial in return for commercial space,” he says. “Once you start fudging editorial product you ruin the magazine’s integrity, and ruin the relationship with the reader, and you ruin the very thing you want to maintain, and that is strong magazines in this country.”

The puffy impression that much fashion writing creates may be because the main way criticism is practised is bv omission; if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Joan Harting Barham explains why this approach is used at Toronto Life Fashion: “You can attribute it to fear of advertisers, but I look at it that I have limited editorial space and I want to tell my readers about what’s new and what’s good. Why tell her about something andsay this is terrible?” Joyce Carter offers another explanation for the nice-or-nothing approach. “It’s difficult to do when you’re talking about young people starting out, particularly in your own hometown,” she says. “You could devastate somebody, and I think that’s dirty pool. I alwavs figured the cruellest thing I could do to anybody is to go to their show and then not write about it.”

However, critics wonder how journalistically sound fashion magazines can be if they are edited not by journalists, but by people from retail, buying or advertising backgrounds. Of the country’s major English-language magazines, all are headed by people who have worked almost exclusively journalism-except Flareand Images, a fashion and beauty magazine produced for Shoppers Drug Mart. “The problem that I see is that people who have no idea what women want are telling writers what to write, says Loxley.

Kate Macdonald, editor at Images, who has a background in retail plus 10 years’ publishing experience, believes that to be a competent fashion journalist you need both kinds of skills. “A journalism program is an excellent starting point, but you should also try to somehow specialize in the field or go through a fashion merchandising program, as I did,” she says. Bonnie Brooks, editor at Flare for the last two years, feels her past retail experience is an advantage to her job. “I was executive vice-president of Holt Renfrew,” she says with pride. “I was running 16 stores and several hundred million dollars in sales were my responsibility, so I know more about fashion and what consumers want than any editor could hope to know, because we were the closest link to the consumer and the designer. When Flare hired me it was because the magazine lacked relevance for the reader.”

Readers don’t seem to be much on the minds of newspaper publishers, rnany of whom have responded to the recession by cutting staff, particularly in fashion departments. Sports coverage, which could also be called frivolous, hasn’t been as affected. At The Toronto Sun , for example, the sports section has 20 writers while the fashion section has two. Over at the Star, which in the late eighties had a part-time fashion editor, an assistant editor, two full-time staff writers and a shared editorial assistant, Bernadette Morra and the shared editorial assistant are now the total staff. This means that Morra is often stuck in the office with editorial duties rather than out reporting. It also means that where the Star used to go to Milan, London, Paris and New York twice a year to cover the spring and fall collections, it now covers Paris once a year and New York twice. David Livingstone speculates that something more than economics is at work: “It probably has in it, historically, some real element of sexism.”

Whatever the cause, the amount of bad fashion writing, unfortunately, still overshadows the good. It is a vicious circle where a lack of respect and a dearth of good writing and funding result in bad copy, which reinforces the lack of respect. The result is that the true scope of the subject is often missed. As Joyce Carter points out: “Fashion is a lot of things-fashion is sociology, fashion is anthropology, fashion is history and fashion can be, although it’s easy to exaggerate, indicative of the way people are responding to the world aroundthem at a given time.”