This is a critical retrospective of publications devoted to fashion.
I'm a fan of fashion magazines since my teenage years, today there are two publications that I buy religiously every month just to read the articles, see trends and admire the photos of the advertising campaigns. Read it and flip it through more than once only for pleasure, but as attentive reader could not help but notice something over time that the number of pages for advertising has increased exponentially over the interesting stories that addressed various issues related to the female universe in all its aspects. I'm talking about this why? I recently saw a video that specifically criticized the fashion magazines for perpetuating not only the physical models impossible to reach for most of its readers and how that helps to boost low self-esteem of women in general, but also as thru time magazines have turned into mere luxury sales catalogs, because as riping off the advertising images, there were only some journalistic content pages. I could not help but agree with all the arguments of this video, which incidentally I also argue vehemently, and one that touches me most, perhaps for the professional aspect, was the slow disappearance of informative content articles replaced by pseudo-interviews international and nationals actresses who after all are only advertising maneuvers where they "casually" address a product or brand they use in their day-to-day and it occupies at least three to four pages. I have nothing against advertising, I guarantee you I also like to flip through the sophisticated bags, shoes, clothing and perfums imagens, it is a weakness that I have, but What I do regret is that the evoluiton of visual campaigns is not accompanied by large reports with important and relevant information and often nothing glamorous. I am saddened by this reality that come already noticing for several years, because if we do this same exercise to pull off the advertising pages of a national fashion magazine well known, for example, in the early nineties and we do the same in its latest edition, the result is devastating.
Currently there is a clear reduction in information content of articles and advertising, camouflaged or not, dominates the space of the publication almost completely. One of the main reasons, in my view, because all this happens is because of the cluster of various means of social communication in a single economic group, I give you an example, I notice on an interview with Meryl Streep, I read the same text illustrated by different pictures and the order of the questions changed in different publications of the same group, why? Because it helps to reduce costs in terms of personnel, content research and potential displacement, so it is easier for a company to buy from international news agencies a number of texts that are the same for everyone, than having a group of accredited professionals to produce them locally, which in economistic terms ends up maximizing revenue advertising space selling not only the largest number of pages in one magazine as the other publications that belong to the business group, thereby generating more profit.
I'll be honest, I like fashion magazines, like flipping through advertising and want to continue to buy them, but it is still unfortunate that we are view by the economic agents as mere futile consumers who do not need to be properly considered and informed. And you know what annoys me most in all this? That the editors and supervisors in these publications are, as a rule, composed by women like us and what do we gain with it? Nothing, apparently, the dumbing mass is more profitable than a most informative content, socially, ethnically and even bodily more appropriate. I really have to stop buying fashion magazines that perpetuate these models...
