Lorraine Candy, The Guardian

Monday, January 21, 2008

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Free Handbags at Dawn. Elle's editor-in-chief is hoping that a full magazine makeover will beat the January blues - and boost falling sales in the face of the fashion weeklies. Just don't mention the G-word. James Silver reports.

It has been a whirlwind start to the year for Elle's 39-year-old editor-in-chief Lorraine Candy.

The latest issue of the style glossy showcases a comprehensive overhaul and facelift, which includes a raft of new fashion supplements a less cluttered cover, big-name snapper signings - including Mary McCartney - and the arrival of iconic actress Chloe Sevigny as the magazine's 'style advisor' and March cover-star.

“For the next six months Chloe Sevigny will be answering letters about style for us,” says Candy, sitting across the table in her cramped Mayfair office. “And 'style advisor' is not just a title, she'll really be doing it, she has a column.

"She is not someone who's instantly recognisable - she couldn't go on a Glamour or Cosmopolitan cover, she could only go on an Elle cover to be honest - but what we're saying with this [signing] is that this magazine is about fashion and style and next month we've got someone who the author Jay Mcinnerny once called 'the most stylish girl in the world' on the cover.”

Hot on the stiletto-heels of the magazine's fresh look comes next month's Elle Style Awards. Now in their 11th year, the bash attracts Hollywood 'A-listers' and is worth, according to the press release, some £2.7 million of PR to the brand - although how that's been totted up is anyone's guess. “I can't reveal who's going to be coming,” she tells me coyly, when quizzed about who heads the guest-list, “but people we've had in the past include Charlize Theron and Kylie Minogue.”

The evening is sponsored by retail chain H&M, which Candy hails as “a very good partnership” between “the world's biggest-selling fashion magazine” and a company “which is not only enormous but also produces clothes which have a very good quality designer feel and are relevant to Elle readers.”

“And they're cheap,” I point out. “No, affordable,” she corrects me, flashing a smile.

On three occasions during this interview, Candy - who is familiar to many from her appearances on Sky One's Project Catwalk and Channel 4's Model Behaviour - describes Elle as “the world's biggest-selling fashion magazine”.

It strikes me as a curious label for a title which is not only comprehensively outsold by market-leaders Glamour, Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire (which admittedly are not fashion magazines per se), but also - by some 17,000 copies - by Vogue.

When I raise this, she clarifies using a touch of political spin: “We have just over 40 editions around the world and we work quite internationally, so US Elle and I occasionally do cover-shoots together and we do co-productions like 'It Girls Around The World' with Italy, France and the US.

"So it is quite a powerful brand and we have more editions globally than anyone else - that's why we use that phrase.”

A powerful brand, certainly, yet Elle, just like the other durable brands in its sector, has been hit by the success of women's weekly title Grazia. In the latest set of circulation figures, the Emap magazine shot up by 26% year-on-year, recording an average weekly sale of 220,125 in the first six months of last year, while nearly all other women's fashion and lifestyle titles were down.

Meanwhile, Elle, published by Hachette Filipacchi, lost some 3% over the same period, shedding 5,500 copies and giving it a per-issue average of 203,302.

"So while Candy's stewardship has undoubtedly been successful in terms of developing the brand across a range of platforms - from fashion supplements to the web, where all Elle photo-shoots are now posted - I wonder how worried she is by the seemingly unstoppable rise of Grazia?

“[Grazia] has been hugely successful and it has affected big non-fashion magazines like Glamour, Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire very badly, they've lost about 11% of circulation,” she says, curiously refusing to name-check the Emap title.

“The fashion end of the market - Vogue, Elle and Harper's Bazaar - haven't really been knocked for six in the way the others have. We've been able to retain stability in a very tough market. So while [Grazia] arrived saying they were the first fashion weekly, they are offering such a different thing to us. You can only get the big shoots and the exclusive interviews in the big fashion magazines like ours.

“So while it is a worry, and we all have to take [Grazia] into account, for me it's all about us constantly extending Elle's authority in the area we are known. If you are a young girl and you really want to know about fashion you are going to buy a fashion magazine rather than a weekly because weeklies don't have the authority.

"But if you've got ten minutes to spend, you're a bit bored and you want to quickly grab something and satisfy that lust, then you probably will buy a weekly. [Grazia] was new, passionate, looks great and has created a new genre, but there will so many [others] in the market soon.”

Is she dropping a hint that Hachette is poised to enter the women's weeklies fray? “Every publishing company will hopefully have an upmarket weekly at some point,” she says carefully.

But are there plans afoot in her own building? “I don't know, probably. I'm not involved in them. I'm really focussed entirely on Elle. But it will be really interesting to see what happens when more weeklies launch. Yes it will put further pressure on [existing titles], but as an editor there's always something around the corner that you have to deal with.”

One tool editors like Candy have used to fight the increasingly fractious circulation battle has bee the use of 'cover-mounts' or free gifts stuffed under their magazine's cellophane wrapper. The last time this interviewer was dispatched to the mascara-and-kitten-heels world of women's glossies it was midsummer 2006 and the battle of the free flip-flops was underway.

Back then, Glamour was offering a free pair of Warehouse flip-flops, New Woman boasted a pair from Faith, while In Style's came from LK Bennett. Not to be outdone, Marie Claire came with a free “stylish bag”, Company with a black bikini and Candy's Elle with Kurt Geiger sandals. Suddenly women could shop for the beach without leaving WH Smiths.

However, browsing the news-stands this week, it is clear that publishers are feeling the January pinch as badly as the rest of us. Apart from Eve magazine which offers a free 'chick-lit' book, the cover-mounts have been replaced, for this month at least, by myriad 'special offers' and '2-for1 deals' at cocktail bars, cinemas and on 'no-frills' airlines. It's all gone a bit bargain-basement; less The Devil Wears Prada, more The Devil Wears George from Asda.

So is the whole cover-mount free flip-flop frenzy is finally on the wane, I ask?

“No,” Candy replies firmly, “cover-mounts and free gifts are really not my favourite part of our business, but they are very much part of our culture now and there's no going back. We have to compete in our market and young women expect something extra with their magazine. That said, they are not something Elle has relied upon. Supplements, like this month's new season fashion guide 'the runway edit', are what we're about. And this year we're going to be doing substantially more of them.”

Popular as those supplements will no doubt prove with readers and advertisers, they have also considerably increased Candy's workload. “Filling a 485-page issue at the same time as filling a 220-page supplement can be relentless, because I see every single piece of merchandise which goes in the magazine and I proof every page,” she says.

“You have to do that on a glossy because unlike a newspaper it hangs around for four weeks and readers will remember the one thing that doesn't work. I couldn't bear getting a caption wrong. That keeps me awake at night.”

I ask her what she made of Heat magazine's recent blunder - currently being investigated by press watch-dog the Press Complaints Commission - in which the Emap title gave away stickers mocking Jordan's disabled son Harvey? “Oh that was atrocious, that was terrible,” she gasps.

“We have processes in which a lot of different people check every part of Elle so that we don't ever end up putting say Chanel on a Gucci catwalk picture. That's why I'm amazed [those stickers] made it through at Heat.”

Some in the fashion industry were rumoured to be sceptical about Candy's appointment at Elle, due to her perceived lack of a fashion hinterland and her redtop newspaper background. However, she has since argued that her “outsider” status was an advantage.

Today she says: “It's good to keep a step back from the fashion industry so you don't get sucked in and lose sight of what the girl in Wigan is buying Elle for. I'm not part of the fashion world, I'm an editor and I'm furnishing that girl's needs and not the industry's. And it's very important that I never lose sight of that for a moment.”

(The Guardian, January 21st 2008)

Posted by James Silver - On Monday, January 21, 2008

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