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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
Mega-buzzed magazines like Lucky, Cargo and the brand-new Domino reduce readers to consumers without brains or a sense of style.
Apr 26, 2005 | "What business have we with art at all, unless we all can share it?"
-- 19th century craftsman, designer, writer and Socialist William Morris
"Design for all."
-- advertising slogan for Target
"Don't just show me a nice console table; suggest unexpected mirrors that might look great hanging above it. Don't just offer me a selection of gorgeous wallpapers; give me ideas about where to hang them."
-- Deborah Needleman, editor in chief of new Condé Nast magazine Domino
Not so long ago, when Americans wanted to shop at home, they picked up a catalog or hit the Internet. But shopping magazines -- or magalogs, a concept first introduced by Condé Nast several years ago with the women's shopping magazine-turned-juggernaut Lucky -- have changed all that. Like catalogs, magalogs allow us to shop vicariously, to spend our money a hundred times over in our minds without forking over a penny. But unlike catalogs, which are simply good old-fashioned pleas on the part of a given company to get us to buy its goods, shopping magazines are allegedly on our side: Seeing how puzzled and bewildered we are by the ever-increasing array of stuff to buy, these magazines, staffed by a host of hip, with-it editors, take us by the hand to offer guidance, insight and wisdom -- they're a kind of Consumer Reports for the shopping-mall set.
On the market for a pair of jeweled flip-flops? Lucky will scour the market to assemble the jeweled-flip-flop hall of fame, offering a selection of every type available for the given season, in a range of prices for all pocketbooks. The editors of Lucky appear on the magazine's pages like mini-celebrities, conspiratorially sharing their favorite finds of the month: "Just a touch of macrami trim is a smart spin on the easiest trend of the season." Before you've expressed even the vaguest interest in jeweled flip-flops, the shopping magazine knows just what you want (macrami -- but of course!) and clamors to be the first to tell you where you can get it.
On the surface, at least, the shopping magazine doesn't seem to be a particularly heinous invention: What harm can there be in a magazine filled with bunches of little pictures accented with helpful little text blips (to call them captions would be an overstatement)? Consumers have certainly taken the bait: Last year Condé Nast rolled out Cargo, a sort of Lucky for boys, offering guy-guidance on clothing, grooming products and gadgets. Other magazine-publishing empires have scrambled to produce their own portable mini-malls, among them Hearst's Lucky-alike Shop. And now Condé Nast reveals the third jewel in its tiara of shopaholism: Domino, billed as "the shopping magazine for your home," officially goes on sale Tuesday.
At first, one or two shopping magazines didn't seem to be too many: The universe of magazine publishing could certainly support them. But with the arrival of Domino, what used to be a refreshing novelty is now that ineffably dull thing known as a trend. And maybe now it's time to ask ourselves what we're shopping for when we pick up a shopping magazine: Are we really slaking a thirst to find out just how many kinds of garden benches there are out there? Do we really need a "smart chart" to learn how to layer the linens on our bed? When we spend 80 seconds scrutinizing a page full of door knockers, are we really shopping for door knockers -- or are we shopping for taste?
Now that Domino has dropped, the insidiousness of the shopping magazine takes a clear form: Why spend years building a personal aesthetic when you can just buy one?
