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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
Will Harper's Bazaar join the march down-market?
Jun 12, 2001 | Last week, Hearst announced it was replacing Harper's Bazaar editor Kate Betts with Glenda Bailey, who had until then headed another Hearst publication, Marie Claire. Reports following the announcement (which variously described tears, glee, disbelief and catty references to people's wardrobes) made the fallout at Hearst sound like a scene straight out of "Heathers."
For those who have missed the tsunami of ink surging from this particular teacup, Betts was shown the door after just two years, one year before her contract was up. Betts -- one-time protigi of Vogue editor Anna Wintour and presumed successor to her post at Condé Nast -- was hired by Hearst to take over the job of the legendary Liz Tilberis after her death from ovarian cancer in 1999. Over the next two years, the posh, Ivy League-educated Betts (whose mandate it was to bring a younger, cooler sensibility to Vogue's biggest competitor) oversaw a much-criticized redesign, alienated much of her staff and saw single-copy sales of the magazine drop 7.4 percent in the six-month period ending in December.
But if Betts wound up playing an ineffectual Heather No. 2 to Wintour's steely Heather No. 1, the ascension of Marie Claire's Bailey to Hearst's most glamorous post seems as improbable as having Martha "Dumptruck" Dunnstock elected captain of the cheerleading squad. While the still stylish Bazaar faltered under the chic, patrician Betts, however, its plainer but not necessarily smarter sister, Marie Claire, increased its readership by 50 percent under the leadership of frumpy, frizzy-haired, working-class Bailey -- who was named editor of the year by Adweek despite her tendency to mispronounce fashion designers' names.
Many of Betts' supporters are horrified by Hearst's decision, lamenting that Bazaar's status as a fashion icon will suffer because of Bailey's less than stellar sense of style. But as Alex Kuczynski wrote in the New York Times, Bailey has said that she does not intend to turn Bazaar into "a magazine about shopping, or makeup and baubles, or celebrity lifestyle, or spirituality and fitness, or how to get a date by Friday" and that in her heart throbs a genuine "passion for fashion."
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Besides, opines a frequent Marie Claire contributor, "Bazaar had been somewhat scattered and moving away from fashion since Betts took over."
Still, Bailey's editorial style is decidedly more reader-driven than Betts', a style that seems bound to shift Bazaar down a gear from vaunted style icon to a more "get this look," buy-by-numbers sensibility.
"My understanding," says the Marie Claire contributor, "is that Bailey is a genius at gleaning what her readers want and serving it up, rather than imposing her own signature on the magazine. If they want the dish on the latest Blahniks, or if they want the old Harper's logo back on the cover, Bailey will deliver -- whether she's wearing Ross for Less or whatever some designer has sent her that month.
"Whereas Betts was keen to put her stamp on Bazaar and erase the memory of Tilberis, because she knew how much she had to live up to. There was a bit of a smoke and mirrors diversion there, some flash over substance. Betts wanted to create a buzz by reinventing Bazaar and thus escaping comparison with Tilberis."
