Pick a topic, any topic, and it’s virtually guaranteed that within miuntes, it will be staring at you from the pages of some glossy.
Recently, we’ve been given Model, devoted entirely to gushing over the super-model flavor of the month. In Style, which tracks the fashionable lives of the hip and famous. And let us not forget the self-explanatory Makeover.
And so, with the bronzing of America, perhaps it was inevitable that some smart someone would come up with a multi-culti mag.
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Witness Rubell magazine, the effort of a Haitian-born duo, Phillipe Gelin and Ralph Clermont, a paean to the oft-maligned phenomenon, 20th Century multiculturalism.
The models come in all colors. The clothes are chic-and designed by an equally representative batch of designers.
The photo spread of Puerto Rico is probably one of the few magazine travelogues where the models actually look like the “natives.”
“Rubell is multiculturalism at work . . . a sophisticated cultural resource, a forum wide enough to welcome every kind of reader,” Clermont says.
That’s a noble-and ambitious-aim, especially given the short and turbulent lives of most glossies.
I want my MTV
She is a $7-million-a-year industry unto herself.
Indeed, over the years, Cindy Crawford, the heartthrob of 40-something movie stars and 10-something male mall rats alike, has cranked out quite the lucrative career-make that careers-for herself.
She peddles Pepsi, Revlon and Kay Jewelers. Takes the occasional star turn down the catwalk. Extols the virtues of fashionable living for MTV’s “House of Style.” And, in a sleight of hand on view at a newsstand near you, simultaneously appears on the covers of Vogue, TV Guide and Vanity Fair.
Apparently, it’s not enough.
This week, MTV announced that the workaholic Ms. C. will represent it in a brand-new, believe-it-or-not venture: home shopping programming for MTV via VH1 and Nick at Nite.
That’s right. Home Shopping.
Beginning this summer, the moled one will attempt to make the tacky hip with print and on-air promotions during a six-month test airing in 30- and 60-minute segments on all theee cable channels.
But this is QVC with a serious MTV twist. Among the items to be hawked: CDs, cassettes, music videos and fashions.
“I don’t see myself as an artist,” Crawford told Vanity Fair. “Commercial is not a bad word to me.”
I’ll say.