Say what you will about Martha Stewart, but the doyenne of domesticity and her print publication probably have influenced the world of shelter and women’s magazines more than anyone and anything else in the past decade.
The latest example: Real Simple, a new women’s lifestyle magazine from Time Inc., which makes its debut with the April issue on newsstands Monday.
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The pretty, pastel cover showing pink-petaled roses floating serenely in a bowl looks more like a Martha Stewart Living cover than the image gracing the front of MSL this month. Almost all the inside photography–the uncluttered, well-composed pictures–are reminiscent of Martha style. Even the highly organized format of stories–well-oiled prose that delivers gobs of information on how to do or solve something–has the controlled cachet Martha carefully coined during the junk-bond era.
Both magazines seek the pure, simple, beautiful life in which files are immaculately organized and supper is a nutritious and functional family event.
The difference is in the spin. MSL always seems to turn the beautiful life into a complicated project. Flipping through its pages, readers construct a life of fantasy–the fantasy of having the time to do it all, glue gun in hand. Real Simple proposes the opposite.
“Real Simple has a real simple mission about simplifying every aspect of your life. It is solutions-oriented,” explains Susan Wyland, managing editor of the new magazine and–it’s not a coincidence–a former editor of MSL.
Wyland reigned at MSL from 1992 to ’96 and says this about that: “I am a great admirer of Martha, and there are many talented people working there, many of whom I worked with. There is room for another magazine that is more about personal satisfaction than perfection. . . . Just because we can do anything as women doesn’t mean we have to do everything.”
About Real Simple looking like MSL, Wyland says: “I think (Real Simple) is very beautifully photographed. That is the similarity.”
Wyland is right about the two magazines being different in content. Real Simple is much broader in its editorial program–topically akin to Good Housekeeping or Ladies Home Journal but more contemporary and refined than either of those. It equally weights stories on money, financial organization, health, nutrition, clothing, beauty and well-being in addition to home and food.
In its premiere issue, the simple spin works beautifully in stories on finances and organization. Pieces on how to choose the right credit card for your needs, how to pay bills on-line, how to get off the junk-mail circuit permanently and how to organize financial records (with tips on what paperwork can be thrown into the trash, and what documents should be saved and for how long) offer solid information.
The pared-down concept doesn’t work as well in this month’s food and decorating stories. The elegant one-dish recipes for weeknight dinners would not satisfy most families with hungry children for five days in a row, as the feature proposes. The all-too-basic decorating story on creating serene spaces in your home will be a disappointment to shelter-magazine junkies. We’ve seen and heard all this before.
Overall–and in spite of the troubling visual resemblance to MSL–we were impressed with Real Simple. Its fine writing, concise delivery of facts, broad content and assumption that time is precious is a refreshing editorial take.
Single issues of Real Simple cost $2.95; subscriptions cost $19.95 for a year. It will be published eight times this year, 10 times in 2001.
Meanwhile: Martha Stewart and/or Stephen Drucker, editor in chief of Martha Stewart Living, were not available for comment on Real Simple. If the April issue is any sort of response, however, it’s a prideful belief that Martha’s way is the right way. The featured projects are more fantastic and cantankerous than ever.
Check out the gardening/landscaping stories, though. We especially liked the piece on garden paving, which has lots of fresh ideas for mixing materials and creating patterns.