Deborah Needleman has made some bold changes to T Magazine, the most noticeable of which is its brand-new logo.
Gone is the Gothic capital T that used to reside on the magazine's cover, and in its place is a sleeker sans serif T custom-designed by the magazine's creative director Patrick Li.
"I feel the Times is such a strong brand that it can handle under its umbrella a kind of distinctive magazine and that it doesn't need to typographically reference the Gothic type," Needleman said in an interview with WWD.
Speaking of strength, the magazine is now also physically bigger and printed on heavier paper. The thicker pages will provide support for her fashion-themed first issue, which will debut on Feb. 17. The issue features a cover story on front-row staple Lee Radziwill that Needleman started working on while she was still at the helm of WSJ. Magazine and a new front-of-book op-ed that examines "something in the zeitgeist." (For this issue, Suzy Menkes will ruminate on fashion bloggers; the cover teases the story with the line "the circus that is fashion.")
Photo via T Magazine
Tongues are still wagging about Alexander Wang's appointment as the creative director at Balenciaga: Anna Wintour, Diane von Furstenberg, and some other powerful industry players have now chimed in on his new job.
Eric Wilson talked with Wintour, von Furstenberg, and a number of other people who have observed Wang's work since his career started. Like Karl Lagerfeld and much of the Twittersphere, many of the people Wilson interviewed wholeheartedly support Wang's move. Below, the rest of the industry reacts to Wang's big news.
Anna Wintour on whether Wang's age is a problem: "Oh, please, come on. How great is it to be young? That is when designers are at their most fearless. That is when you do your most creative work."
Wintour, again, on Wang winning the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund: "He was so articulate. He said he wants to dress the girls of his age and his generation. That's what you see in everything he does. He lives and breathes the Alex brand."
PPR chief Francois-Henri Pinault, who is similarly unconcerned about Wang's age: When he started at Balenciaga, Ghesquière "was designing uniforms for Air France, and who would have said that Nicolas would become such a great talent?"
Isabelle Guichot, CEO of Balenciaga: "We're not asking him to be an entrepreneur. But luxury fashion is a business with some rules, and he understood that very early in his career, without ever compromising the creativity."
Robert Burke, industry consultant: "There were some feelings after what happened with John Galliano at Dior that the brands were promoting the individual designers too much. Now they're thinking, what is it going to take to keep a brand relevant and alive?"
Diane von Furstenberg on whether Wang is ready for the new job: "It was a coup for Alex, and a coup for American fashion," she said, adding, "he's going to need some mentoring in Paris."
And one designer who chose to remain unnamed, on Wang and other designers like him: "They're not fashion designers. They're fashion curators. They're sitting at a computer copying other peoples' ideas."
Photo: Wintour and Wang in 2010.
Kate Moss recently revealed which supermodels she thinks are hot — and which are not.
Moss told The New York Times that she admires the Brazilian beauty Raquel Zimmermann for being so versatile. Of Lara Stone, Moss said, "I think she's very hot, with her boobs and her teeth. Though my husband says she's not his cup of tea."
As for Christy Turlington, a woman who Moss once thought of as the best in her class: "The last time I saw Christy, she was wearing a twin-set," Moss said. "You can think twin-set, but you can't wear one."
Photo: Turlington, Naomi Campbell, and Moss at the 1995 Costume Institute Gala.
Well, that was fun: another Fashion Month has come and gone. Now that we've had time to regroup, it seems like this one was a lot more eventful than seasons past. Certainly a lot of the excitement had to do with the new arrivals at Dior and Saint Laurent, but those weren't the only happenings that caused a stir this month. From the critic who got into public spats with two high-profile designers to the most recognizable accessory of the season, we examine the reasons why the Spring 2013 collections will stick out in our minds for years to come.
Newly appointed T Magazine editor Deborah Needleman is settling into her office at The New York Times, and she's bringing some of her old staff at WSJ. with her.
Sources have confirmed to WWD that WSJ.'s creative director Patrick Li and fashion features director Whitney Vargas will join Needleman at T. Whether they will replace the magazine's current features director Jacob Brown and creative director David Sebbah remains to be seen.
Needleman had also reportedly been negotiating with the Times about her role before Sally Singer packed up her desk. Among her demands for the job were for T to have its own publisher, for printing of the magazine to be scaled back from 15 issues a year to 12, and to stop doing themed issues in favor of general interest issues that cover fashion and a range of other topics.
A spokeswoman for the Times wouldn't comment on these requests or the prospective new hires.
"It's her second day and she's focused on getting herself settled here. She's not ready to talk to the press and likely won't be for a while," the spokeswoman said. "Similarly, it's too early to talk about who might stay, who might go, who might join."
Be that as it may, Needleman told Daily Front Row before the Chanel show that she already has her first cover idea in the works — she's just keeping it a surprise.
Hedi Slimane batted back against Cathy Horyn on Twitter once again Wednesday night, responding to her comment that his reaction to her critique of Saint Laurent's Spring 2013 show was "silly nonsense."
"The perfect integrity of The NewYork Times, and its writers, is not precisely 'just silly nonsense,'" Slimane tweeted. He continued, "What is a 'silly nonsense' to me is Catty [sic] Horyn still singing her tired bias tune for the nyt. This is an embarrassment for the newspaper."
The volleys started Monday, when Horyn wrote a post about Slimane's debut show for Saint Laurent (to which she wasn't invited), calling it "a nice but frozen vision of a bohemian chick at the Chateau Marmont. . . . Mr. Slimane's clothes lacked a new fashion spirit."
Slimane responded with an open letter Tuesday, calling Horyn "a schoolyard bully and also a little bit of a stand-up comedian." The letter continued to say that she would never be invited to a Saint Laurent show. Horyn told WWD on Wednesday that the war of words was "just silly nonsense to me."
Photo courtesy of Yves Saint Laurent.
After weeks of speculation, the wait is over: Deborah Needleman will leave The Wall Street Journal's WSJ. Magazine to edit T, The New York Times Style Magazine effective immediately.
"Deborah is a creative and innovative editor with an impeccable sense of style and design," said The New York Times' executive editor, Jill Abramson, in a statement. "As we look to expand and extend T and continue to evolve it for our loyal and sophisticated New York Times audience, we will rely on Deborah's broad range of experience and creative energy. She is coming on board to strengthen the franchise and reimagine its future on all platforms."
Needleman replaces Sally Singer, whose departure from the magazine was announced just before New York Fashion Week.
Cathy Horyn told us the full-page ad Oscar de la Renta placed in WWD responding to her critique of his Spring 2013 collection — in which she refers to him as a "hot dog" — was the result of one big misunderstanding.
"I used the term in a professional context, as someone showing off his tricks, like a surfer," Horyn said in an email. "I thought an ad was a little over-the-top."
Hotdogging was coined as a surfing term in the '50s and generally described surfing "for flash rather than function." De la Renta's collection had plenty of flash: graffiti embroidery snaked over a lace suit jacket and dress, little cloth-covered beads hung from strings on a cardigan and a full ball gown, and the fluttery effect of one cocktail frock was created by sewing individually cut white flowers with red piping all over a strapless white A-line dress.
The designer's response to Horyn's critique was a little less flowery. The open letter reads in part, "I respect and accept criticism because in many ways it does help us develop; I try to make my work better each time. What I do not accept is when criticism is personal. If you have the right to call me a hot dog why do I not have the right to call you a stale 3-day old hamburger? My advice to you is to abstain from personal criticism. Professionals criticize the clothes, not the people."
Horyn's original critique said, "Mr. de la Renta is far more a hot dog than an éminence grise of American fashion. He opened his lively show on Tuesday with a red latex pencil skirt, a sleek ivory wool pantsuit and dairymaid lace. . . . It was wonderfully cantankerous, a good bit of window-dressing for the gooey stuff that followed."
She may have intended to be positive, but this isn't the first time that Horyn's criticism has gotten her in hot water with designers. Giorgio Armani banned Horyn from his shows in 2008, complaining in a letter to her editor about the "unnecessarily sarcastic comments" on his friends and family at his Spring 2008 couture show and saying that he "rarely found positive remarks" in Horyn's reviews. She's also been banned from shows by Dolce & Gabbana, Helmut Lang, and Carolina Herrera.
In 2010, Horyn wrote quite plainly that Alexander Wang "is not a great designer," but she was still seated at his show the next season.
We've reached out to representatives for Oscar de la Renta for a comment on Horyn's clarification and will update this post when we hear from them. For now, the original full-page ad below.
Sally Singer will leave her job as editor of T Magazine, the New York Times's fashion magazine, at the end of the week. No reason has been given for her departure, and the Times hasn't yet named a successor.
"Sally's contributions are clear to anyone who's read the magazine during her tenure," wrote the Times's executive editor Jill Abramson in a staff memo announcing Singer's departure. "Gorgeous visuals, interesting stories and enterprising features — both in print and online — have been hallmarks of her stewardship. We wish her every success."
While Singer may have expanded T's coverage to include interesting non-fashion stories, she didn't succeed in making it more profitable. T had, in the Times's former executive editor Bill Keller's estimation, been created to "generate the revenues that help subsidize the stuff that drew most of us into the business." But after a year on the job, T's advertising pages had only increased by .7 percent. The Spring 2012 fashion issue, for example, saw an eight percent decline in ads, which wasn't good news in a month where many other magazines, including Vogue, Glamour, W, and Harper's Bazaar posted ad page gains between two and 31 percent.
Singer came to T in June 2010, leaving her position as fashion news and features editor at Vogue. She replaced Stefano Tonchi, who had moved on to be editor in chief of W Magazine. At the time, Singer said, "I imagine at some point [T Magazine] will naturally evolve into something that reflects more my taste and concerns than those of my predecessor. But hopefully that will be an organic process and not an imposition."
