Singapore Diva Tracy Huang Sings Again

PEACHES AND CREAM
One of Singapore's earliest pop successes, Tracy Huang has survived the vagaries of the industry by shrewdly shifting her act to the right places at the right time. 
Daniel Goh  fathoms the woman and her image.


"Fat, fat," says Tracy, slapping her thighs. "Fat, fat. I've put on weight,. Three pounds. Fat, here," she says, cupping her cheeks. She lifts her arms and flaps them, making the flesh on her alabaster-white upper arms jiggle. "Fat, fat, do you see?"

Tracy's preoccupation with weight, her looks, her age is understandable. After all, her feminine and fashionable image has always been a strong selling point for her albums. As such, these vanity concerns, inherent in most women, must seem even more vital to Tracy. But today, just for the moment, Tracy, relaxed and light-hearted jokes, "I'm 28, two years older than Alan Tam!" Later, she would give me her age as 39.

Tracy Huang is folded neatly onto a black sofa in the photo studio. She's just completed a photography shoot, part of her efforts to promote her new album Traces of Love, but talk is not about the album. There is nothing so crassly commercial about Tracy.

Even relaxing, her legs are elegantly crossed, ending in pointy, stiletto-heeled ankle boots. She's wearing a two-year old Azzedine Alaia: A black stretch one-piece with a white patent leather belt. "It gives me the illusion of height," she says.

Her hair is straggly now, and is loosely tied back; her eye make-up has run a little, there are black smudges; her lipstick has bled into a crooked pout. Plumes of smoke from her cigarette surround her like an aura.

Tired and slightly dishelleved, even while chain-smoking Virginia Slims, Tracy Huang still exudes a glow. Her skin is not only just fine and creamy white, it has a translucent, jade-like glaze, like rare Song china.

As Tracy talks, her small, white hands flutter about her in arabesque, like twin doves. "Hands are important," she says, flipping through the lyric pages for her new album cover until she finds the illustration of her silhouetted hands, reaching for a bird on a branch. "Look at this picture, I like this very much. Hands can express so much. You don't see my face here at all. But it's me."

Her small, flower-like hands. They are not money-grabbing hands, nor dish-washing hands. No, these are the hands of a princess. I tell her so. "Oh, but I'm not a princess!," she says, laughing. "More like a Cinderella. My father was from Guangdong, a military man, a colonel, so he didn't earn much. My mother was from Shanghai. When they came over to Taiwan from the mainland, they had absolutely nothing, not even a roof over their heads. We were very poor.


"When I was young, I had to help my mother do all the chores. I was the oldest, I had to take care of three baby brothers. All I can remember of my mother from those days was that she was always cooking, cleaning. She'd give me some money and I would have to go to the market to buy vegetables. And I had to cook after school.


"I still found time to play, somehow. I ran around barefoot. I have memories of a little barefoot girl, piggy-backing one of my brothers – maybe that's why I'm so short and all my brothers are so tall!


"I remember one day, while out in the open fields, an aeroplane flew over. At that moment, I made a promise to myself that I would be on that plane someday. I would fly out into the world. And it was a big wish, for a little country girl like me."


She continues in a rush of words; she is enjoying the reminiscences. "Singapore put me on that aeroplane. I was discovered by a talent scout from Neptune Theatre. Here I was, a Taiwanese singer singing English songs – wow! What a novelty, you know. I was billed as 'Angel from Taiwan' at the Neptune!"


That was in 1969. The Angel from Taiwan took flight. Tracy appeared in countless TV variety shows and eventually recorded her own albums, mainly sentimental ballads and cover versions of Olivia Newton-John hits. Over a 43-album career, Tracy established herself as a major star in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China. Now she has set her sights on Japan with her album, consisting of English songs by Dick Lee.

Not only was she a major recording artiste, Tracy was also a style icon of the 70s. The image conscious artiste embraced every 'look' that emerged – from frosty purple eye-shadow to padded sweaters, from tattooed eyebrows to cowboy shirts.

The correct 'look' no doubt contributed to her enduring popularity, but she attributes her success to a determination to better herself. "I want to learn something new everyday – then that day is not wasted." And indeed, there were many occasions during my meetings with her when she whips out a little electronic organiser and enters all sorts of information, with a great urgency: names, numbers, movies to see, authors to read, phrases, ideas.


"When I was in school, I only studied music and Chinese folk dance – these were subjects thought to be more befitting to a girl. I learnt to read only after I left school. When I first came to Singapore, I had no friends or family. There were long spaces of time when all the friends I had were magazines and journals and books. I read so much during this time. And all those English programmes on television here. Education is the world around you. It does not mean that if you go to a university you become educated. A lot of people don't realize that experience is so important – you can learn from the people and the environment. I feel that my education is still going on, never stopping."

But something that Tracy feels she has not learnt enough of is studio production and other technical aspects of recording. So last year, she formed her own production company in Taiwan called Inner Music. "I'm at a turning point now – or rather – I'm in a period of flux. I feel that Tracy, as an artiste, is fading out and Tracy, the producer is fading in."

Her energies, and her accumulated knowledge and contacts in the music industries, are now concentrated in production. "It is not that I don't want to perform anymore. Working behind the scenes on a recording is also like performing. What's on show is what you produce, is how Tracy sees it. Inner Voice is where she put together her last three albums – of which two became award winners and hits. Tracy is also casting about for new talents to groom, record and promote.

Next year, in her role as producer, she will launch a 17-year-old Singapore girl, Gina Tan. There are several uncanny similarities between Tracy and her protégé : Tracy herself started her musical career at about the same age (at 16, Tracy was already singing at the American Club). Gina has the same sort of demure, feminine beauty that has served Tracy well; she sounds remarkably like Tracy. They sing like they look: all peaches and cream. There is tinkling clarity in their singing, there is a breathy languidity.


"Also, I really want to act. I really feel like making a movie, something meaningful. Maybe it's a bit late. But I was really inspired by my experience doing the music video which Wong Kar Wai directed."

The video for her Mandarin number entitled Making You Glad has generated more than the usual attention because it features Tony Leung, the star of The Lover.


"All the reporters keep asking me about it, as if Tony Leung was the main thing. At my press conference a reporter asked me if I felt flattered and thrilled that I had Tony Leung to act with in my video. Just imagine.


"I replied, 'How so?' Tony Leung should be the one to be flattered and thrilled."

First published in 8 DAYS Nov 28 – Dec 5, 1992 edition, as a cover story

FASHION, STYLE, MONEY

Social Media may have given us more Fashion than we can swallow but does it bode well for style? By Daniel Goh

Social Media, in its exciting democracy, has thrown up all manner of “style influencers”, most self-proclaimed, many deluded. It certainly has expanded the vocabulary of style and what it means, because on social media, anything goes. Anything tacky, gimmicky, and vulgar, I might add. I’d like to think this fashion democracy good, but have to admit that oftentimes the ceaseless parade of people presenting themselves to be admired (with not a stitch of irony in their conceited expressions) is in fact bewildering, and makes one want to click off, block and delete.

This non-stop, revolutionary channel for expressing fashion, which upsets the traditional top-down model of rarefied tastemakers dictating trends, make it impossible to separate the man from the boys: the really stylish, who practice subtlety, nuance and refinement must lose out in a storm of likes for the flashy, brazen and bold. To click ‘like’ takes a fraction of a second, but style takes a lifetime to perfect, and may not be immediately recognizable in a quick scroll, as you’re watching that latest K-drama.  

Social media has made style into a game of competitive shopping with the influencers around the globe: It has become about who was seen wearing whatever first, regardless of the merit of the item or design. It’s about speed, grab, snap, post – fly there, eat that, eat up the scenery, edit the photo and post. And then the next gaudy item, postcard location, etc. This sort of race really isn’t what personal style is all about. It isn’t even about fashion anymore – forget about relevance, craftsmanship, technique. Fashion has become a circus for vulgar wealth: For isn’t this what it is all about? You can only afford to fly there, wear this, buy 1,000 handbags, multiple carats, lay your hands on the very latest shoe every other hour if you have Money. It isn’t about style or intrinsic value or integrity or beauty. It’s all about money, and only money.

I’m constantly surprised that people would enthusiastically shut themselves up in this prison of the material. There they are, in that gilded cell, reading labels on each other’s backs and bags and boots (and IG captions). Doesn’t this immediately remind you of some people you know? Can you think of anything more depressing? Style should be about not needing the constant approval of others, not needing the constant reassurance of the ‘in’ labels, startling hair colour and nail art, the ‘cool’, the ‘It’, the most expensive, the purportedly exclusive, the supposed one-of-a-kind, the chorus of likes. These are the manacles and padlocks and delusions that weigh these influencers down. Because being stylish is all about freedom. It’s about not having to conform; it’s about having that sense to make discerning and appropriate choices; it’s all about the freedom to fearlessly be who you are.

What has this generation of influencers really given us but a vapid and perverse fashion environment in which taste is nothing compared to the blind worship of the filthy rich? This worship makes the world a much smaller place, being a narrow and unimaginative creed; There’s nothing intrinsically creative about shopping – influencers famously do nothing, have no skills, ideas or craft. Some of them take a good picture, but that’s just dieting and apps. This focus on the material and the surface of things is the antithesis of style. In the end, the focus on money is just unimaginative, and terribly, terribly dull.

   

WHAT IS STYLE?

That is Style: November 2007, when I was still working on it, inventing that genre as I went along. My work, my passion and my style.

FOOTBALL FEVER: AND GOD CREATED CHRISTIANO RONALDO

Football phenom Cristiano Ronaldo strips down (yes, yet again) for Mario Testino (always!), on the June issue of Spanish Vogue, alongside Russian supermodel and girlfriend (of two years) Irina Shayk. Ronaldo, to my mind the most perfectly beautiful of all footballers, and the highest paid soccer star in the world, plays for Real Madrid and will captain the Portuguese national team in this year's World Cup in Rio.

I know many of you would have never seen Ronaldo's eyebrows in their natural glory and here they are. If you click on the T Magazine cover, you will be able to see why he has them groomed into immaculate arches at all times now. Many have objected to his Joan Crawford worthy plucked arches, but I rather like them and I think they add a certain attractive violence to his prettiness. 

WHAT IS NORMCORE? DO YOU CARE?

NOTES TO THE NEW HIPSTER

Is there to be no end to the indignities to suffered by the chronically clued-in? As the new “Normcore” trend breaks into our collective consciousness, here are some notes on how to be, or not to be.

1. Firstly, don’t worry too much about precisely defining Normcore; Just take it that a silly fashion director somewhere decided to spell Hipster with an ‘N’, and go on making your lunch. It’s only fashion jargon and you have a living to make.

2. The guiding principle for fashion jargon seems always to be on a need to know basis and you, a mere non-fashion professional, need only know this: The fashion pendulum has swung yet again, and now, the epitome of cool is the anti-cool.

3. Normcore is about affordable, bland, functional anti-style. It’s conventional and nondescript drag, stuff you can pull out of your dryer drum anytime and wear with devastating buff nails. 

4. Examples given of this trend seem marked by white sneakers, dull zip-ups and not-skinny jeans, in other words, stuff you wore when you were in NUS. A Normcorer dresses like an undergrad seeking to blend in, rather than stand out. 

5. According to "experts", Normcore is a reaction against the aggressive coolness that relies on vivid difference (studded trophy platforms, K-pop type synchronized dancing, nail art) to a post-cool of authenticity and sameness. To me, this “sameness” thing is troubling. If all around you are synchronized dancing in studded and screaming prints, the Normcorer will not fit in – she will stand out in her discreet denims, plaid shirt-dress and trainers. Is Normcore grunge spelt with an N?

6. The horribly termed Normcore was coined by K-HOLE, a New York-based trend forecasting group. They define it as “a desire to be blank.” But this concept and its assumption that the average hipster isn’t blank would immediately present a challenge for those for which this is relevant. What if you were already blank, as so many hipsters naturally must be? What if you didn’t fundamentally have any identity or persona at all and studied fashion in Perth? What if shopping at Givenchy actually gave your life purpose? Then how do you adopt the Normcore?

7. Who are you if your clothes are brand-free and logo-less? Wouldn’t you be a complete nonentity without a single label signifier? Since Normcore has nothing to do with flashy fashion and more to do with character, it would present a particular challenge to those who would most want to embrace it. The Singapore fashion scene is after all filled with an inhuman army of the vacuous. 

8. So. Instead of scratching your head over every last trend, perhaps you should take a cold shower and then go out there and do something useful with your life.

A version of this piece appears in Style: June 2014.

THE HOWLING: THAT KIMYE VOGUE COVER

"The cover of Vogue is not exactly the Nobel Peace Prize, and Kim Kardashian isn’t exactly Pol Pot." - Tina Brown

What I think is this: That everything that is wrong in our money-centric, greedily self-promiting world is distilled in this Kim Kardashian Vogue cover. It shows that you don't have to have any real ability, to produce anything useful, to have any morals or probity, to be honoured and lauded. Vogue is just mirroring what is already happening in every dark, creaky corner of fashion and publishing.

BROOKLYN BECKHAM

The Beckhams are conquering fashion as a clan! Football star Papa Beckham is all round fashion figure, underwear 'designer' and pin-up; Mama Spice is a serious 'designer' and famous handbag hook; Baby Bro Romeo is a Burberry model. And now, the formerly pudgy Brooklyn Beckham, only 15, is the cover star of Man About Town's SS14 edition. This magazine is (purportedly)  "targeted at high-end business-engaged and culturally-orientated male urbanities" althought it's quite hard to see what the connection is with a youg teen on the cover and a 20 page spread featuring Brooklyn in disheveled style ( shot by Alasdair McLellan). 
Is this going to be an annual thing? Only last year, Papa Beckham was the cover for the same magazine.
Next spring Baby Bro Romeo perhaps?

The Cod is Everywhere!

Grace Coddington is appearing everywhere and nowhere as charmingly as she does here, on the iD cover. Promoting her new book, Grace: A Memoir, The Cod dishes the dirt on Anna Wintour in a few revealing moments:
Every so often I have lunch with Anna at her request. These days, though, I get worked up beforehand, usually thinking, 'This is finally the time she'll say, "You're getting on a bit. You're looking tired. I think you should take it easy,"' as a prelude to gently asking me to step down. In fact, the last time we went out, I dared to say, 'I thought you were going to tell me to leave.' At which point Anna laughed and said, 'No, as long as I'm here, you will be, too.' 

"I think (the Ben Stiller shot by Annie Leibovitz for a couture story in Paris) was decided upon, really, because Anna had a crush on Ben. She gets these occasional crushes - Ben, Puff Daddy, Roger Federer."

"In the end I think Anna gave up on my styling covers since I'm not good with famous people. We used to use the occasional model, but the sales difference was so marked between them and celebrities that it's now 100 per cent pop and movie stars. Fashion is just a part of what the magazine stands for today, which may be hard on old-timers like myself but is definitely the modern way. I'm grateful to have lived through the 10 years or so I did at American Vogue when fashion was the most important element."

Four Movies and a Flight

On a recent trip, I buckled down with the goal of watching four movies by the time I got home, flying not being one of my favourite things to do. I don't like anything about flying do you? These were the four movies I watched: 
To Rome With Love

He's taken us to London, Barcelona, Paris and now Woody Allen has landed us at yet another luxury-tourist European capital, Rome. It's pretty and escapist and great in that honeyed sunset lighting and picturesque and familiar setting kind of way. In this ensemble/omnibus movie (it's got Judy Davis, who's always so droll!), not all the jokes come off, but on the whole it is engaging, undemanding fun with gags that are one-liners but milked for slightly more than its worth. It's a warm, slight movie, far from the greatness of his earlier ones, but fun nonetheless. I want to highlight that Allen's movies are always nicely styled, and all the actors look prosperous and attractive. I was especially thrilled to see the patrician Flavio Parenti (below), whom I first discovered in I Am Love in this movie playing the activist/lawyer Michelangelo. And Jesse Eisenberg who plays the architecture student is creamy-cute!

Bel Ami

Pat Pat and Kristin Scott Thomas

Can you resist a costumer with Uma Thurman and Kristin Scott Thomas? Robert PatPat plays a pale, vampiric Belle Epoque social-climber with greasy hair under his hat and suggestively poufy breeches and seduces both Uma Thurman and Kristin Scott Thomas. Of course I had to watch this! Adapted from a novel by Guy de Maupassant, the unsympathetic protagonist, a would-be journalist, Georges Duroy clambers clumsily from a roach-infested garret to the poshest salons of literary Paris. I've never read the book, and the movie doesn't make me want to, as the script seems sketchy and cliched and none of the characters seem particularly sympathetic or indeed interesting. I think the story's point is that Pat Pat  is both foxy and self-deluding, but Pat Pat just comes off as petulant and sulky and in need of a good shampoo. Pat Pat always looks clammy and unwashed and I'm sure Ms Scott Thomas (who seems to be in a separate, better movie) must have fought the urge to bury her nose in a hanky doused with Jicky. There's lots of Pat Pat's white, thickly-fleshy body in this movie if that's what you are into.
No judgements!

Farewell, My Queen

This much lauded period piece about the French Revolution is told from the perspective of a servant to Marie Antoinette in Benoit Jacquot’s rather claustrophobic film. Most of the film is situated in smallish chambers or hallways and seems unfamiliar, a sort of 'fresh take', I suppose, but one does like a bit of grandeur and pomp in period movies, doesn't one? Sidonie Laborde (Lea Seydoux) is the queen’s devoted “reader,” and Marie Antoinette (Diane Kruger), who spends most of her time considering patterns for new dresses and dithering over her infatuation with the beautiful Duchess Gabrielle de Polignac (Virginie Ledoyen in too brief an appearance) seems mostly bored out of her wigs. It's not escapist fare and I clutch at the introduction of  a handsome gondolier (Vladimir Consigny), who isn't even necessary to the plot. How sad. This movie could be of special interest to history buffs, who will appreciate the “behind-the-scenes” speculation, but I'm not sure this is all that good an idea for in-flight entertainment. Much has been made of Ms Kruger's portrayal of Marie Antoinette, but I almost want to say I prefer KiKi Dunst's in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. 

Magic Mike 

Could I have missed this?
This is the perfect movie to watch just before you land because it's silly fun, and you can rush through it with your finger on the forward button and still enjoy it entirely. Inspired by Channing Tatum's stint as a male stripper, director Steven Soderbergh's comedy uncovered Alex Pettyfer for me, and that's enough. He's dreamy and a Brit and if you can hug his image all the way to the hotel like a double cashmere coat . Matthew McConaughey is the big daddy stripper, and despite the chocolate bar abs doesn't register as sexy. There's just a hint of erotic energy (unapologetically targetting the reliable gay dollar)- there's ample, if unthreatening, man candy, of course, fit for the mainstream. The script isn't polished or strong on character with no narrative originality or emotion, you don't really care about the girlfirends, and the poverty and drugs never seems real. But you can almost read this movie as a bromance because it seems more about male camaraderie and the buddy element is the emotional core of the movie. If anything, the friendship between Tatum and Pettyfer is the main narrative - it's Brokeback Lite. The Chinese uncle sitting next to me was so riveted by the stripping scenes that he actually leaned over and asked me what I was watching - I told him, pointing to the title in the the menu, and then he turned it on, put on his headphones and studiously ignored me me for the rest of the movie. Well, at least one person enjoyed the flight.

COUGARRR!!!

Don't you love this? The latest Vogue Hommes cover certainly stopped me in my tracks and isn't this what a great magazine cover is supposed to do? Wouldn't you let Marlon Texeira grab you like that (and more!) and isn't Stephanie Seymour stunning? 

But domestic violence and women’s advocacy groups are up in arms over the magazine’s Terry Richardson cover. Only in America, I'm telling you. Sanctuary for Families, Safe Horizon, Equality Now, and the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women are saying that the image connotes domestic violence with sex and glamour (only in America!). The groups have reportedly written a letter to Condé Nast, protesting the promoting of choking as “a sign of passion rather than violence” and asking that the magazine be pulled from newsstands. They’ve already received some 200 signatures (but that's not that many what? You can get more just by posting pics of a handbag what?) on their online petition on Change.org backing up this request. Only in America could they not tell that this is banal fashion magazine posing and imagery and pretty tame as far as most of the magazine's intended audience is concerned. 

CR Fashion Book - Carine Roitfeld's Rebirth

This week sees the launch of CR Fashion Book, the semi-annual fashion glossy that is Carine Roitfeld's comeback vehicle after leaving Vogue Paris two years ago. I can't believe it's been two years already! Two years of hating Paris Vogue - I might add. So here are the twin covers shot by Bruce Weber. There's also going to be an online version of the magazine, something to look forward to at last?
"I’m not the generation of the Internet – I’m the generation of paper magazines – but with the new site, we’re going to do CR Fashion Book online. It’s very exciting, because it will be like a diary. I hope with the Internet, it will be quicker, and like the front of the book in a classical magazine. This is something very new for me, and very exciting. It’s a new way of thinking, a new way of looking, it’s a new way of doing pictures." - Carine Roitfeld

Christy!

Not sure about those highlights, but otherwise I can't wait!

Natalia!

Love, Linda

Weekend Reading List: On a Plane

I read about La Bella Principessa on the plane in the National Geographic, and it interested me more than anything I've read in a long time. This purported 'lost' drawing by Leonardo da Vinci, in ink and coloured chalks on a sheet of vellum measuring only 330mmx39mm (it was reproduced in actual size in the magazine over a spread, like a centerfold), is a controversial find. Its origins and authenticity continue to be debated over by experts. The drawing is on a sheet of vellum which carbon-14 tests date to between 1440 and 1650, which coincides with the years in which da Vinci was working. The direction of the hatching shows that the artist was left-handed, as was Leonardo. The Renaissance-style garment is said to be accurately rendered, and is purportedly the portrait of Bianca Sforza, the teenage daughter of the Duke of Milan.The Portrait of Isabella d'Este (below), a chalk drawing on paper by Leonardo da Vinci, is the only profile drawn by the master.Reading the story made me think of my painting classes at NAFA. Our teacher Fern made us paint oils of radishes in claypots, which is quite different from sketching a doomed teenage bride in an Italian court I suppose, but still. Rembering those days reminded me of this passage from Brideshead Revisited, one of my favourite scenes:"One day in a cupboard we found a large japanned-tin box of oil-paints still in workable condition.
‘Mummy bought them a year or two ago. Someone told her that you could only appreciate the beauty of the world by trying to paint it. We laughed at her a great deal about it. She couldn’t draw at all, and however bright, the colour were in the tubes, by the time mummy had mixed them up, they came out a kind of khaki. Various dry, muddy smears on the palette confirmed this statement. ‘Cordelia was- always made to wash the brushes. In the end we all protested and made mummy stop.’"
And so Charles Ryder began to paint. I imagined the japanned-tin looked like this.

Weekend Reading List: Fashion

“There’s only one thing in life and that’s the continual renewal of inspiration.” - Diana VreelandI forgot to say before that just before Christmas I recieved a couple of books that I wanted but never got down to buying; I guess I didn't want them badly enough. One was Diana Vreeland: The Eye has to Travel. I spent a very pleasant afternoon looking over every page with BG on his sofa, feeling excited and inspired. After that we went outside and repotted a cactus, and pruned back his passion fruit vine. Reading and gardening: I can't think of a more agreeable way to spend a Sunday afternoon - unless it's to work on a painting or drawing, but that's just me.
Lots of you would rather hit the gym, I'm sure, or trawl a 'sauna', but different strokes for different folks, as they say (I'm quite sure it should be 'folk' not 'folks', by the way).Anyway this book made me look at Carine Roitfeld's Irreverant with a bit more perspective - not that Irreverant isn't a splendid overview of Ms Roitfeld's work so far. It is, and much of it is excellent and definitive, and I'm her fan. Also, I like the personal bits of information, and the archival photos of her family. The thing I object to is the title, as well as the sense the book projects that her work, or her attitude actually pushes the moral or aesthetic envelope in some extreme, innovative fashion. You must be very short-sighted to not see that what she does had already been done half a century ago at least. Her ouevre is but an echo of the truly shocking (and yes, irreverant) path scorched by Helmut Newton, Chris Von Wangenheim (see below), Guy Bourdin and Robert Mapplethorpe. So accomplished, yes, irreverant, hardly.And can someone tell me how someone as immaculately stylish as Ms Roitfeld begot a daughter who looks so common? In Julia Restoin Roitfeld's every slutty outfit, one can see that Carine's style really isn't for everyone.
I'm also struggling with the magazine Industrie (the one with Franca Sozzani, the editor of Vogue Italia, on the cover) and also Love (Kristen Mcmenamy). Poor Ms Sozzani is striving, isn't she, to fill Ms Roitfeld's heels, to be the queen of fashion? The grizzled one wants to be irreverant too! But she succeeds only in being disagreeable and frankly repugnant - the interview amply illustrates the reason why fashion people have such a negative vibe, and why they should remain behind the masthead and not appear on the cover. Plus she looks like Madonna with all the filler vacuumed out of her. Oh, and Industrie has a story on Glen O'Brien.
Does anyone even need to know one thing about Mr O'Brien?
As for Love, the less said the better. A quick flip shows that the magazine has no direction whatsoever. Since I'm way behind in my reading, I'll struggle with Love no longer - into the bin it goes! Ms Mcmenamy's 1992 Vogue Italia cover (Steven Meisel) directly 'inspired' the 2010 Vogue Paris cover.

Jon Jon Linda Turlington

And let me tell you this: Jon Jon is Linda and Christy in drag. There was always something completely asexual about Jon Jon's beauty for me - but you see, it was the same sort of androgyny as Linda's and Christy's beauty. Jon Jon is the final flower of Peter Lindbergh's vision of beauty from the 1990s. We love you Mr Lindbergh! How I miss your early, early days at Vogue Italia.Linda!Christy!

Coitus

I can't quite imagine why anyone would name a magazine Coitus, but there you go! That's the lovely Brazilian 'model' Pablo Morais on the cover - Mr Morais is another one of those young men fated to rarely wear 'fashion' in his career, not that we are complaining of course.

EY!

And here are more gratuitous pictures of Marlon!

The Untold Story

Don't you love the promise of that irresistible headline - above the title - "The Untold Story of Elizabeth Taylor's Final Days"? Can't wait to read it - I bet it's craaazy! And I have to say that casting against type for the Vogue Italia cover (you don't necessarily think swimwear when you think Kristin McMenamy) is exceptionally brilliant when dealing with this annual theme.