Medianatomy
Why Lucky is the only women's magazine I read
October 17, 2001
By Alison Rogers

When I first heard about Lucky, I had the same reaction as everybody else: "They're not really going to create a whole magazine about shopping. That's ridiculous."

Then I picked up a copy. I'd like now, publicly, to repent. I love Lucky so much I'd even like to convert you. So stay with me a minute as I explain why Lucky is the only women's magazine I read. (Okay, there's mary-kate and ashley, but I'd argue that's a tween magazine and doesn't count.)

I'd laughed at Lucky before I read it, because I thought it would be one of those magazines which makes the usual claim that it would be easy to change your life, this time by changing your wardrobe. But the brilliance of the magazine is that it's not about changing your life, really. It's just about changing your wardrobe. Let Oprah aim high and fix women's spirituality. Let Cosmo tell you how "Bigger Os!" will make a more-than-momentary, even earth-shattering difference in your circumstances. Lucky just wants your closet. It's about shopping the way a cooking show is about dinner -- an agglomeration of step-by-step hints, tips, and how-tos.

In this sense, it helps you implement the fashion you'll see in Vogue, W, and Harper's Bazaar. More to the point, it helps me. I'm no shopaholic. If I can snatch an extra ten minutes in the morning, I¹d rather spend them with a book than with a blowdryer. Yet I want to look au courant without spending extravagant amounts of time or money. While Lucky's not quite "Fashion for Dummies," it begins to bridge the gap between cafe society and the frappucino set. I'm squarely in the latter, and the magazine does its best to keep me streamlined, offering sensible these-shoes-go-with this-skirt type advice (That's an actual feature in the September issue; and yes, I've already pulled together a fresh outfit because of it.)

This extreme focus is surprisingly affirmational. Unlike most magazines aimed at women, Lucky's not about men -- "Planet Him," to use a Helen Gurley Brown phrase. Partly because it's guy-free, it's not about failure. Debbie Stoller, the editor-in-chief of Bust, recently described the women's magazine model as "sell(ing) product by telling women what they need to do to be okay." But when I enter the experience of Lucky, I don't have to change. I don't have to lose 10 pounds, I don't have to learn to relate to his friends, and I don't have to adapt my workstyle to conform to today's dumbcluck femininity. I don't even have be nice to my mother.

All I have to do is buy stuff.

There's been a movement in the past few years to push women's magazines in this direction. I remember reading Marie Claire when the American version first came out, and experiencing a little of the empowerment of this step-by-step fashion. But the rest of the book was traditional, from the relationship story to the in-depth story about women suffering somewhere halfway around the globe. InStyle, too, is a shopping magazine, but in that case you're aspiring to a celebrity's lifestyle. Which doesn't work for me.

I think InStyle's a great product, but I don't aspire to the lifestyle of Nicole Kidman, to cite a recent cover model. Her beauty, perhaps, or her talent, but frankly, her life's a tangled, Hollywood-Babylon-style mess. I think that Lucky's NOT putting celebs on the cover makes the aspirational intention more realistic. For me, anyway. I have an easier time believing I can look like a run-of-the-mill Ford model than that I can look like Halle Berry. The Lucky cover girls are Photoshopped, sure, but their bodies aren't switched and their noses aren't cut down. It's more of a girl-next-door thing. Think of Lucky as a peppy, girly version of Men's Health (minus the great sex tips.)

Sure, there are some problems. There¹s not a magazine in the world that has the authority to convince me that socks and sandals is a good idea.The de rigueur cutesy advice column, "Dr. Shopper," is stupid rather than silly, a waste of Mim Udovitch's gifted reportorial eye. And when Lucky tries to get creative -- witness some of the alternatives offered in "Escape A Fashion Rut," a feature which tells you how to quit buying the same basic pieces over and over again -- the result seems literally misshapen.

Finally, just because it's a good idea to explain fashion doesn't mean it's a good idea to attempt to also explain beauty (don't we already have Allure?) or shelter (don't we already have Met Home/Elle Décor/House Beautiful, not to mention higher-end shelter porn?).

But these are quibbles. Lucky has real glories too. Every single question in "Ask the Editors" is something I've really wanted to know the answer to. (An October Q: I'm going to Italy. What can I wear to walk around and not look like a tourist? A: Birkenstocks.) In a way, the magazine's "this is how you put it together" explanation of women's fashion is more like GQ or Esquire than like any women's magazine I can think of. Lucky doesn't offer the world-class fiction and ground-breaking essays that GQ and Esquire used to, but it could be argued (at the risk of Messrs. Granger and Cooper never hiring me) that today's GQ and Esquire rarely do either.

A friend of mine left the coffee-table flattening September Vogue ("722 pages of Fabulous Fall Fashion") in my apartment the other day. It's pretty much the year's fashion authority, but I have to admit the story I wanted to read was "the sex memoir Paris can't put down." I didn't need the Linda Evangelista-returns-fashion bible part. Lucky's already told me what shoe to wear with what skirt.

A former bartender, gourmet coffee seller, and Wall Street analyst, Alison Rogers has been in the publishing business for over a decade. She has written for Fortune, Yahoo! Internet Life, and the New York Times; edited at a now-dead wire service in addition to defunct weeklies, monthlies, and bimonthlies; served editorial stints at Brill's Content, First! for Women, and Individual Investor; consulted for Empire Magazine and women.com, and written five drafts of a 300-word article on moisturizer for a Conde Nast magazine that shall remain nameless. Currently an assistant managing editor at The Daily Deal, she is the co-creator of thefelixes.com. In addition, her humor has appeared in the Chicago Reader, Fortune, Modern Humorist, and Salon.

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