West magazine ran its annual Spring Fashion issue and while the results were more appealing than in the past, there's still a lot of work to be done.

Elizabeth Khuri explores the art of Rodarte, although it would be nice to read about the Mulleavy sisters that didn't go on about growing up in Pasadena. People have to grow up somewhere. Autumn de Wilde's photos are fine, but a video would have been far more interesting than a slide show.

Barbara Thornburg's video piece on shopping with dogs is a textbook example of how not to do a video piece. Called both Shop Til They Flop and Shopping with Cleo, the producer gets it wrong right from the start. The vo says "Cleo is a long-legged blonde who loves to shop" as the camera starts on her paws and tilts up to the head, thus spoiling the surprise and the joke, all at once. Starting on human legs and traveling up to a handbag pooch would have been better. Turning off the camera would have been best.

Cleo is said to love shopping, but has to be dragged into a store. Thornburg's vo tone is mournful and slow (although she's funny when she's baby talking about Dolce & Gabbana). The art of the montage has evaded the LAT's multimedia staff yet again. The pooch-in-the-streets are inadvertently hilarious, like the woman who takes her dogs to Her-maize. Ultimately, why does this exist? It's not strikingly visual, it's not funny or witty and it's not informative.

Jade Chang writes about design teams isn't particularly revealing about the nature of collaboration, but we do learn how the teams come up with names for their collections and companies. The photos show the designers but not their work which is a wasted opportunity in a fashion issue.

FBLA thinks this issue could have been better. How? The Cory Kennedy story could have been saved for this issue. Downtown LA wants to recapture fashion week from Smashbox--surely there's a story there? In fact, there's no mention of Fashion Week at all, even though it starts on Friday, March 16th.

C+ Shows improvement, needs to work harder.