I remember vividly when Elle Australia first launched in Australia after existing in many other countries for a long time (since 1975 apparently). It was 2013, I was 24 and studying Education after finishing my Media and Comms degree. Magazines were very important to me because for a large chunk of my youth, I wanted to be the editor of one. Vogue specifically, which I’d started collecting in at the age of 13 or 14.
In 2013, the first issue of Elle (pictured below) featured someone called Gabby I didn’t recognise and boasted a bunch of headlines that are both relevant to this media product but can also be used to spoof it. This issue promised to tell you about the next big thing: fashion’s game changers, whether your voice is a turn off, how to complete easy sexy (somewhat of an oxymoron) makeup, how to learn from street style and perform a cultural reboot. In much smaller font, it also said the words ‘Modern Australian. Just like Gabby’. This is the aforementioned Gabby whose identity remains largely unknown. Gabby is posing in the dessert; Gabby is wearing lots of beads and a scarf to signify she is in said dessert but also has her shoulders showing and her hands in her pockets. Perhaps they were trying to tell us the modern Australian is exotic but non-descript in a photoshopped way?
Fast-forward to ten years later and it’s kind of same/same but different (below). It’s still blue but this time we’re after bright young things as opposed to the next big ones. Apparently ‘bright young things’ is a term which was developed by the press to describe a group of artists or socialites in the 1920s. They emerged after the First World War. Whilst I understand the context is a little different, the sentiment still exists. The headline (which stands alone bar for the explanation of who is featured and the masthead) is a signal to its audience that this is a new generation who are doing things in different ways.
When I first saw the cover of Elle, I was happy (woman of colour), but disappointed. Mainly because of the phrase bright young things. It really hammers home the reality that I am not a bright young thing, and Elle is no longer made for me, but then it kinda could be… for two reasons.
I read somewhere, sometime ago, that Elle was bringing back its print counterpart to combat the fatigue consumers are experiencing from the infinite scroll, a feature Elle’s website capitalises on. I am tired by the infinite scroll!
When speaking to the announcement of the re-introduction of print, Editor-in-Chief Grace O’Neill said, ‘“The first issue is a love letter to Australian women – smart, stylish and complex. Welcome back to ELLE. We’ve missed you.”. I am complex!
Reading this issue of Elle, it was quickly apparent that Elle is in fact, like the cover suggests, not for me, even though I am an Australian woman and well, we’ve been over the other two reasons. I am at once too old, and too jaded by this medium to enjoy it. Whilst there were some local elements, and some exciting additions, such as Bri Lee as Contributing Cultural Editor and exciting articles like Are Influencers The New Public Intellectuals?. Overall the magazine did nothing to evolve from its hiatus, nothing to suggest this was a way to bring back a media form that in many instances has been deemed as irrelevant. Magazines have always straddled a fine line between a creative pursuit and a commercial one. The pages are filled with glossy commercials which become content in themselves. Often the editorial contains products that have been sent to editors by PR companies or are being featured because they have paid to be. It’s just more seamless and doesn’t seem to be as bothersome to people as an influencer attempting to do the same. Somewhat hilariously, the article, Is ‘Tradwife’ Content Anti-Feminist? An Expert Weighs In on Elle’s site questions the role of the Tradwife whilst having shoppable images of the clothes of said wives.
There has always been a hierarchy between newer forms of media and those which can be deemed as more traditional. And even in the era of digital, it seems that is still the case. Nicky Briger, GM of fashion and beauty at Are Media (Elle’s publisher), states that "In luxury fashion, print legitimises a brand; it’s a luxury product in itself, especially in this digital age where everything’s transitory,". This brings me to back to the mystery of the audience, because who can afford luxury fashion? The same article, Inside the relaunch of Elle Australia, acknowledges that a few years ago, magazines were competing with platforms such as YouTube etc. and rushing to put out content. Content that didn’t necessarily suit magazines.
Moving forward, I am curious as to how they will make content that is aware of the worlds of fashion, beauty and lifestyle that sit online and how they can find a place, which is still relevant, parallel to this. Even more so because they pace will be even slower this time around. That is, two issues in the first year and then increasing it to four issues in the second. To me this suggests a much meatier offering as an antithesis to fast production and the infinite scroll. Whilst they have had a long time to think about this, I am not sure if this thinking is reflected in the pages of its relaunch issue. Majority of articles (except for those I mentioned above) are like the articles of Elle in its former years, and its other print colleagues, somewhat lacking.
As I was writing this, I did a quick bit of market research by texting my 26-year-old sister, a smart, stylish, and complex Australian woman in her own right, to ask her if she would buy Elle Australia. Her answer? An eloquent ‘nup’.