Suede - New Magazine from Essence
 

Does anyone have a copy yet? I just ordered one. I'm guessing this will be like Honey??

Good idea, but a few concerns.
 

I don't have a copy of Suede yet. I'm a bit older than the target market, but I want to see it nonetheless.

I think it's a generally good idea, but I have one concern about it: the models. I understand that high fashion demands people who look like Liya Kebede, Naomi Campbell, etc.

Where it may be a problem, however, is when young girls start internalizing it. I don't want to see us developing a rash of eating disorders -- and I speak as someone who was relatively thin as a teen (wore size 9-10).

Fact is, more of us are bound to have the body type of Angie Stone, Jill Scott, Queen Latifah, etc., than Liya, Naomi, etc.

So true! But I am interested to see what its like. There is definitely a need for a magazine for this age group.

I received my copy on Friday. I haven't read the magazine from cover to cover. I mainly flipped through it. From what I can tell, it's our "Vogue" with out all the trash on sex, etc. It appears most advertisements cater to those with deep pockets.

Once I get a chance to read the issue, I'll add more comments.

I decided to cancel my subscription just based on the fact that my precious eyes couldn't take the way the magazine was layed out. I really wanted to read the article on Alicia Keys but the background and text color put a strain on my already visually challenged eyes. I prefer Essence, but I did like the article on "groupies" and the profile on the owner of BET's daughter.

My eyes!!! My eyes!!
 

Takeshi I would have to agree with you. The layout seemed soooooooo extra, bordering on haphazard. It literally gave me a headached. :eek: :(

I also suspect it is a magazine for those with deep (dare I say "bottomless") pockets. :o It's almost like a combination of Honey (in terms of the fashion) and Savoy (in terms of living a more luxe lifestyle).

I will give it a chance and make my final decision after perusing the second issue.

I thought I was being too critical with my assessment of Suede. I'm a self-professed magazine junkie. I subsribe to Essence and lost money with subscribing to Honey, Heart&Soul, Savoy.

But I thought the layout was too busy and I too had difficulty reading the Alicia Keys article. Actually I didn't bother to finish b/c of the background color and I wear reading glasses.

I think they should cater to women that have shallow pockets as well as the deep pocket sistahs. Hopefully, I'll be a deep pocket sistah one day, but for now although I have little funds I still would like to look as good/sophisticated as possible, especially for the line of business I aspire to be in.

I picked up a copy and it rung up for $99! No magazine is worth that much,lol.

But it isn't aesthetically please at all. The articles were very blah, not really sure what they are trying to do with this magazine.

Not Impressed!
 

Okay, okay!

I confess, I still haven't read the magazine! I flipped through AGAIN and read some of the articles. I tried to read the AK article, but just couldn't make it to the end. I don't recall if I found it not interesting or if it was hard to read. It was probably both.

I also don't care for the paisley, small font title. I was hoping the 1st issue would have explained why??????? But it didn't. I think I will give it another shot. If it doesn't get better, then I'll abandon it.

It appears the magazine is catering to "elite" consumers and I don't fit the mold!

I flipped through it, and decided it wasn't worth buying, until the next time I'm stuck at an airport w/ nothing to read. :rolleyes:

What store did you find this mag?

Safeway. But not by the register, in the magazine section, across from vitamins

I'm gonna' cruise by Borders and see if they might have it.:)

What store did you find this mag?

I picked it up at Target

I got mine at Walgreens.

I picked it up last night at Borders.

The layout is a bit much on the eyes.

The ads:
American Express(2)
Nissan Altima
Target
Make A Wish Foundation
several beauty {hair, makeup, etc..}products
several clothing companys
Crysler
Ortho Evera(birth control)
Ford Escape
HBO (2)
Jeep Liberty Renegade
Style maagazine
Toyota Solara
Chevy Equinox
VW Touareg (wagon style car)

The articles were ok. This mag is not for the clothing conservative in terms of $$. I would support this mag because of a couple of reasons.
1. Unique
2. No cigarette ads or alcohol ads.
3. It's put out by Essence
4. There are black folks listed as contributing photographers:)

I haven't read it.. and from the layout comments, Im not sure that I want to. For those of you who bought it, do you plan on emailing the editor (or contacting the magazine somehow) to tell them of your displeasure? This may help with future issues..

I don't think so. Since I dont think I fit into the demographics for this mag, it doesn't really apply to me.

It's not a bad magazine, just needs some fine tuning. Even though I'm not too fond of the layout, it does show youthfulness and brightness.

I feel you on that

i've had it for about two weeks now and i just can't read it. i'm so glad to hear that other people's eyes were straining because i was thinking 24 aint old enough for my eyes to be going bad! it is just too busy! Azul, you said it when you called it overstimulating because that is THE BEST word for it. hopefully, it will work out the kinks. but, i won't be subscribing.

and let me say this: these fashion editors need to be more realistic. the people that can afford to buy the clothes in these magazines are not reading these magazines--they're being featured in them!! let's show some affordable clothes. and as a rule of thumb, $90 jeans, $120 shoes and $75 dollar belts are NOT considered affordable so stop trying to play us for crazy!!:mad:

They need to be more realistic, but they're not going to. There are people who have disposable income or different priorities, so they can pay what you posted above for fashion, particularly on the coasts (N.Y., Kollyfornia). That's who their market is.

I remember reading a lot of the same criticisms of Mode and Grace, when they existed (Mode and Grace were fashion mags for women roughly sizes 10-20 and so. They weren't targeted toward women of color, but featured models of color). Really, though, I think their audience was more likely to shop at Nordstrom than Fashion Bug.

You don't have a $75 belt!:eek: Gurrrl you need to gon' head and get you one! Along with that $2,000 crystal dress. :p

Precisely. If you have good taste and know what works for your body, lifestyle, etc., you will be fine.

TTT/Village Voice on Suede
 

Press Clips
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Brown-Skin Lady
Suede magazine wants advertisers to see its true colors—and spend some real green
September 21st, 2004 12:20 PM

ast spring, sales reps from Essence began spreading the news to ad agencies: The matron saint of black female self-esteem was birthing a daughter. "The Essence team came in and told us they were coming out with a new magazine," says Carla Louis, media planner for UniWorld Group. "They said it would be high-fashion, multicultural with a heavy African American base. It sounded like something new and exciting. The way they described it, you just felt there wouldn't be anything else like it in the market."

True that. Suede, the progeny of Essence's marriage to deep-pocketed Time Inc., hit newsstands this month and immediately made clear that the high-fashion glossy is its own animal. Suede is less service-y than Marie Claire, more spasmodic than Elle, thinner than Vogue, and blacker than all of them, not that the last one required much. The actual contents are a mix of peaks and valleys. At least in its first issue, Suede looks best when it talks least. The spread of black chicks in church-wear is as gorgeous as the ode to cuckolding is cringe-worthy.

"I think it looks beautiful," says Leonard Burnett, publisher-at-large for Trace and former associate group publisher for Vanguarde, which published the now defunct Honey. "If anybody could do it, it would be Time Inc. But there are some fundamental business decisions that they're going to have to entertain."

Among them: Is Suede a black magazine? (Full disclosure: Press Clips' partner works for Suede, not that it helped.) A Suede flack declined interview requests for anyone at the publication, but not before insisting that, despite the abundance of Negroes on the debut edition's pages, Suede's target audience is multicultural (read: "We're not black, we're just laid out that way!"). The inaugural note from Suede's editor, Suzanne Boyd, does a marvelous job of speaking to black girls and those who emulate them. "You wore the track suit before it got Juicy, got a weave years before Donatella and knew to buy bling before everyone else could look it up in the dictionary," writes Boyd. Her message isn't aimed just at readers, but at potential clients, too. Undoubtedly, she is serving notice to advertisers who would direct Suede to the colored section.

Perhaps Suede's closest parallel is Complex. Almost to a fault, Complex, a vaguely hip-hop men's magazine, is a study in diversity. The August-September double-fronted issue featured Eve on one cover and Djimon Hounsou and Mark Ruffalo on the over. While Complex isn't exactly high-fashion like Suede, it speaks to the convergence of ethnic and mainstream. "We're one of the few magazines where our demographic mimics the top 10 markets in the country," says Sean McCusker, director of marketing for Complex. "It's 50-52 Caucasian, 38 percent African American, the balance being Latino and Asian."

While Suede probably aims at a blacker demographic, the magazine seeks to establish that the multicultural market is now the general market. "The reason they're forcing the multicultural thing is to gain high-fashion advertising," says Burnett. "There are folks who have a pot of money devoted to ethnic or black. There are quite a few advertisers who've devoted a pool of money for multicultural. But high-fashion advertisers don't have those types of budgets."

Suede essentially asserts a two-part theorem—that there are half a million women of color who want to see high-end fashion portrayed in living color, and that there are advertisers who believe this. "You know how we spend our money," says Louis. "We look up to the Gucci this and the Coach that. We can have just a couple dollars in our pocket and find a way to get a Coach bag. The audience is definitely there. We're hungry for it. Right now we have turn to Vogue, we have to turn to Marie Claire. But we want our own magazine to have this."

Black buying power is an old refrain among upwardly mobile African Americans frustrated by advertisers who look the other way. Suede's first issue offers little evidence that the ad community has changed its tune. On the one hand, Suede got a nice spread from American Express. But fashion is another fight, and the magazine has taken an L in the first round. Suede's spreads may feature names like Salvatore Ferragamo and Dolce & Gabbana, but its fashion advertising is strictly Lady Enyce and Baby Phat.

McCusker says Complex has also had its own struggles convincing advertisers that the general market has shifted. "I know that many of the ad agencies have divisions that cater to the multicultural market," says McCusker. "We obviously don't look at it that way. We like to think that the mainstream is coming to us."

It's a lot easier to pull the mainstream to you when the biggest magazine publisher in the business has your back. Time Inc. last ventured into the urban market back in 1993, when it paired with Quincy Jones to launch Vibe. Three years later, evidently disappointed with the urban market, Time Inc. sold Vibe to a partnership led by Jones and ex-Time Inc. exec Robert Miller. At 850,000 copies, the magazine is now second among music magazines in paid circulation, trailing only Rolling Stone.

"At one point, Vibe was deemed never to be big enough to fit within the Time Inc. system," says Burnett, who also worked at Vibe. "Maybe they have learned from that lesson." And then some. A Time Inc. spokesman was recently quoted in Advertising Age asserting that the company's long-term goal would be ownership of Essence Communications. Stay tuned.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Headed uptown

Since Vanguarde Media, his joint venture with Keith Clinkscales, went under last November, Burnett has stayed busy. His most recent project is Uptown, a city magazine for upscale refined Harlemites. The first issue's cover hails "the return of the gentleman" and positions Fonzworth :rolleyes: Bentley as pitchman and cover boy. "We live in the most diverse city in the country and there's not one magazine that targets the African American audience," says Burnett. "A magazine grounded in the ethos of what Harlem is all about would provide us with a chance for success."

Burnett sees Uptown as the flagship in an armada of magazines about affluent black neighborhoods. He says his model is Jason Binn, publisher of the magazines Gotham, Hamptons, and Los Angeles Confidential. Lofty ambitions indeed, given that the dust is just now settling from Vanguarde's demise. The first issue of Uptown is long on breathy profiles of all the touchstones for Harlem's black bourgeoisie—The Den, Sette Panni, Utopia. But it lacks an original voice, and that powerful ethos Burnett invokes feels only vaguely rendered.

Don't expect any of that to slow Burnett down. Later this year, Burnett says, he's launching Mynt, a shopping magazine for black boys distributed through a partnership with the kicks merchant Dr. Jay's. Then in 2005 he plans to launch Bronzeville, slated to be the official bible of Chicago buppiedom. "The key to publishing, now more than ever, is that your magazine be urgent to the consumer," says Burnett. It takes an urgent publisher to know that.

Re: TTT/Village Voice on Suede
 

Steeltrap, you wouldn't happen to have a web address for this one? I did a search and couldn't find anything :confused:

NP...
 

I don't actually have a copy, but I flipped through the mag. It seems cool. Alicia Keys is on the cover. Personally, I think the magazine is cross between Vogue and Essence. There a whole bunch of high fashion pictures. However, I am unsure about the quality of the articles.

Re: NP...
 

Thank you:)

This makes me cringe. :(

^^
It may be cringeworthy, but it's a fact. Many of us are vulnerable to competitive consumerism, and IMO, it goes way back. We should change, but change is slow.

As for me, I can find that Coach but I get it secondhand or at the outlets.
:p

I got the new one a couple of days ago. It's just as bad as the first one.:(

I cancelled my subscription right after I received the debut issue with Alicia Keys on the cover. For some reason I thought that since it was under the Essence banner that it would be a magazine with style AND substance.

Maybe it will get better as time goes on and customers send letters to the editor with suggestions on how to improve the magazine.

Flash and glam is what this mag seems to be. For those who like it, I hope the relationship works out but I think I'll stick to the old favorite...:)

TTT
 

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/.../arts/boyd.jpg

December 7, 2004
Embracing Black Fashion and a Great Deal More
By DAVID CARR

Even the most discerning listener could end up at wit's end trying to parse Suzanne Boyd's accent. There are hints of French and British and even Scottish lilts in her voice, and then she tosses in an "eh" that could come only from the Great White North.

Ms. Boyd is the editor in chief and the muse of Suede, a freshly hatched fashion and culture magazine aimed at a polyglot audience, so it make sense that she sounds as if she comes from almost everywhere when she speaks.

She actually most recently edited Flare, Canada's leading fashion magazine, with headquarters in Toronto. Her new urban-inflected American publication lands somewhere between the street and the runway.

At 5-foot-10 - 6-foot-4 if you count the abundant hair and stilettos - Ms. Boyd is tough to miss. New York is just the latest stop on a long and complicated itinerary. Born in Halifax and reared in Dominica, an island between Guadalupe and Martinique in the Caribbean, she picked up the tiny island's French influence, then went on to Jamaica and attended Immaculate Conception high school, where she was drilled in the queen's English. Time in Barbados working as a reporter exposed her to the Scottish way with the language. Toss in her stint as a club kid in Toronto, and she is tough to pin down. And all that comes before you find out that she is a serious surfer, which adds another whole dynamic to her speech.

Suede, the magazine she began making in March and first published in September, is a similar collage, a mix and match of high and low, urban and couture, bling and fling.

"We wanted so that when readers looked at a page, it had to reference things in addition to fashion, whether it was the street, hip-hop or grafitti - African-American iconography both old and new," Ms. Boyd said.

The magazine, which will come out almost monthly next year (nine issues), was conceived as a publication that would appeal to the millions of black and multiethnic women who have plenty of money to spend on blush but have specific requirements for hues.

Instead of confecting an ethnic version of the existing fashion magazine, Ms. Boyd cooked up something that has little precedent. Suede has a Pop Art logo, a narrative pushed through the prism of contemporary black culture and a Polaroid-influenced photo approach, with things tacked and taped and plopped everywhere. In the inaugural issue, an opening spread of epically refined church ladies is soon followed by a feature called "Blah, Blah," which is rife with gossip and juicy bits.

The magazine careens from hip-hop icons to full-stop fashion photography, with advice and product coverage strewn throughout. It can be naughty (women are encouraged to trade favors with the famous) and baldly commercial (hand-scrawled Rolodex cards for some advertisers are arrayed on a pop-out page). The magazine is frenetic in a way few fashion publications would dare to be. It can be exhausting to stare at. But sitting on a rack of me-too fashion magazines, it evokes significant exhilaration as well.

"I like shiny things," Ms. Boyd, 41, said, her face framed by four-inch vintage crystal chandelier earrings. She giggled as she said it, her hand covering her mouth during an interview in an office above Times Square. The tittering, which pops out from beneath an improbable riot of spiky curls, is not exactly a front, but it does reflect her approach to putting out a magazine. Ms. Boyd is a full-blown diva who demands - she would say requires - that everyone around her push past the edges of what has been done.

"I like to lead in a way that is directional, that is therefore clear," she said. "If you are not precise about what you want, you are not doing anyone any favors."

When P. Diddy has his own store on Fifth Avenue, along with a fragrance deal with Estée Lauder, and Jennifer Lopez sets fashion trends for women of all sorts, Ms. Boyd said, black audiences have a magazine that reflects their roles as consumers and influencers. Ms. Boyd herself is not shy about sticking out: she wore $500,000 in borrowed jewelry to Flare's 25th anniversary party. But she thinks that the transmission of street wear into fashion trend needs to be documented and recognized.

"We want to reference culture as much as shopping," she said, although decked out in Gucci suit and Chanel shoes, Ms. Boyd knows her way around a designer store. "We wanted hot weather, brown skin, the kind of urban feel that has had a lot of influence on the runway."

Ms. Boyd and her crew pay attention to high fashion and consumer trends, but they draw inspiration from music videos, club fashions and the girl down the block with the hair that will not quit.

"Suzanne is very aware of the cultural complexity of the times that we live in," said Rufus Albemarle of Albemarle Eason, a branding group. "She is very much about closing the division between fashion and other aspects of the culture."

Whether advertisers will respond to what has been a traditionally underserved market remains an open question for a magazine aimed at the growing ethnic market. The magazine has a a rate base - the number of readers promised to advertisers - of 250,000 and will publish its third issue in February. In the publishing circles the magazine has created a rare bit of excitement, the kind of currency that would normally have advertisers leaping into the arms of the latest, hottest thing. While cosmetics firms like Clinique and Lancôme have jumped in, many fashion advertisers are waiting to see where the magazine goes. Executives at Essence Communications and Time Inc., which is a 49 percent partner in the company, are happy to have a magazine people are talking about, but they would like to see their new project blow up huge with a lot of ads as well.

"There is a frustration in what we do," said Michelle Ebanks, group publisher at Essence Communications Group, which has been publishing Essence magazine for 34 years. "In a sense, there is not a road, not a path, that we go down. And because there is no pavement, we have to work a lot harder. We can't just sell the magazine. We have to sell the audience. We have to explain that our audience buys things, that they are valuable. It's just plain dollars and sense."

The company's partners at Time Inc. say Suede could be a breakthrough product. Isolde Motley, corporate editor at Time Inc., has had her eye on Ms. Boyd for years, and when Essence talked about adding a fashion magazine, she suggested that Ms. Boyd had been more or less training for exactly that role for years.

"Some years ago, I was flipping through a copy of Flare, and in the editor's note there was a picture of Suzanne, who was wearing an evening dress that she had designed out of a Hudson Bay blanket," she said. "Years later, those dresses showed up on the runway. This is a person who has a complete and passionate vision for what she wants to do. She already had the whole magazine in her head."

In putting the magazine together, Ms. Boyd did not just start from scratch. Flare brought her to the attention of designers, who were more than willing to lend her clothes for photo shoots, and she had longstanding relationships with fashion writers and photographers. Bryan Adams, a fellow Canadian who achieved prominence as a huge-selling pop star in the 1980's and 90's, contributed photos for a fashion shoot in New Orleans in the inaugural issue.

"I have known Suzanne for about seven years," Mr. Adams said. "I have always thought of her as a surfer chick from the Dominican Republic, but she is so much larger than life. I love all the glitz and glamour she manages to generate wherever she goes."

Ms. Boyd said she expects Suede to do good business, but she is more concerned with establishing a bench mark in the publishing culture as well.

"The expectation when it comes to black magazines is that they will be urban and that will be the end of it," she said. "There is supposed to be no taste level, no understanding of the runway aspects of fashion. We want to be fun and fashion correct."

Now I know why the magazine looks a hot mess...

why is that, soror? :confused:

please help a sista out--thanks! :D

From looking at the 2 issues of the magazine it seems like the magazine is all over the place. Like they are trying to do too many things in a limited amount of pages.

oic...thanks for the clarification, soror!:cool:

the new issue
 

my mother got the mag today (don't ask my why) and they had a spread of greeks (AKA, DST, ZPB, SGR and a latina sorority that i can't quite remember) dressed to the millions in haute couture. the spread was about three pages and it was really sharp. it made me feel so proud of us all.

i don't know how i feel about the mag yet -- it does seem to jump all over the place and the clothes are too too too expensive to be catering to my type but....

the spread was nice and it was nice to see fellow greeks doing their thing in a positive way.... temple university's AKAs were representing!!! GO YALL!!!!

zoe saldana (sp?) is on the cover.