One of the things I love about late August, and the beginning of the sense of fall, is reading the September Fashion magazines. I always buy them all, and I love looking through them. This year, I am busy enough that it will probably be well into September before I get through them all, but that is ok. It simply prolongs the enjoyment, and its not like actual autumnal temperatures are about to hit my immediate environs anytime soon.
There are a couple of things I've noticed though. I don't really like Vogue. I've subscribed for years, decades really, but it is time to stop. I do believe I used to like it, used to read it, used to pore over it. But I don't even really save inspiration photos from Vogue much anymore, either the editorials or the ads. The articles don't bore me, at least not entirely, but the attitude does. The question is if one or two articles is enough to justify the poundage of waste. This makes me wonder if I ever really liked Vogue, or I just thought I should like it.
I think I was always more interested in the details of the clothes than any editorializing or fantasy. Or maybe I'm just older and wiser and not interested in the elitism of high fashion an.ymore. No that's not true, I love looking at fabulous clothes, even fabulously extravagant clothes, even though I would probably never wear them. I used to really love were those French and Italian magazines, like Collezioni Donna and Show Details that published runway photos of all the collections. I can get runway photos online, and the magazines are frightfully expensive, but I like the glossy photos. I want to look at photos of the clothes themselves, that is what inspires me, not the editorial pages, which are too stylized, too disconnected from any reality I understand, and really do nothing to satisfy my primary impulse in buying these magazines.
But although I look at the magazines for inspiration, I am also looking for perspective on the market, on trends and what is modern, even though I may just decide to wear what I want regardless. The standard US magazines have ads from manufacturer's who may not be high fashion, but which still inspire, and are far more directly related to what people actually wear. I can still be inspired by them, and this is perhaps what I look for in the September magazines.
I'll definitely have a small collection of inspiration pics. Thousands of pages will be reduced to a handful. What will I learn in the process? Perhaps I need to seek out a copy of Collezioni Donna or Show Details. They were easy to come by in New York, not so much now. But I've more than paid for one issue of Collezioni Donna already for a 25 pounds of magazines that will probably mostly just end up in the recycling bin. Perhaps one subscription to a runway collection and a couple of issues of In Style or Lucky, or Elle will meet my needs. I'll be interested to see what my perusal of the fall fashion magazines actually yields, whether anything will inspire me, and where that inspiration may be found. There is no rush, I want to enjoy the process and I am busy enough with other things that this will occupy my playtime well into September.
I'm taking an end of summer vacation for the rest of this week. I will be back after Labor Day. Enjoy summer's last hurrah.
