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Last week I was excited to pick up the annual Style Issue of the New Yorker, since I was looking forward to some enlightening articles on the subject. So I bought my copy, featuring first lady Michelle Obama splayed across the cover, and proceeded to make it my mission to read every article pertaining to style over the weekend, and whatever else interested me (i.e., some morbid poems by John Updike). I am sorry to say that in the end, I was slightly disappointed. Let me explain why. First I have so say, my reading experience started off on a positive note, since I jumped straight to the profile of Alber Elbaz, designer for one of my most coveted labels, Lanvin, which was an interesting look not only into his life, but also into the reasons why Lanvin has evolved from a one-woman millinery in Paris to the phenomenon it is today amongst the fashion intelligentsia. Next I went right to an article about Bill Cunningham, the man behind the "On the Street" audio slide shows in the New York Times Fahsion & Style pages whose slide shows I watch religiously (seems to me he was the original Sartorialist, as far as style-on-the-street photos go). And then the annual Style Issue began to slip right off the pedestal on which I had put it with the lamely ironic "Confessions of a Pilgrim Shopaholic" article, a transparent reference to the rampant consumerism that preceded the new mindset of the recession. So finally, after realizing that I had yet to find the article about Mrs. Obama, cover girl of the issue, I leafed through each individual page until I found it - a one column, paltry attempt at including Michelle Obama in some sort of story. A brief mention of her arms, of Thakoon Panichgul and Jason Wu, and already the article was over. All that fanfare and the New Yorker did not deliver. I could not believe it, especially since I've already read countless articles examining her style with just several months in the White House, enough already to fill a novel, and this article could barely muster a few paragraphs?
It may have been called the "Style Issue," but with little substance and such lacking photographs they wouldn't even make it on a sidebar on the pages of Vogue, I find the cover story of this week's New Yorker to be the worst of both worlds - lacking in both substance AND style. Thank goodness for Alber Elbaz for making this issue worth my $4.99.
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