Germany’s top-selling women’s magazine is considering abandoning its use of amateur models barely two years after deciding to banish professional ones.
The fortnightly Brigitte hit the headlines in 2009 when it said it would feature only “real women” in its pages, part of a backlash against the use of ultra-thin professional models in fashion.
However, the magazine is reported to have found working with amateur models a challenge and the move has done nothing to increase sales.
Photo: Reuters
Now, with Stephan Schafer taking over at the helm as co-editor-in-chief alongside Brigitte Huber, the magazine is reconsidering the policy.
Schafer has been brought in to give Brigitte, which has been providing German women with a mix of fashion, recipes and lifestyle tips since 1954, a facelift.
“Naturally there is now a new direction at the magazine, which means everything is under review and that includes the no-models policy,” confirmed Sabine Grungreiff, spokeswoman for the magazine’s publishers Gruner + Jahr.
Back in 2009, the former editor-in-chief Andreas Lebert had claimed he was fed up having to retouch photographs of ultra-thin models.
“For years we’ve had to use Photoshop to fatten the girls up,” he said. “Especially their thighs and decolletage.”
He said Brigitte’s readers had complained that they couldn’t identify with the women featured in the magazine. That prompted the magazine to make use of ordinary women, with the first model-free issue appearing in January 2010.
However, the new direction has proved more difficult than anticipated. For one thing, the magazine says, its stylists and photographers have found that it is harder and takes longer to work with inexperienced non-professional models.
At the same time the models are being paid at a level “comparable” to professionals, the Suddeutsche Zeitung reports.
The magazine has to find the women without the help of model agencies. Arranging to shoot the women has also proved a challenge, as many work in other jobs and are only available at the weekends.
At the same time, the radical move has not had the desired impact on readers. They have complained that the women that now appear in Brigitte’s pages are just as skinny and pretty as the models previously used. They also point to the fact that the magazine has continued to feature diet tips.
Furthermore, the publicity gained by abandoning models appears to have done little for the bottom line. Sales have continued to slide, continuing the trend of the past decade, down from 801,574 in 2002 to 601,696 today.
“It is true that the numbers have fallen back,” Grungreiff said, but she disputed that this could be blamed on Brigitte’s no-models policy. “It is similar to all women’s fortnightly magazines.”
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby