So now that the juggernaut of fall fashion is in full swing—fashion weeks have come and gone, coats have made their way out from the back of the closet, and the color of the season, camel, is just about everyhere—we can reflect back on the early bellwethers of the coming season: the September issues. We've already done a literal weigh-in of the heavy hitters, with Vogue's 2.89-pound book ranking as the heaviest.
But was all the back-breaking effort worth it? According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations Rapid Report, Harper's Bazaar, Marie-Claire and Glamour all saw sales increases for their September issues, with Bazaar taking the cake with a 22 percent increase—and their highest-selling issue in seven years—while Elle, InStyle, Vogue, and W all reflected lower turnouts, WWD reported.
There's no question that Glenda Bailey, Bazaar's editor-in-chief must be pleased with the magazine's success, not to mention its cover girl Jennifer Anniston (who channeled Funny Girl Barbra Streisand for the occasion). Celebrity subjects aside, Bailey also credits her British training for Bazaar's newsstand sales. We chatted with her last week at the magazine's launch party for "Harper's Bazaar Fashion," and asked her about the proliferation of British editors here in the states.
"The advantage of training in Britain, is the fact that you're taught to sell on the newsstand, and that's how you become more profitable, obviously," she explained. "And this is a tremendously helpful tool for when you come to work at an American magazine, because if you can sell more at the newsstand—and we've been so incredibly fortunate to do that—it's way more profitable than the subscriber route. So that's the real reason why there's so many Brits."
Indeed, Bazaar has been employing tactics to appeal to newsstand consumers for some time now, including different subscriber and newsstand covers for the same month's issue. Still, given the number of British editors heading up American fashion magazines (Joanna Coles for Marie-Claire and of course Anna Wintour for Vogue), and the overall decrease in sales across the board, Bailey deserves to credit herself more than her British background.
