Hey teen girls who are not among Atoosa Rubenstein’s Alpha Kitties? You have so much to look forward to when you finish up a tony j-school degree and move up the rank and file of the magazine industry. You do know what you’re aspiring to be, right?
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• Jack Valenti, the longtime Hollywood lobbyist, dies at 85. His death will be mourned by everyone who knew him, and rejoiced by every teen who’s ever been denied admittance to an R-rated movie.
• Two “major publications” (read: NYP and People) digitally obscured portions of the photo from the VT shootings. “Eh, that’s nothing. I used to to pull that crap all the time!” says recently fired Blade photog, Allan Detrich.
• Say, remember when we suggested Rush Limbaugh might be the next Don Imus? Apparently, he was listening!
• ABC network exec, Andrea Wong, to take the reins at The Lifetime Channel. Her first goal? To make it “even more boring.”
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It’s gotta suck to work at Glamour. Just like it sucked to work at Star when Bonnie Fuller forced asked very nicely with pretty-please eyes staffers to appear in the magazine, now when you walk into work on the 16th floor offices at 4 Times Square, you can be expected to appear on Glamour.com.
Which is what happened to Kristin Koch, assistant to EIC Cindi Leive, when she showed up wearing a moderately similar outfit to senior accessories editor Ali Nichols’ ensemble. Bam, there she is on the mag’s Slaves to Fashion blog, run by associate style editor Ashley Baker.
To be fair, this is exactly the type of assignment staffers are now expected to complete as part of a book’s “digital strategy,” sans extra compensation. So we’ll excuse the little matter of unfashionable wardrobes appearing on a fashion magazine’s fashion blog.
Have you ever wanted to meet the interns at a glossy? We’ll let the Nielsen numbers for I’m With Rolling Stone answer that one.
But there goes Glamour, with executive fashion editor-at-large Suze Yalof Schwartz using her blog to get hip with the new era and trot out a pair of unwilling victims.
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Oh, boy. Well, as it turns out, you won’t have to end the week without a quote from Observer scribe cum socialite/model Jessica Joffe. The ladies at WWD were able to corner her at Wednesday’s “Glamour party” in the West Village. (Our invite must have gotten lost in the mail … or, since Jessica was hosting, maybe we were off the list.)
Oh, and did you hear? Joffe is blogging for Glamour now. And she doesn’t even need to break up with Ryan Adams and go date other people to do it.
One such, co-host, Jessica Joffe, was about to kick off the fashion week blog she’s keeping for Glamour (though she professed to “not really reading the blogs” that have been sniping at her lately). As to her ubiquity in Banana Republic ads around the city: “I feel like I’m in a Kafka novel. It’s really frightening.”
That’s, uh, a pretty bold statement. Oh, well, at least she didn’t say she felt like she was in a Brett Easton Ellis novel. Then again, if she reads Kafka, and has also memorized Zoolander, maybe Jessica should be blogging for Jane, instead. Oh, she’s not in the actual Jane ads, though. So, that probably won’t work.
ALL OVER …: [Irin Carmon, WWD]
Earlier: Earn Your Double Rewards Points With Jessica Joffe
• Two little socialites driving to Marquee, the car stopped short, got hit by a taxi. Lydia Hearst bumped her head … should’ve gone to Bed instead. [Page Six]
• If Craft-y chef Tom Collichio had $15 Million, he’d resurrect CBGB. Even though nobody wants him to. [WWD]
• Paris Hilton knows everyone thinks she’s a whore, but, really, she’s only slept with a few of her 100 boyfriends. And only made videos with one of them. [Page Six]
• See, it is possible to write for Glamour, even if you’re not also featured as a model on the back cover. [FBNY]
• Cindy Adams prefers her 9/11 movies to come a little later and go a little faster. [Cindy Adams]
Peter Kaplan’s former assistant/office eye candy at the New York Observer, Jessica Joffe, is taking over at Conde Nast. And she’s starting by leaving her mark all over Glamour magazine. In what she herself calls “a funny coincidence,” Joffe not only interviewed cover subject Emmy Rossum, but she also appears in a Banana Republic ad on the back cover. Remember? She’s modeling for Banana now.
She ends up getting more play on the back cover than the woman she profiles gets on the front cover,” joked Glamour editor in chief Cindi Leive. She said the magazine became aware of the double exposure at the last minute, and while Glamour has a policy prohibiting employees from appearing in advertisements in the magazine, the policy does not apply to Joffe, a first-time freelance contributor.
Wait, Glamour actually has a written policy that prevents employees from appearing in ads? But what about all those people who are simultaneously pursuing a career as a model and a freelance magazine journalist? It seems a little unfair that socialite’s are being so limited in their job opportunities.
Glamour Girl [Irin Carmon, WWD]
AM New York sex columnist and blogger Julia Allison – who also busies herself byling for Cosmopolitan, and then writing about her boss’ book for AMNY – did as she always does when her bevy of women’s mags arrive in her mail slot: opens them up, flaps them around so the mailer cards flutter to the floor, and dives right in with an half-open pint of The Gobfather. But the August issue of Glamour had the unfortunate surprise that Gotham used to Already at the point of “It” boy extinction that not even Atoosa Rubenstein would open up her book to him, Fabian Basabe shows up in a five-page spread in Cindi Leive’s pages — which upset Allison enough. The kicker, however, was that Basabe didn’t just take over so many glossy pages of girly goodness. It’s that he wrote them himself.
Today, I innocently opened my August issue of Glamour, anticipating a lovely hour of procrastination perusing the usual ampersand-obsessed mix of “Fashion & Beauty,” “Health & Body,” “Dos & Don’ts” and the occasional “My Sister/Mother/Female Dog Had Cancer & Survived” piece.
And what did I get instead??
FIVE. PAGES. OF. FABIAN. FRIGGING. BASABE.
Fabian smiling. Fabian dancing. Fabian blowing out his birthday candles. Fabian dipping various long-maned women while simultaneously posing for photos (hello, he practices in front of the mirror at home!). Fabian wondering if his butt looks big in these jeans.
My first thought was “Oh god, they’ve done a puff piece on Failed Former Sorta-It Boys Who Might Be Gay and Also Maybe Not As Rich As They Insinuate They Are.” And then I saw it.
“It” being … Fabian’s byline. Fabian, apparently, is now a writer. Like every other New Yorker (except me), he’s “working on a novel” about his favorite subject. Um, Fabian, obvi?
Julia’s got the Glamour scans over at her blog, where we’ve been working hard to identify the tear stains.
Dear Glamour Editor/Fabian’s Lit Agent, Have You No Shame?? [Julia Allison]