Daily Front Row

2010 March 19

Apropos Link of the Daily: Ad Age Takes Down T

Comments | | Print

The Spring 2010 issue of T.
View Gallery

(NEW YORK) Quel timing! As the fashion world rocks with the news of T: The New York Times Style Magazine editor Stefano Tonchi’s imminent move to W, Ad Age has been busy with its own T takedown. Writer Larry Dobrow doesn’t mince words in this piece, published Thursday. A few quotes to discuss:

“My God, has anyone besides the pricey-pants advertisers who keep it solvent taken a look at this thing lately? Perhaps at one point the mag was a smudgier, slightly more articulate Vogue, but it has long since passed Monocle on its way down the inadvertent-satire food chain. Basically, T has become Zoolander: The Magazine.”

“The price of entry for anyone who appears in it: Alps-high cheekbones. The price of entry for readers: a superhuman tolerance for prettify-or-die affectations.”

“It doesn't help that T has never met a pun or dated cultural reference it couldn't spin into a headline or caption. The photo spread on desert-themed garb gets dubbed ‘The Chic of Araby,’ while the one-pager on glow-in-the-dark watches is tagged with a ‘Go With the Glow’ and ‘watches that glow with the flow’ tweaked-cliché double shot. Occasionally the magazine dispenses with making sense altogether: a compilation of bright, striped shirts is accompanied by the subhead/caption pairing, ‘Linebackers: Tackle the future in Technicolor.’ Okay.”

“As affected and unwittingly self-parodying as T may be, it looks like a marvel of artistic reserve compared with the mag's fledgling web presence, particularly its "exclusive" videos…My only questions after having viewed all five miniflicks: What possible relevance does this have to style, fashion or art? And who's paying for this? Leave the student films back in the dorm, where they belong.”

“Some people would label [T video] ‘Strange Attractors’ a bold, evocative protest against the fractiousness and mutability of modern-era ethnoculturalism. Those people would be morons. But Derek Zoolander would totally hit on them at the after-party.”