If you aren't familiar, Lucky was "the magazine about shopping" that Conde Nast began publishing in 2000 (year confirmed by Wikipedia). This week, numerous media outlets have reported that Lucky is dead, after a reduction in issues, major staff layoffs, and a partnership with an outside company failed to save it. According to New York Magazine's fashion blog, The Cut, Lucky may live on as a website, but the print aspect of it is done.
I'm a feminist media critic. I'm supposed to find women's magazines problematic. And I do. But I also love them.
I have a long history with "ladymags," and especially fashion and beauty magazines. My entry into the category was Allure, the first issue (1991, so sayeth the Wiki) of which somehow ended up in our house. I was all of 11, but my mom subscribed and I read every issue when she finished it. I have subscribed (either through my mom or on my own) ever since. No kidding, 24 years. By around freshman year of high school, I was also getting Vogue. I have vivid memories of advertisements in both magazines for the pastel eyeshadows and nail polishes so popular in the early to mid '90's. I loved poring over the pictures of the couture fashions and reading about various random rich people attending parties and what they wore to those parties (Vogue, of course. I actually ended up canceling my subscription several years ago when I realized I was more annoyed by than interested in these ladies and their parties). I even wrote a research paper for my sophomore year science class about Botox using an article in Allure as a source (I was, and I remain, horrified by the idea of paralyzing one's facial muscles with botulinum toxin. It has the word toxin in its name!!!).
I remember hoping that one day I'd be able to afford the clothes and bags I saw in those pages. As soon as I had money, I started buying the more affordable luxury pictured in my magazines: the cosmetics (first non-drugstore makeup purchase: Clinique Chubby Stick -- the original silver pencil that had to be sharpened -- in Blue Jam, approximately 1996, and chosen based on an article I read in Allure). The clothes I saw remained elusive, though. It was difficult to even recreate the styles with the options available to a teenager in suburban Detroit working a minimum wage job.
Lucky was a game-changer for me. In 2000, I was a junior at DePaul University. I kept seeing advertisements in Allure (my subscription came with me to college) for a "new magazine about shopping." As soon as it appeared on newsstands, I bought a copy. I was instantly hooked. Here was a magazine that showed how to style clothes, but the clothes were at least in the realm of possibility for me. Instead of Chanel and Burberry, here was Gap and J. Crew and Banana Republic. Sometimes, they'd even feature stuff from Target and Old Navy, where an undergrad could actually afford to buy clothes. The focus was on looking good at every price point and the thrill of getting an amazing deal on something that made you look and feel great. Every item's price was printed right next to it on the page. They even included pages of "Lucky Breaks," exclusive discounts and giveaways on items featured in each issue (I won at least five of the giveaways over the course of my subscription). I subscribed immediately.
For its first several years, Lucky was my favorite magazine. Editor-in-Chief Kim France brought an accessible, interesting approach to style. I loved Jean Godfrey June's columns about beauty and bought many of her recommendations. If you ever liked an outfit I wore in undergrad or grad school, chances are at least one item or the idea for the outfit came from the pages of Lucky. The mix of high and low end styles was groundbreaking for a fashion magazine and it was perfect for someone who wanted to look good on a small budget.
For me, Lucky started to lose its appeal in 2010 when Brandon Holley (previously of Jane) took over as editor-in-chief. By that time, I had a real, grown-up job and had just had my first baby. I was financially stable enough to start building a wardrobe and affording the things I loved in Lucky's pages. Just as I got to that point, I started noticing a major shift in the items featured in the magazine. Instead of that famous high-low mix, more and more high fashion brands were taking over. The prices kept going up. I remember seeing a very plain white t-shirt featured that cost $70. There was less and less differentiation between what I was seeing in Lucky and what Vogue, InStyle, and Allure were pushing.
I held out until early 2013. By that point, the magazine was focusing heavily on "street style" stars (which seems to me to be young, wealthy people, who work in creative fields, mostly in New York, with unique style sense, who wear outfits that are meant to make them seem "interesting") and fashion bloggers. While I get why these people can be influential and important (talk about democratizing fashion) there is very little about the life of a rich twenty-something in Brooklyn that I can apply to my own life and style. I canceled my subscription. Shortly after that, Conde Nast announced that Holley was being replaced by Eva Chen, best known for her mastery of social media, particularly Instagram. Several months later, I bought one Chen-edited issue at the newsstand to see if I'd want to resubscribe. It didn't take me many pages to realize that I didn't. The only thing I found compelling enough to read in the entire issue was Jean Godfrey June's column.
The end of Lucky makes me sad because for a long time it was the only magazine that made fashion and style seem achievable for a young, middle class woman in the midwest. Part of its downfall may have been that other magazines started picking up their high-low approach, rather than focusing on high-end only. I can see Lucky's influence when I flip through a copy of InStyle and see items I can actually afford with their prices printed right on the page, instead of in tiny print at the back of the magazine. I think the bigger problem, though, was that they left their readers behind. The focus on street style significantly narrowed the concept of style in the magazine's pages and as a result reduced the appeal to a broad range of readers.
These days, my fashion magazines of choice are Allure (of course), InStyle, and Elle. They're good for what they are and I enjoy them, but I miss the old Lucky approach. A lot of what I used to see in Lucky is covered in numerous blogs and websites now, so there will almost certainly never be another print publication like Lucky pre-2010. And that's sad.
