Magazine Review: Vogue Paris

Vogue is one of the most well-known and oldest fashion magazines in the world, with editions in over 20 countries it’s likely you’ll have trouble finding someone who hasn’t heard of Vogue before. Each Vogue differs greatly, depending on who edits it. For example American Vogues cover is most commonly covered with celebrities and Hollywood actresses. UK Vogue is a mix of celebrities (mostly British) and the hottest models of the moment. Paris and Italia Vogue however rarely feature celebrities and are pretty much always covered by models. 

The Cover 
The cover features Doutzen Kroes photographed by David Sims in SS12 Givenchy. The styling and make up and hair is all effortlessly cool and minimalistic. The image is on a plain white backdrop, which also adds to the simplicity. From an image search I can see that most Vogue Paris covers are cleaner and more simplistic than their US and UK alternatives.
There is also little text on the front, very different from the Vogues we see here. Whereas Vogue UK generally has text all over the cover, on this cover its been kept to a minimum on the top left of the page. The text is a simple, eligible serif font in gold and black, introducing 4 of the issues main features. The cover looks simple and elegant and with the white background really stands out on a newsstand as being light and contemporary. 

The Typography and Graphics 
The typography is pretty consistent through the issue, even through every editorial the same serif font is used although sometimes in varying formats and sizes. On the features in the magazine a tall bold sans serif font is used alongside the serif font for added emphasis. This also helps to work with the elegant classic serif font to update it and make it more contemporary and edgy.  Its all very clean and simplistic which is what I love about it. 

The Layouts
In keeping with the rest of the magazine, the layouts are kept simple, uncluttered and clean, without looking too bland. There’s a lot of white space, most features and editorials have white border of about 3cm around the edge. The text is generally kept between either one or two columns, not once in the magazine does it extend 2 columns. Most content text isn’t justified except on small features where text is wrapped around images and one or two features, which uses hyphenation. I feel that the layout is in a way quite similar to Vogue UK however is it much cleaner and sharper, which makes it seem more edgier and cool. 

The Editorial
Something that I found with Paris Vogue is that there seems to be more editorial content and its paced throughout the magazine, whereas in UK Vogue its generally all kept together towards the end of the magazine. Emmanuelle Alt herself styles a few of the editorials and I think that that comes through. In this issue, she styled ‘Attitude’ featuring Arizona Muse and also the ‘Haute Couture editorial. All editorials have either a single page or a double page spread there are no more than 1 photo per page and the layouts are kept classic and simple. What’s interesting is every editorial is different, no two are the same. There doesn’t seem to be a particular style for the photos it depends on the trend that the editorial is trying to illustrate. Seeing as Vogue is a fashion magazine read by many it needs to have a broad theme that can connect with lots of different consumers, I do feel though that the editorials here do some edgier than those found in UK Vogue.

The Overall Feel
The overall feel of the magazine is very sophisticated, chic and clean. I think it’s very different from its counterparts, US and UK Vogue. This Vogue feels –much trendier and chic then the other two, with its sparse layouts and simple typography it’s a very beautiful clean publication.