Elle

Author's product rating:   

Value for money	OK
Quality of journalism	OK
Quality of features	OK
Quantity of advertising	Average

Advantages:	Good coverage on latest catwalk trends, full of useful fashion tips, interviews of celebs are good
Disadvantages:	Many articles in the mag have an unhealthily bitchy, self - obsessed, weight - obsessed slant

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Elle magazine is one of those women's fashion glossies which has stood the test of time (It was started in 1945!). Costing £3.50 an issue if you buy it off the newstands (and costing a bit less if you subscribe - you pay £6 for the first 6 issues/6 months, then pay £16.80 for subsequent 6 issues every 6 months, which is around 20% less than its usual price) it is not one of the cheaper magazines on the market, but for what it does, it does quite well. Out of the 274-page May 09 issue, about 147 pages are completely devoted to ads and promotions. That means about 53% of this issue was just advertisements alone. The rest (127 pages, or 47% of the entire mag) make up the actual content and I am reviewing them here.

Elle is a high fashion magazine like Vogue (with which its often compared), and as such, at least half of all the products featured in it have price tags that are in the hundreds, some of which are in the thousands, though not *everything* shown in the magazine was expensive. One thing is for sure : you won't find Primark or supermarket brands such as George or F+F in here. However there are some featured items/clothing from high-street outlets like French Connection, Urban Outfitters, Topshop, Accessorize, Oasis, Uniqlo, River Island, etc. As long as an item is in keeping with the latest catwalk trend and can mix and match well with the other high fashion items featured, the lower cost of a high-street item won't stop it from being featured here. Its not all about brand snobbery but for something to be featured here it's got to look expensive AND on trend, and if its not expensive its got to be very stylish and on trend. After all, Elle is highly focused on catwalk trends.

One thing which Elle seems to do very well in comparison with other fashion magazines is that it offers a good deal of advice for the reader on how to dress in the latest styles and look good in them. It offers pages and pages of advice and examples (I would not recommend anyone go out there and buy every item that is featured in this magazine unless they are seriously loaded!) and in fact, I've counted that there were at least 34 pages of content in the May 09 issue geared towards offering fashion-related advice and featuring the best shops or the best items at the moment to look out for. I find the information on fashion very up-to-date and very useful if I'm looking to get a good idea on what's hot off the catwalk at present. Some people say that this magazine is useless to normal people who can't spend a thousand pounds on a dress. I don't really agree with that though. You could be normal folk AND still glean some good useful styling advice from this magazine. Yes it does feature a lot of expensive clothing but that's more akin to showing you what the latest catwalk trends are like straight out of the horse's mouth - let's face it, catwalk shows in Milan, Paris, New York, London, etc. were not meant for parading around clothes that cost £10 a pop. What is good about this magazine is that you can read it and get inspiration from it, and tailor the information you've gleaned from it to what is accessible to you in the shops. In this respect, I think Elle magazine does very well even when its compared to other high fashion magazines like Vogue and InStyle. (Vogue's fashion seems more artistic but less "wearable" in real life. InStyle's fashion seems to me a bit plainer than Elle's and it doesn't offer as much unique fashion insight and advice as Elle does.)

The celeb interviews in Elle are not bad. In the May 2009 issue, they've interviewed Ethan Hawke (famous Hollywood actor), Kylie Minogue and Duffy. The magazine is obviously not intent on just treading on the lighter more positive issues about people, and they will often throw in at least a trickier question or two which won't elicit easy positive replies from the celeb. A little bit of dishing the dirt, but they do it in a suggestive and ironic way, not in a brash or direct way like the tabloids. I quite enjoyed reading the interviews, especially the one about Ethan Hawke - I used to fancy Ethan Hawke quite a bit when I was a teenager but after reading his interview, I'm not so sure anymore!

There is a section on books, music, arts scene and film. This is generally good, and took up 5 pages in the May 09 issue.

The Travel section, which took up 7 pages in the May issue, was about Laos and weekend-break locations in England. It was a good informative read as it contains a wealth of info about the place - including the types of activities you can get up to in Laos like renting a bike (for £1!) and exploring the beautiful countryside. The prices of the accomodation featured here are not expensive at all. One of the Laotian hotels featured here only charge £18 a night for a nice big room in a hotel set in amazing scenery. Of course the airfare to Laos is perhaps the most expensive if you were ever to make a trip there, costing about £600 to £700 on any major airline which flies there - it is a long-haul flight after all. Amongst the England weekend-break hotels featured, they cost anything between £85 to around £150 for a double room, plus they were recommended on the strength of their "fine dining and boutique-chic bedrooms", so they don't seem overly expensive for what they are.

The Makeup/Beauty section of the May issue took up about 11 pages. It is indeed full of makeup and beauty advice plus product reviews. Good if you are into this sort of thing (though I'm not).

The articles/stories in Elle are okay but not great - although they are not dull and they didn't put me off finishing reading them, they don't make for very funny or exciting reading. All in all, they took up 15 pages in the May 09 issue. One was an article about a survey which Elle recently put to 2000 women readers in order to find out how the perspectives and life priorities of women have changed over the last 10 years or so. There were 4 personal stories written by 4 different women writers, 3 of whom have books published recently or about to appear on the bookshelves. The stories are quite applicable to many women in today's society - especially those in their 20s, careerwomen (or those who get a decent allowance and don't have to work) and/or unmarried, and/or without kids. The writers seem to be sensible, intelligent career women who are a bit self-obsessed and have a soft-spot for high fashion - i.e. middle to upper class women commonly found in rich, developed Westernised countries. Its like stuff that Sarah Jessica Parker from Sex and the City would write, but definitely not as amusing as Sex and the City itself.

Then there was an article which took up 3 pages (one of which is just a full page picture of a very well-proportioned but slim top-naked model in a fashion shoot). This article was featured on the front cover of the mag as "Lose a stone in 3 weeks with fashion's diet doctor". Written by one of Elle's writers, she talks about her experience of going on a special diet prescribed for her by "fashion industry's best kept secret" - a diet "Guru" called Dr. Jeffrey Fine. He told her to eat nothing but citrus fruits and protein (meats) for 3 weeks, wine is optional, and gave her weekly vitamin injections and mineral supplements to take alongside the diet. She lost 14lb at the end of it and was so glad she achieved the goal which made her go on this special diet in the first place : the goal of being able to fit into her RM by Roland Mouret pencil skirt. All this, considering her normal weight normally fluctuates between "a small size 10 and a large size 12" - which is considered really normal for the average British woman. She seemed glad at the end when she finally managed to fit into the skirt, despite the experience of feeling a bit sick and starved for 3 weeks following this crazy (if not even slightly dangerous) diet! What's more, she said she was gonna stick with it (!) but was gonna try and introduce veg (excluding potatoes) into the diet gradually! I'm sure I read somewhere before that such high protein diets put a lot of pressure on the kidneys and could make you very sick. I think I'm now perhaps "old" and "wise" enough to take the things I read with a pinch of salt if needed, but I'm not sure if a younger, more impressionable woman or teenager reading such an article would be wise enough to laugh this article off. I think its irresponsible of Elle's editor to publish such a thing even if she only intended this as a joke or as light reading or perhaps even educational (as it can offer you some insight on what people on such diets go through or think like). My main concern about this is that some readers might actually think its okay to try such a diet out after reading about it, especially if they were compelled to buy the magazine in the first place after seeing the headline on the cover "Lose a stone in 3 weeks with fashion's diet doctor".

The Health section is scant and really only 1 page long. It is an interview with Hollywood actress Eva Mendes on *her* opinions on what keeping healthy involves. For her, a reward for finishing a project involves her ritual of "ordering a large pizza and inhaling it." She also adds that the pizza reward for finishing a project "must be accompanied by Coca-Cola, not Diet Coke. It's a reward for me." Of course, she goes to the gym -"I like to eat so I go to the gym as often as I can..." and she says "My motto is, if I eat, I must gym," but then later says that she finds gym very stressful and not a stress reliever - "I detest the gym - I get hives every time I step inside one." For stress relieving, she says she indulges in massages and facials, and tries to meditate but finds it "near impossible" to do even 5 minutes of it. Then she adds "I also have a therapist, who I love. Everybody should have a therapist." Hmm... great. I suppose we're all doomed if we want to follow her advice, cos not many of us can afford therapists. I suppose all I've garnered from her Health interview is that looking good and slim is paramount, even if going to the gym is something stressful and gives her hives, she feels obliged to go everytime she's eaten. When asked if she's comfortable in her own skin, she says her early 20s were important because that was when she started loving herself physically and internally. "I started celebrating everything I hated about myself, like my big mouth and buck teeth. I found such peace in finally being able to accept those things." I suppose her weight and appearance obsessed mindset is understandable considering she's a Hollywood star. But isn't it disturbing that this magazine only devotes 1 page out of the entire mag to Health and instead of giving us good advice on keeping healthy, it gives us an interview of a Hollywood star and *her* ideas of what's important in life and how she keeps healthy?? As if readers should look to her for health advice. I'm all for keeping healthy with moderate eating and moderate exercise and for learning to accept oneself warts and all, but I'm not sure if Eva Mendes's interview conveys a healthy attitude to health and eating that women should be emulating. Just reading about how she said she had to "inhale" her prize pizza after finishing a project, that is just something only a weight-obsessed person would say. I mean its not like she's overweight and really needs to cut down her eating for the sake of her health. Normal women, with normal weights, shouldn't need to go to that extreme.

On the last page of the magazine is the MADEMOISELLE column called "Confessions of an Elle Girl". I found myself sneering at her words all the way. Basically, she comes across as weight-obsessed, self-obsessed, superficial, bitchy... the fact that she actually has a boyfriend (called "Mountain Man") to write about is surprising because I wonder what the man sees in her. Perhaps he's only interested in sex or he's not seeking a deep connection with her, I don't know. She criticises his dress sense and exclaims in slight disgust when he offered to take her fly-fishing (though it seems she might have just gone along anyway because she comes across as liking the man *despite* all his "flaws")... I finished the page and then wondered if it was put there as some kind of subversive humour. Then I noticed it was titled "Confessions of an ELLE GIRL" and I became genuinely quite perturbed by the fact that it was touted as an article written by an "ELLE GIRL". What sort of person does the term "Elle Girl" refer to?

Is it someone who characterises what Elle magazine stands for?

Is it someone who represents the general audience at which Elle magazine targets itself?

Or is it just some woman who loves reading Elle magazine and hence calls herself an "Elle Girl"? (just like some Cosmopolitan readers who call themselves "Cosmo Girls")

On the whole, the standard of journalism in Elle is good and the language is direct. The humour is very dry and the overall tone of the articles and stories quite cynical and wry. I say there is dry humour in this magazine though I'm not sure if it was intended! Whether it was intended or not, I found myself snorting and chuckling incredulously at some of the things I read. I've now reached perhaps the most questionable aspect of this magazine. I'm not sure if the things written here are meant to be taken seriously because if they are, then the women writing them are seriously living on another planet. In any case, its articles like these which make me question the stance that Elle magazine has on women. Its not empowering, although too much empowerment can be a bad thing. But surely a lack of empowerment coupled with a disregard for good health in the name of fashion plus a self-obsessed, bitchy attitude cannot be considered good influence on young women of today.

Seriously though, I cannot recommend this magazine for anything other than its fashion pages and advice. Its Travel and Arts sections are good reads, but I don't think anyone would just buy Elle magazine for those.This magazine has been in circulation for more than 60 years and there is a good reason why its still going strong. NOT because of its articles, but because of its fashion coverage and fashion tips. If you want a lot of good fashion advice and inspiration on how to dress in the latest trends straight off the catwalk, if you want lots of makeup tips and learning about the latest makeup/beauty products, then Elle is really good for this (in my eyes, even better than Vogue or InStyle).