Todd Cole/ASOS magazine

Above Elizabeth Olsen, on the cover of ASOS magazine, wears a MiH Aztec jacket, and an Elizabeth & James striped silk Ella blouse. She wears an ASOS long-sleeve Breton top inside.

ASOS—once better known as As Seen on Screen—has continued to grow in profile. Its latest magazine features actress Elizabeth Olsen on its cover, photographed by Todd Cole at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in New York, reportedly one of her favourite spots in the city.
   She is the younger sister of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, and was one of the break-out stars at the Sundance Film Festival 2011 for thriller Martha Marcy May Marlene, about a woman who chooses to leave a cult.
   Her new film, Red Lights, with Robert de Niro and Sigourney Weaver, débuts at this year’s Sundance, while Liberal Arts, with Zac Efron, was released this week. Her horror film Silent House opens March 9.
   ASOS has 18·5 million unique visitors per month, 7 million registered users, and 4 million active customers, according to its own data.

Bailey, copyright ©1965 by the Condé Nast Publications (UK)

BBC/Kudos

Compare the pair. Top Jean Shrimpton, as she appeared in Vogue shot by Bailey in 1965. Above Karen Gillan and Aneurin Barnard as Jean Shrimpton and David Bailey in a publicity shot for We’ll Take Manhattan, which aired last week on BBC4.

The visitor stats have been very clear: one of the most searched-terms at Lucire has been David Bailey and Jean Shrimpton over the last few days.
   Presumably, it’s due to BBC4’s We’ll Take Manhattan, a TV film about a ground-breaking New York shoot by David Bailey and his model and lover, Jean Shrimpton. The shoot defined, according to the programme, the 1960s.
   As previewed in Lucire, the BBC4 film starred Karen Gillan (Doctor Who) and Aneurin Barnard as the couple. While it took a little while to get going—it begins with the pair boarding a jet to head to New York, then goes into flashback—with the charged arguments between Bailey and Vogue fashion editor Lady Clare Rendlesham occupying a great deal of the action once the story gets back on track. The centre of the argument: that it’s the 1960s, that Bailey wants to catch more liveliness, and that the stuffy portraits shown in British Vogue—which had, of course, covered the Coronation the decade before with HM the Queen and aristocratic ladies-in-waiting—were a thing of the past.
   Of course it’s idealized, but it’s not too far from the truth when the film claims that Bailey and the Shrimp defined the decade.
   The forces had been coming in for a while, but perhaps not with the youthquake that the Bailey represented after national service was abolished in 1962 and there was plenty of youthful energy around Britain. Technological changes in the 1950s and the telephoto lens already meant fashion photographers were experimenting with more lively shots, and Vogue photographers such as Irving Penn, Norman Parkinson and Antony Armstrong-Jones (later Lord Snowdon) were capturing moments that the magazine’s readers would not have seen the decade before. While staged, they appeared to be casual moments, with the model seemingly living her life in the editorials.
   What Bailey did was take this into raw sexiness, tapping correctly into the Zeitgeist. Starting at British Vogue in July 1960, Bailey had in fact met Shrimpton while she was being shot for a cornflakes advertisement by Brian Duffy. And unlike the film, Bailey was actually very grateful for the gig and knew what British Vogue was: ‘When Vogue offered to pay me to photograph beautiful women all day I thought I was on a dream-boat.’
   Gillan captures the innocent country girl that Shrimpton was at that point, which makes the transformation into ’60s sex icon all the more poignant. Never mind posh locations with Bailey: the Shrimp was on the floor, legs akimbo, complete with teddy bear or another prop. Skirts got shorter, progressively so till 1966, and Jean Shrimpton and her long legs modelled plenty in the decade. It might not be inaccurate to say that Shrimpton was the 1960s supermodel, along with Twiggy—certainly they were two of the most recognized women in Britain.
   Vogue had gone from being a magazine read by the well-to-do lady to one that reached the masses—and for the first time, its pages even became pin-ups.
   Bailey has remained in the public eye with his ongoing work, though Shrimpton has opted for a quieter life, running a country hotel. Both had reportedly approved of the script, which showed them in a positive light—though given Shrimpton’s silence over the years, we’re guessing it must have had some verisimilitude for her to give it the nod.
   There were some glaring mistakes—a 2005 Chevrolet taxi zooms by in a 1962 scene in New York—and Mad Men it was not, neither in feel nor in execution. Where Kudos was once known for lavish productions—Life on Mars springs to mind—some corners felt cut, probably thanks to the recession and the difficulty of securing locations that still looked “’sixties enough” in New York. It lacked the pace of another winter BBC film around this time last year: Eric and Ernie, covering the pre-fame period of Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise.
   But, on the other hand, period Vogue covers were faithfully re-created, the wardrobe department did extremely well securing period costumes, and Frances Barber stole the show with her portrayal of Vogue editor-in-chief Diana Vreeland in the New York scenes. And it summed up the period well: while a telemovie will take liberties with history, there was no denying that Bailey and Shrimpton were influential and very deserving subjects.—Jack Yan, Publisher

Our correspondent Joanna Mroczkowska has sent us some images from Netherlands-based Polish designer André Lisowski, one of the men behind the Delikatessen label. The latest look book for spring–summer 2012 features Polish model Greg Nawrat, the face of the Gucci spring–summer 2012 campaign.
   Delikatessen, co-founded by Stephen Hartog, aims to combine old-world craft and modern design. As the company itself states, ‘We forget products valued on status but instead appreciate those where the time, thought and true commitment are put into their development. We are modern artisans.’

Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week

   While Maurice Luckett is in Berlin shooting Fashion Week, we stumbled across this image of Karolína Kurková and Eva Padberg from the official stash.
   On the main part of the Lucire site, Stanley Moss takes in the healing waters of the Hacienda Hot Springs Inn, a mere two hours from Los Angeles.
   We wish all our readers a happy and prosperous New Year!

How appropriate that the 2,000th entry in the ‘Insider’ section of the Lucire website would be devoted to something very important to the internet.
   On January 24, the US will vote on internet censorship, despite the opposition of the majority of American citizens, with the Protect-IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in Congress.
   It’s little wonder that many Americans hold their Congress in such low esteem—when their Representatives do nothing that their title requires of them.
   It stifles the First Amendment: everyday Americans who are engaging in free speech who aren’t infringing copyright might still find their websites taken down.
   Ever film something innocently on your cellphone that has some music in the background? You could be found guilty, too—and face up to five years in prison.

Lawmakers don’t get it: the US joins Iran, China and North Korea
Why should a publication HQed in New Zealand care? It affects non-American websites, too, because it potentially blocks us from being seen by the American public. If you publish in English, there’s a fairly good chance the largest number of your readers will be American. If you have a site e-tailing products, you could well have a lot of US buyers.
   Already, New Zealand has seen amendments to our Copyright Act that have come thanks to pressure from American lobbyists. Amendments which already saw the most ridiculous debates in Parliament where one MP equated the internet to the fictional Skynet of the Terminator films. Amendments which our Prime Minister was against before he was for. In both major parties’ quest to appease foreign groups ahead of the voter, “guilt by accusation” is now part of New Zealand law.
   While President Obama has come out against the bills—though the White House’s words have been vague—this is no time to be complacent. The copyright amendments resurfaced in New Zealand in largely the same form. The bills have not gone away. Americans need to keep the pressure on their politicians to express how they all feel.
   Right now, American lawmakers want to put the entertainment lobby ahead of their own voters, by seeking to pass legislation that puts the US on the same playing-field as Iran, China and North Korea.

We believe in a fair go
We’re not against the idea of copyright, at least not the form that existed when we first started in the publishing business. In fact, we rely on copyright as our means of protecting our and our contributors’ authorship. But we are against this bill in the US.
   Copyright disputes should happen with due process. While we find ourselves on the side of the complainant in most cases, we believe that those who infringe copyright should have an opportunity to remove affected works, or offer an explanation. We believe in the common law right that there is a presumption of innocence. We believe in a world where people have a fair and equal access to justice.
   However, this bill goes further. A mere accusation of an infringing link posted by users can block a website to Americans.
   Lawmakers have defended the bill by saying it protects copyright, but it won’t. Those who still want to share copyrighted content will do so—simply by typing the IP address of the site into their browsers.
   The laws can remove any defence an innocent web publisher might have. Governments and corporations can potentially take down any website, creating new liabilities on the internet. As this is one of the areas of growth in many countries, the US included, it has the potential to harm economies.

Act now: it’s that important
You can read more here: it’s a simple guide to the proposed laws, explained far better than I could. The SOPA Strike website also has a good summary.
   We’re urging the 38 per cent of our readers in the US to stand up for your rights. Write to your local Representative or Senator, and let them know that you do not support these bills. If you use the internet, this will affect you. If you have never involved yourself in the passing of a bill before, this is important enough to warrant your attention for the first time.—Jack Yan, Publisher

Lucire’s coverage of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Tokyo is online today in the main part of the website. Not content with bringing back the event after a cancellation earlier in 2011 due to the earthquake and tsunami, peripheral events, including an international edition of Fashion’s Night Out with all 17 Vogue editors, made sure that the event made big headlines.
   In addition, the Japan Fashion Week Organization will run Tokyo Fashion Week in Italy at the Pitti Immagine Uomo exhibition from January 10. This exhibition is for menswear. This is a business-to-business event, not open to the public.
   Japanese designers continue to make a splash globally. Featured designers from Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Tokyo will collaborate and showcase as Leather Japan 2012 at New York Fashion Week. The presentation event will be held on February 13; an exhibition will follow at the Nexus showroom in New York from February 14 to 16.
   It’s official: Giuseppe Mascoli’s new London burger joint, the Bukowski Grill, is receiving guests. Well worth an expedition to Shoreditch, a quarter of the city not often seen by tourists. These burger concoctions offer a reasonable alternative to the snobby high-end fare at downtown eateries, and the people-watching can’t be beat.
   We’ve also seen in 2012 with our review of the BMW X5, part one of our Vancouver Fashion Week coverage, and new original photographs and layout for our earlier Mini Cooper D road test.—Yuka Murai, and Stanley Moss, Travel Editor

TF1
Above Delphine Wespiser soon after being crowned as Miss France. Our article on her win was the most-read this year.

Last year, quite a few readers were interested in the most visited news articles on the Lucire website. This excludes the features we have on the main part of the site. Nevertheless, it gives us a fair idea of what people were interested in during 2011.
   Our most popular article of 2011 was about the new Miss France, Delphine Wespiser. It might have helped that Lucire was the first English-language publication to break the news, though traditionally we’ve noticed there has always been a healthy interest in Miss France.
   Our Honor Dillon article was next. This was a 2010 piece, but with Dillon marrying fiancé Dan Carter earlier this year, people were curious. The fact Dillon was modelling underwear will have prompted some extra searches that we didn’t anticipate.
   Unsurprisingly, given how much coverage this got at the time, Scarlett Johansson gets into third place with our story on her modelling for Moët & Chandon. In fact, each time we run a story on Johansson, there’s a good amount of public interest.
   The wedding of HSH Prince Albert and Charlene Wittstock gave royal-watchers their second major celebration of the year, after HRH Prince William and Catherine Middleton. But, with more media covering the British event, Lucire netted a slightly larger share of the Monaco one to get it into fourth place.
   And in fifth, Keira Knightley’s Coco Mademoiselle campaign got plenty of fashionistas and fans popping by, initially to get a preview.
   Stories on Vanessa Paradis, Miss New Zealand 2011 Priyani Puketapu, Brooklyn Decker, Bar Refaeli and Miss Prestige National 2012 Christelle Roca take us to 10th place.
   For actual search terms, the patterns were similar, though we can add Princess Catherine or the Duchess of Cambridge, Miss Nationale 2011 Barbara Morel, Aishwarya Rai, David Bailey and Jennifer Garner into the mix.
   Any bets from our readers on the top celebrities of 2012?

In another media “he said, she said”, Daniel Craig has denied ever calling the Kardashians ‘idiots’, in a brief red-carpet Q&A with our colleagues at ITN.
   The actor, promoting the remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, wonders how he could have ever given them a label, considering he has never seen their TV show.
   ‘I haven’t read this article, so I can’t comment about it … I’ve never seen The Kardashians, so I actually don’t know how I could have done that,’ he said.
   The principal online reference we could find to the alleged quotation was a promotional entry in British Vogue’s website, publicizing the January 2012 issue of British GQ.
   ‘Craig was equally reluctant to talk about married life—citing the Kardashians as an example of the reality show tell-all culture that he considers his approach the antithesis of.
   ‘“Look, I’m in love,” he told GQ flatly. “I’m very happy. And that is as far as I’m prepared to go. Life is long, life goes wrong, and I don’t want to say something now that might be thrown back later … Ultimately, people are saying, “Give it six months”. Well, guess what? I’m not responding. Life is long and I am hopefully in this for the long run … If you sell it off, it’s gone. It’s precious. It’s worth more than money. You can’t buy your privacy back … Look at the Kardashians, they’re worth millions. Millions! You see that and you think, “What, you mean all I have to do is behave like a f***ing idiot on television and then you’ll pay me millions?”’
   The story made its rounds in the media. In the overwhelming majority of cases, Craig’s quotation was published before the GQ interview was released, with media citing it as though they had read it. Media also gave their take on it, which, based on our analysis, wasn’t what Craig actually stated.
   Based solely on the excerpt above, Craig simply extrapolated an idea on what he would do from the Kardashians’ desire to flaunt their lives publicly.
   At no point did he call the Kardashians ‘idiots’.
   However, it’s tempting to connect Craig’s analysis with a criticism of the Kardashians—simply because one sentence followed another. It’s often done by media, probably even by us (errare est humanum), because people want to find justifications for what they read or hear.
   Nevertheless, there are now claims the Kardashian family expects an apology, according to the tabloid press. If true, one would think that, as the frequent subject of many misquotes themselves, they would be more insightful. Or, for that matter, as public figures, one should be able to rise above it—or, until they hear it from Craig directly, understand that the media are a filter.
   Welcome to the world of 24-hour news and round-the-clock gossip—and those celebrities that seem so easily baited by them.

TF1

Top Delphine Wespiser with her first words upon being crowned as Miss France: ‘36-37’, the number for France’s Téléthon. Above Christelle Roca, Miss Prestige National 2012, crowed at Divonnes-les-Bains in Ain.

While Sunday was a record day for traffic this year at the Lucire website, thanks to the Miss France pageant, Monday remained relatively healthy thanks to the rival Miss Prestige National, founded by Geneviève de Fontenay.
   But it’s interesting to note just how much of the public interest each of the pageants has.
   It is unfair to give direct comparisons between the two. Miss France enjoys a live telecast in France and public voting from the TV audience. Miss Prestige National might make French news, but lacks the terrestrial network backing of its rival. Early photographs of both Delphine Wespiser and Christelle Roca were passable and fuzzy respectively, making it hard to give the second pageant the sort of visual prestige that its name implies in this publication.
   So it is no surprise when I say that for both the 2011 and 2012 pageants, more people read our articles about the Miss France winner.
   However, the gap was much larger this year in terms of reader numbers.
   It’s our policy not to give out exact reader numbers—plus they are constantly changing for these particular articles anyway—but the ratio between readers of the Miss France and Miss Nationale 2011 pieces is currently 2·7. It would have been roughly the same in December 2010.
   Through the past 12 months, Miss France 2011 Laury Thilleman has enjoyed more press than Miss Nationale 2011 Barbara Morel, though some media have grouped the two together in articles. Morel herself became better known for her personal relationship with basketballer Tony Parker, former husband of actress Eva Longoria, more than making up for any lost profile.
   However, the 2012 pageants have the ratio at 8·6. In other words, nearly nine times as many people were interested in Miss France as than were interested in Miss Prestige National. Other than the home page and sectional pages in Lucire’s online edition, no other web page has had as many readers in the past few years.
   One factor at play was that this year, we had the Miss France 2012 results as they came to hand through the wire services, whereas last year, there was a delay. But even halving the ratio—and that is being particularly generous to the newer pageant—we are still looking at 4·3.
   These stats might help the organizers of the newer pageant look at why they haven’t done as well for the 2012 edition.
   One logical place to lay blame is the eleventh-hour name change. Until November 2011, and despite a trade mark opposition, de Fontenay had stayed firm and refused to change the name of the pageant. It was only when the legal noises got too loud, both from Miss France owner Endemol and prior Miss Nationale trade mark registrant Michel le Parmentier, that the organizers, sans Mme de Fontenay, hurriedly retitled their pageant.
   It’s also not helped by non-Francophones searching for the wrong name. Based on searches in Duck Duck Go, Google and other search engines, Miss Prestige Nationale (with the adjective in the feminine form) outnumbered the correct Miss Prestige National here, which would have limited the number of hits we had for the search term. Granted, many of our readers would not have been French—having said that, on Sunday and Monday, we noticed that there was a nice jump from l’Héxagone.
   One big difference may be down to the absence of Geneviève de Fontenay herself, who, in order to save the pageant, stepped down. Endemol had cited a non-compete clause that prohibits la dame au chapeau from running a rival pageant until December 2013. Much of the news labelled la guerre de Miss was fuelled by interest in de Fontenay, herself an iconic figure in France thanks to her decades-long involvement in the original Miss France. The committee that runs Miss Prestige National has no high-profile head that has caught the public’s imagination.
   Even if you look at a non-French publication like Lucire, much of the coverage is tied to de Fontenay. Without the “battle of the pageants”, Miss Nationale and its successor would not have had the same level of coverage. The public enjoys a story that has a personality, and who better than a pageant director who felt so embittered with the direction of the one she sold that on principle she began another? You almost want to see the underdog win.
   It is hard to say how 2012 will pan out for the newer pageant. Given the sort of TV audiences Miss France commands—typically in the region of a 40 per cent share—the French have quite the appetite for beauty pageants. There is, in other words, plenty of room for two without there being conflict, just as Miss World and Miss Universe occupy the same space in countries as small as New Zealand. They coexist amicably most of the time.
   France can cope with two, but it seems Miss Prestige National needs a figurehead, perhaps its own Sylvie Tellier (a former Miss France now heading the senior pageant) to be its face, with the endorsement of de Fontenay.
   When the 2013 pageant rolls around again, there can be another media frenzy.—Jack Yan, Publisher