Yety Akinola
Thursday October 22 saw the Manchester Fashion Network host the Condenast.com media event. The night brimmed with eager anticipation as heavy hitters Dolly Jones from Vogue.com, Natasha Aitken from Glamour.com and Fashion and Lifestyle Editor, Jamie Millar from GQ.com made the pilgrimage up North to answer Manchester’s burning questions.
After a glass of wine (or two) the questions were fired at the panellists. Starting off slowly at first, the atmosphere soon picked up, as an eager student inquired intensively about the mystery of gaining that coveted fashion internship. (Call the desired publications switchboard FIRST and ask who to email, send your CV with covering letter and check and recheck the spelling).
We learnt a little about Dolly Jones’ background: she graduated from the University of Manchester before gaining experience at Vogue, before being offered a job at Vogue after interviewing Alexander Shulman, for her Masters class. With a history like that, we were all ears for her advice. My favourite piece of the night: her tale of a intern she worked with, who told her superior, “I didn’t come to Vogue to make cups of tea” when told where the teabags were, on their first day. She quickly added, “that girl doesn’t have a job now.”
Designers were urged to keep their product offerings original, not to send a general press release and most importantly to know who to send their products to, if they wanted online exposure. Natasha added, “cakes go down very well in my office.”
Then the ultimate question: if the panellists had the choice, would they choose to edit the online or print magazine? Jamie bravely admitted the hefty print paycheque would lure him to the other side, while the ladies kept true to their love for the internet. The online magazine is indeed a big part of the future, however a shoot shot by Testino, modelled by Miss Moss and styled by Grace Coddington will always imitate art better on paper and not on a screen.
Fashion Editor Leah Armstrong’s highlights of the Meet the Media event-
The key strength of the Meet the Media event was they way in which it made accessible those people who are often thought of as enigmatic and purely ideational creatures- the fashion editors. There were two main points I brought away from the evening:
1) The panel dispelled the impression many have of the world of online journalism locked in a fierce battle to topple over the world of print journalism. By contrast, Dolly Jones said that the magazine remained extremely important to her online product, since it was the ‘brand’ which gave her website its reputation. Jamie Millar also said that he didn’t feel that the two aspects of journalism were in competition- that they served different purposes, different audiences and that there was an equal need for both.
2) If you want to get into journalism, fashion or otherwise, you better be prepared to pack your bags for the big smoke. There was an unmistakeable sense that the three had travelled up North, like Missionaries, to spread the word, reinforcing the fact that the power in journalism lies in London.
