Ex-publisher advocates glossies debate "unhappy marriage"

Trevor White, former publisher of The Dubliner magazine, has called on Irish TV and filmmakers to consider making a documentary on the “unhappy marriage” between the editorial and advertising departments of a big glossy publication.
White said it would be “engrossing” to see a documentary about the struggle between two magazines such as Image and The Gloss competing in a small, hotly-contested market like Ireland where a recession should, by rights, only sustain one title.
Deputising for columnist Liam Fay in The Sunday Times yesterday, White said that RJ Cutter’s new movie, ‘The September Issue’, based on life at Anna Wintour’s Vogue magazine, put forward the opposite argument to ‘The Devil Wears Prada’.
By the end of ‘The September Issue’, White said, viewers could only conclude that the fashion industry is full of “sycophantic morons” and people who care about pretty blouses are blander than we suspected.
But White said the film’s director, RJ Cutler, clearly had another intention. He believes that the frock industry merits our attention far longer than the time it takes to say: “Your bum looks big in that”.
White believes the 90-minute film will do well at the Irish box-office where it will be popular with women, who, in the words of designer Paul Costelloe, “only feel confident if they are wearing a label” .
White said that in ‘The September Issue’ the power of advertisers is glossed over, leaving nothing more than a glorified press release for a magazine that wouldn’t admit to taking a release seriously.
He said the movie was made in 2007, just before the fortunes of print media took a nosedive. Ad pages in the September 2009 issue of Vogue were down by 36 per cent year-on-year.