"Strictly speaking, Details is not really a fashion magazine.
After all, who dares to call itself a mens’ fashion magazine, given that the fashion market for men is so limited? The best performing men’s magazines are those that deal with current affairs, business, automobiles and sports. Fashion is often treated as a side-dish in men’s mags, like in Men’s Health. Even Men’s Vogue steers clear of men’s fashion issues, preferring pages that are not fashion-driven, but personality or celebrity-driven. Some mags don’t even bother to market themselves as men’s fashion but for the benefit of earning ad dollars from both menswear and womenswear brands, they make it known that they do men’s fashion, e.g. i-D and Surface. So far, Ac.Stet can only count upon “T” The New York Times Style Magazine as doing men’s fashion really really well, but even so, the Men’s Style edition comes out half-yearly."
"Having said that, Ac.Stet must say that the layout and order of the fashion pages in Details are a study in how a men’s mag should be put together. To the uneducated eye, the mish-mash of the fashion pages – some here, some there, but never grouped together the way most men’s magazines do it for the sake of this strange concept called “organization” and “categorization” – seemed haphazard and all-over-the-place.
But, to those in the know, such pagination is a brilliant exercise in educating men – especially those who either don’t understand fashion or has no patience for it – about the ways of fashion.
This is how Details orders its fashion features:
It usually begins with the style column in “Know + Tell” section starting on Page 66, following that are feature-feature-feature, and then another story on style (the badly written “Lose The Peter Pan Haircut”) on Page 112, and then sandwiched by feature-feature-feature, next comes “The New American Bespoke” on Page 122, again feature-feature, and then more fashion product spreads in “The Details” Page 147, story-story-story, and then even more product spreads in “The Best Suits In The World” Page 170, and then again cover-story-story-story, and then like a jack-in-the-box, more fashion spreads in “How To Wear A Vest” on Page 184, and “Outsider” following that.
This way, like coaxing a wayward child to eat his green veggies, you mix it up with his favorite foods so that he laps up the whole damn bowl. Fashion information gets absorbed into the system one way or another. See? Simple but brilliant. But not many magazine editors get it.
Speaking of fashion stories, the “The New American Bespoke” feature on bespoke and made-to-measure (MTM) clothing is one of the finest articles on tailoring Ac.Stet has ever come across."
from blogger Acrylic Stetson
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