Who it is for: POP is a fine art and fashion based magazine that is mainly aimed at young and middle aged artists, designers and other professionals involved in the fashion industry such as photographers.
Price: £6.00
Consists of: Recent collaborations between artists/designers, fine art, fashion photography, informative "POP Essays".
Advertisements: Prada, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Dior, Gucci, Giorgio Armani, Balenciaga, Yves Saint Laurent, Salvatore Ferragamo, Tod's, Céline, DKNY, Stella McCartney, Zadig & Volatire, Iceberg, Paul Smith, Margaret Howell, Van Cleef & Arpels.
The magazine mainly consists of fashion clothing advertisements; occasionally there are adverts for footwear, jewellery and accessories such as bags and scarves.
Feature Articles:
Towards a Redefinition of the Lady
Georgia Jagger by Gillian Wearing
Marina Abramović: An Artist Should not Make Himself into an Idol
Gaia Repossi & friends by Karen Knorr
Amy Winehouse remembered by Scott King
Regular Columns: There aren't any regular columns as such, but each POP magazine is focused around a theme. For this issue, the subject was a "POP Lady" which featured fashion photography and essays centred around the "Lady" and how the term is being redefined.
Article Review
POP ESSAY: LADIES, BAGS AND LADY CHAVS
Words: Dr Sarah Churchwell
This essay was written with the theme of the social title "lady" in mind and how it is coming back into fashion thanks to recent trends (pencil skirts and the return of Dior's "New Look" style clothing) and television series like "Mad Men". The article goes on to explore many different aspects of the lady; her taste, social class and status. Churchwell explains how books popular from around 1850 until the 1950's were manuals that instructed women how to be ladylike:
"We feel an involuntary sense of incongruity, when we see a noisy, bold girl, it is so contrary to the model which we have formed in our minds of the female character."
How to be a Lady: A Book for Girls by Harvey Newcomb
Nowadays, a lady is defined more by her taste than her manners, as Churchwell puts it: "I trust that Harvey has gone to his just reward and is spending eternity being told...to shut the hell up, just as he spent his life telling innocent young women." The western culture has spread all over the world and the newly rich in countries such as China want to show that they have wealth and power. Churchwell argues that this is shown through taste and the ability to discriminate, not by coveting an item just because the elite has it. As soon as this item becomes attainable, it loses it's desirability. Her example of this is the Burberry check and it's association with "chavs".
"This is where ladylike and taste converge: being a lady is about seeming unattainable."
Dr Sarah Churchwell
I enjoyed reading this article because it explored a variety of sources ranging from book extracts to current issues and examples of the lady in fashion trends and media. The article was also thought provoking and it inspires you to research books like the one written by Harvey Newcomb to see what women were once told to act like and to watch Mad Men for a contrasting view of a "lady". There are no pictures in the article but I don't think this takes anything away from it; they would only serve as a distraction from the detail in the essay.
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