Love?

Giorgie and i popped into Dover Street Market yesterday to snoop round its subterranean Love In, which is set up in honour of the launch of stylist Katie Grand's new mag Love. less of a love in, more of a bed with expensive shit on it if you ask me. a consumers orgy. Loewe leather cushions sit plumped up on shiny D&G sheets that adorn the mattress of an iron bedstead wrapped in grimy black tape. all merch totting up to enough money to bail the country out of its economic crisis. still, quite fun, i guess, in a ludicrously lavish sort of way. Love magazines are stacked up all around said bed, and the effect is one of flagrant decadence and fuck-you luxury, which is quite like the mag itself in a way. A first flick shows it to be hyper, hyper glossy with a luxurious, weighty feel. i absolutley love the cover. such voluptuous milky white flesh exuding such confidence. this image of Beth Ditto and the ones in the feature inside remind me of the Opium adverts Sophie Dahl did all those years ago - soft, voluminous, sexual curves. it's less shocking to see second time round though, although just as sensual on the eye. makes you wonder why it's not done more regularly. inside the mag, after a tsunami of adverts, Katie's frank, unpretentious ed's letter is followed by an A-Z of things the Love creative team love (musicians, models and designers mostly). their choices seem by turns obvious, curious, hilarious and misguided. W is for walnuts, X for X-factor winner Alexandra Burke, Y for Yasmin le Bon, and Z for shoe designer Zanotti. Letter people are asked questions like who, what, and what love song do you love most, but its more about the images than the words i think and some answers seem a bit lacklustre - this is a launch issue after all, show some chutzpah people, goddammit! after the A-Z there are both written through and solely image profiles of 'names' including Courtney Love, Angelica Houston, Iggy Pop, Lilly Allen, Duffy, Pam Hogg, Kelly Brook and Kate Moss. each is the love object, in a creative or cultural way i guess you could say, of whoever has worked on their piece. there's something brilliantly unpretentious about this. the content isn't desperately trying to be new, edgy, esoteric or pointedly awkward like that of some magazines. It feels, at least at first glance, quite genuine, although i'm not sure how original that makes any of it, plus there's a danger of it trying to appeal to everyone, which may of course mean it pleases no one. but i think that their wide casting of the net is a canny move. i like the idea of hooking readers in with someone familiar to them and then introducing them to people they might not otherwise have heard of. for those who like the exclusivity of niche fashion mags though, hmmm. not many surprises, so 'nothing particularly new' would be my guess as to their reaction. for my part i'm enjoying it, visually at least... i have yet to really get into the meatier features (or the ones that seem that they might be) so for now, i'm reserving judgement. my Love letter is in saved drafts.