It’s that time of year again — when backyard barbeques and back-to-school shopping take precedence and that beach body you’ve been talking about developing can take a back seat until spring.
For the magazine enthusiasts, it’s also the time when publishers put out their Brittannica-thick September fashion issues, and women of all shapes and sizes take up the dangerous, Jenga-like sport of stacking them on their coffee tables.
Yet, as has been the case the last couple years, the global advertising slump and economic recession appear to have hit these issues hard. And the issues — once thought invincible — are becoming as thin as the models who inhabit them.
TheWrap took to the newsstand to scour all of the major fashion titles – all 3,752 pages of them — to find out the determine the biggest winners and losers of the fall fashion magazine season.
And, yes, we actually weighed them, too. As expected, the difference between 2009 and 2008 is significant; last year, the magazines weighed in at more than 21 pounds — this year just 15. (See chart below.)
There was one bright spot, however. Time Inc.'s In Style actually managed to up its page count (514) by 28 pages over last year — gaining a 10th of a pound in total weight.
Conde Nast's W lost the most pages — 226 in fact — between this year and last, dropping roughly 170 ad pages and more than a pound and a half in the process.
Vogue didn't fare much better, shedding 214 total pages — 130 of those ads — and 1.4 pounds in overall weight.
Here's how it looked back in 2008:
