vogue material

Last week I read an article [which can be found here] which gave column inches to the fact that Adele's Vogue cover was somewhat a failure. The British Vogue editor, Alexandra Schulman commented "Adele is the most popular women in the world, but one of the worst sellers we've ever had". It's true that Adele, with her beautiful songs, husky voice and amazing talent, as well as down to earth personality, is one of the worlds most wonderful celebrities. But pop her on the cover of Vogue and everyone changes their minds. 

While a whole host of women worldwide may connect with her and associate with her on a multitude of levels, maybe the average Vogue woman (and man for that matter) just don't get on board with the Adele bandwagon. Lets look at this objectively; Vogue is a fashion magazine and there is minimal reference to fashion on the cover. While the close up shot is absolutely stunning, there isn't much in the way of fashion to entice the eyes. 

As Schulman said herself, "Music stars haven't sold well at all". For me very few music stars go hand in hand with fashion. And while her music has a cool, of the moment vibe, the Vogue cover doesn't currently come with free i-pod pre-loaded with Adele tracks for consumers to associate with. 

And to be honest I think the pre-conceived notion of what a Vogue cover should be and for that matter who should grace its page, is a very powerful thing. Adele is not your average fashion icon; she isn't a size zero and she doesn't have the typical model look. So I would have to speculate that the fashion industry just isn't ready for such an average women, representative of more British women than any model, to grace the front cover of such an iconic fashion publication. 

While the industry continually battles to make steps forward, moving away from size zero hooplas, numbers speaker louder than pictures in this case.