THE DAY YVES STOLE THE JEWELS
British-born magazine editor Maggie Alderson didn't flinch when media tycoon Rupert Murdoch's nephew announced he was launching the Australian edition of marie claire, making a multi-million dollar thrust into the women's magazine market.
Small, blonde, and cool, the imported Maggie, who edited the glossy Mode for Murdoch's arch-rival, billionaire Kerry Packer, shrugged: 'Size doesn't matter. Quality is what counts.' If anybody was going to go under in the tussle for $10 m. worth of annual advertising, it wasn't going to be Mode.
Maggie Alderson comes across as refreshingly candid in a bitchy, fickle magazine world that has to pay $28,350 for an inside cover; and where the fashion and cosmetic industries call a tune that editors dance to; often just to survive. A few weeks earlier a powerful Sydney media director, heralding the launch of marie claire, had wondered if the international magazine's arrival on Australian news-stands might mean the final "nail in the coffin" for Mode.
Brushing back her blonde locks, the diminutive Alderson says: 'We have a much more mature readership than marie claire. Mode is the only uniquely Australian fashion magazine. But we are not just fashion - we use stories from top writers in New York, London and Los Angeles, looking at things in depth.'
And the magazine delights in being controversial...
On 'the dandy look', so big in the European collections and embraced by Australians: 'It died a horrible death in Australia, where such buttoned-up velvet and brocade pomposity looked simply ridiculous,' wrote Maggie.
On 'knock-offs', street-language term for Australian manufacturers slavishly copying collections launched in New York or London: 'It cannot be denied that in order to satisfy our hunger for the new, some Australian manufacturers and retailers (you can't in all honesty call them designers) are guilty of bare-faced copying.'
She adds: 'But it's no worse in Australia than it is anywhere else in the world.'
She goes on: 'Photographer Robert Maplethorpe once went to dinner with Yves Saint Laurent, wearing jewellery he had made himself. He saw the next Saint Laurent collection - and there was his jewellery. So nothing is sacred!'
Maggie had just come down from the 17th.floor of her hotel on an interstate trip to compere a fashion show, admitting she'd had cold pizza for breakfast ('I had it last night and it was too good to waste'), ready to talk about her role in what a mere male might call the lipstick war.
Does it all matter?
She smiles tolerantly. A reader, she said, had just written to her about Mode's last issue: "It was the first time a fashion magazine has made my heart beat faster.." 'I will treasure that,' said Maggie, toying with tropical fruit to perhaps balance the pizza. 'But I know what you mean, when there are people starving or being killed in Bosnia.
'You must remember that fashion is a huge global industry; it employs millions of people around the world. It is an expression of values, of mores of cultures; of a decade, a year, or a moment.'
Maggie took over as editor 16 months after a trip to Dublin with the Australian Wallabies rugby union team caused her to fall in love with Australians and the country.
Fashion-candid, she confesses to hoarding old clothes - particularly shoes she's had for 20 years - that remind her of good times when they were worn. 'They demonstrate to me that I have bought well; that I have chosen something of quality and style that lasts.' This morning she has on her "lucky' ear-rings. Something good always happens when she wears them.
'I am annoyed with myself if I buy something and only wear it twice; I think I've failed.' She began her fascination with fashion when she was a little girl, admiring what medieval and Victorian women wore in the books she was given. Working as an executive on mass-circulation "unisex" magazines like You in London, she went after newspaper-style exclusives.
Today the magazine cover is the exclusive. With a readership of 151,000 in the 25-40 age group she is delighted to snare Elle Macpherson to smile out to the potential reader, (sometimes to be frustratingly trumped by Vogue giving away free lipsticks). But why Elle? 'Women are fascinated by her because she's an Australian success story; she's an idea. That doesn't mean a woman of 40 wants to look like her. She just wants her mood, her surroundings, her confidence.'
Do men buy Mode? (In the sometimes puzzling appeal to the sexes there's a full-page ad. in one of her issues with a model wearing a handbag where her bra should be; a model being somewhat carelessly dressed by a man. 'I do understand we have quite a large male readership; some say a large gay readership, but that's anecdotal. I try and appeal to intelligent people, male or female.'
And she's determined to stay honest. 'We recently fell into the fashion trap of getting involved in the 50s revival. I looked at what we had done when the magazine came out and wished we hadn't done it. The 50s dress doesn't work for grown-up women. Forget it!'
Like fellow editors of glossies she is no stranger to being pressured by her advertising people to be "kind" to big spending clients. 'But I come from a newspaper background where integrity is important. If somebody who doesn't advertise with us makes a great product it still goes into the magazine.'
