Monday, August 5, 2013

EVA CHEN: LUCKY MAGAZINE'S NEW EDITOR IN CHIEF


News articles are identifying Eva as the first Asian-American editor-in-chief of a Conde Nast magazine. First, I don't remember where that pic came from.  I tried to find it again and it just got lost in the google abyss. Second, as much as I would rather Eva was praised for her social media savvy (45K instagram followers and 47K twitter followers*) before her Asian-ness, in the end I don't really care.  It takes a small miracle to amass that many followers - I don't care if they're mostly the same people.  I can barely cut and paste my blog links onto a Tweet. 

As always, I'm happy to hear about Asians who ditch the premed/law school course to go with what makes them happy, especially when they're already most of the way through Johns Hopkins, which isn't exactly known for their fashion and design program. 

Eva seems to be an interesting choice to head a print magazine.  I wonder what she's going to bring to the party. My personal theory on people who can successfully gain thousands of followers through tools like Twitter is that they have the gift of knowing what people want, and then giving it to them.  Over and over again.  It's like having your finger on the pulse of the human psyche, and knowing what makes that pulse jump.

Even though Lucky has been in a slump, I've always liked it, since it didn't subject me to pictures of models holding barbells in spandex to encourage me to go on a diet. It didn't care about my eating or exercise habits.  It didn't oversell me on sex.  It always seemed to be slightly off from the other mags, a little bit unusual in their style recommendations which were sometimes based on editor's personal style.  It showed you that fashion didn't have to be a glossy sheet of perfection by draping clothes all over models.  Instead, they used real people to encourage readers to make their own style choices.  And there was never only one.

I have a feeling the changes won't be dramatic, but will be slow and steady, and the overall makeover will be a quiet revolution.  I will wait and see. 

* Note to self: follow Eva on Twitter.

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