blowing the cover

>> The 2011 results are in: Sarah Jessica Parker, Heidi Klum, and Jennifer Aniston regularly and reliably pulled in the top sales at the newsstand, and Mila Kunis was the year's breakout cover star with some of the best-selling issues across titles. While the biggest-drawing names may not come as a surprise, here's what does: the inconsistent ability of some stars to bring in sales — Gwyneth Paltrow, Justin Timberlake, Lady Gaga, and Emma Stone all had some of the best and worst performing covers of the year. Click through to see who else had cover hits and misses in 2011, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations and Rapid Report.

>> Five of the original supermodels — Naomi Campbell, Helena Christensen, Yasmin Le Bon, Cindy Crawford, and Eva Herzigova — teamed up with Duran Duran in June to shoot the music video for the band's upcoming single, "Girl Panic!" . . . and the December 2011 issue of Harper's Bazaar UK has a first look.

As Duran Duran keyboardist Nick Rhodes explained of the project, "Harper's had approached us about collaborating with the magazine on something really special when the new album came out. I’d had this crazy idea for a video for the song 'Girl Panic!', that looked fantastic on paper, but that I thought in reality would be impossible to pull off. The idea was to re-create a day in the life of the band, with five of the world’s greatest supermodels playing all of us. Lucy [Yeomans, editor of Harper's Bazaar UK] loved the idea of doing a cover shoot within the video itself — and so it all began."

On the cover, the five supers wear black Dolce & Gabbana corsets — designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana were also on set for the shoot — and then inside, transform into Duran Duran band members, with Campbell playing lead singer Simon Le Bon.

The "Girl Panic!" video, which was directed by Jonas Ackerlund — who also did Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" and "Telephone" music videos — is expected to be serialized virally online before premiering in whole later this year. See the first, below.

>> V magazine collaborated with Carine Roitfeld on its first model covers in two years. The issue, on newsstands Nov. 8, featured four covers with two models apiece, styled by Roitfeld and photographed by Terry Richardson: Candice Swanepoel and Joan Smalls; Daphne Groeneveld and Saskia de Brauw; Sui He and Hanaa Ben Abdesslem, and Bambi Northwood-Blyth and Lindsey Wixson.

“It’s a big moment of change in fashion. In some cases, you feel like it’s the end of an era. I have been feeling this with cover subjects, and especially models,” Roitfeld explained. “These eight girls are unique, not one is like the other. Candice is the only blonde and blue-eyed of this new generation of supermodels. Joan is black, Sui He is Asian, Hanaa is North African. It’s their diversity that makes each of them, to me, truly modern. They bring a new energy to fashion.” The magazine plans to celebrate the issue on Sunday with a Halloween party at the gay nightclub Escuelita, hosted by Richardson, Swanepoel, Smalls, Northwood-Blyth and He.

>> "I feel the men's magazines lack energy. Everything feels so affected and fey and not real somehow," Ashley Heath, Arena Homme+ editorial director, proclaims. "These new covers are just an attempt to do something a bit different and eye-catching on the newsstand."

The magazine's two Fall 2011 covers — the issue hits newsstands tomorrow — are a hint at the 30-page portfolio inside, which David Sims shot, employing his friends, assistants, and models who caught his eye. "[The covers] come from this quite raw, punky, digital space," Heath explains. "I feel there's more reality in David playing about with shapes and colors and cheap computer effects — deconstructing fashion photography if you like — than there is in the status quo . . . You look at a painter like [Gerhard] Richter and how brutal he is; he'll switch from a beautiful canvas to thinking, 'How can I do the total opposite of that?' I think there's an element of that with David Sims's new work. He's handing in stunning fashion images to Grace Coddington [at Vogue], then working on playful, experimental stuff for Arena Homme+."

>> Style.com's new magazine, Style.com/Print launches next Monday, Oct. 31. Meant to be a distillation of the Spring 2012 shows which ended earlier this month, the magazine, Eric Wilson writes, "is a surprisingly effective product, one that reads with a swiftness that is not unlike the experience of clicking through multiple screens at a time. The first 100 pages can be read in five minutes."

“We wanted to give the reader a sense of what it is like to go through the journey of the shows, from New York to London to Milan to Paris,” said Dirk Standen, the editor of Style.com.

Inside, there's a profile of Proenza Schouler in which Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough talk expansion plans: "We want to create easier everyday stuff, like jeans and a collection of more wearable shoes." Theo Wenner followed Lindsey Wixson (who appears on the magazine's cover) from her home in Wichita, KS, through the month of shows, and then back home again for a 27-page portfolio. There's a Q&A with Azzedine Alaia, Tommy Ton's street-style photos, top-10 lists of most-viewed shows on Style.com (Chanel was No. 1 with 3.5 million pageviews, followed by Louis Vuitton, Prada, Balenciaga, Dolce & Gabbana), Style.com's top 10 shows (Balenciaga came in first, followed by Lanvin, Prada, Givenchy, and Proenza Schouler). There are also lists of the most ubiquitous party people, "fashion maps of New York, London, Milan, and Paris," and "an illustrated guide to the world's fashion cliques — from Miuccia Prada to Aziz Ansari in six degrees or less."

The issue costs $14.99 on select newsstands across North America and Europe, including Kirna Zabete in New York, 10 Corso Como in Milan, and Colette in Paris, and costs $4.99 plus shipping to order online before Monday. (It will be $6.99 after.)

>> For the first time in over eight years, Elle has placed a model on its cover. Not just one model, in fact, but rather four: “We felt it was time to show the sexy side of fashion again, enlisting four of the runway’s super seductive models – Miranda Kerr, Chanel Iman, Adriana Lima, and Doutzen Kroes," says editor Robbie Myers. "These covers harken to what made Elle Elle: Shot outside, drenched in sunlight, color, and of course accessories, the women look right back at you with all the personal and sexual confidence in the world.” The four models, who appear on the cover of Elle's October 2011 issue — on newsstands Sept. 20 — were styled by Joe Zee and shot by Alexei Hay. Erin Wasson was the last model to cover Elle, for the magazine's September 2003 issue.

Watch a behind-the-scenes video from the shoot, below.

>> While there are still a few biggies that have yet to make their debut — Vogue Italia, V with Carine Roitfeld's touch, Pop, and Dasha Zhukova's new magazine, Garage — the majority of this year's September issues have already made their debut. There are more than a few model covers; in fact, there are more than a few supermodel covers — and we've gathered them all together for your perusal.

UPDATE: The Vogue Italia, Pop, and Garage covers have been added (plus more).

>> For Fall 2011, POP is having a Marina Abramović moment; the magazine tapped the performance artist to collaborate and appear on all three covers of the new issue — one of which also features model Freja Beha. "We'd been wanting to do a cover project with Marina for a while now," editorial director Ashley Heath explained. "The link-up with Freja seemed very right somehow. The dark hair/dark sexuality angle, and the fact they're both uncompromising and very choosy in what they do."

Shot in high-contrast black and white, each of the three Marina covers feature a different vignette — in one, the artist poses with a mini version of herself; in another, the mini-Marina looks solemly over Freja's shoulder. The third cover — a limited-edition hardback — features only Marina's upside-down face, in full mime-style makeup.

Click through to see all four of the new covers and to get the inside perspective — as provided by editorial director Ashley Heath — about each one.

Images courtesy of POP

>> Here's the first glimpse of Dasha Zhukova's much-anticipated new magazine, Garage. Hitting newstands September 5th, the magazine's main editorial — as well as one of it's three covers —  was photographed by Hedi Slimane and features some provactively-placed tattoos. "The 'INKED' project is really emblematic of the mission of the magazine — bringing together individuals from diverse creative fields to produce something compelling and bold," Zhukova said of the magazine's inaugural theme. Jeff Koons, Richard Prince, Paul McCarthy, and Damien Hirst were all tapped to design tattoos for the issue; it's Hirst's version that graces the main cover, which ships with a peel-back modesty sticker in the shape of a butterfly (left).

The two alternative covers of Garage feature the work of prominent artists as well: one cover features a Nick Knight and Dinos Chapman image of a doll house with a Lily Donaldson doll playing inside, while the other cover features a tattoo design created by Richard Prince. Despite the alternative covers, W.H. Smith has already banned the magazine from sale at its stores in England. However, Barnes & Noble will stock the magazine.

Click through to see all three covers from the first issue.

>> Kate Moss tells Vogue's September 2011 issue — which she covers — that after a romantic trip to Thailand two years into her relationship with Jamie Hince, “we were just so loved up, and he asked me to marry him every day.” So what made her finally take the plunge, at 37? Apparently, the British TV series Big Fat Gypsy Weddings. “I am so romantic about gypsies,” Kate explains. “They’re not allowed to do anything until they get married. So they all get married really young, at sixteen. You can’t believe the dresses. They’re like blinging butterflies times ten; they can’t move down the aisle! It’s so genius. I was just watching Jamie, so cute, and I was like, these girls, they just spend their whole life waiting for that day — let’s do it!”

“I’ve met them all throughout the years,” Mario Testino — who captured Vogue's extensive portfolio of Moss's wedding (she shifted her wedding date from Saturday to Friday to accommodate Testino's schedule) — says of Kate's past paramours, “but [Jamie] is the most real. He has a great sense of humor.”

But, as the wedding date nears, Hince “is terrified,” says Moss. As for herself: “Let’s put it this way. If I didn’t have my friends . . . I don’t know how people do it. I’ve had big birthday parties, and I’ve thrown parties for other people, but this is a completely different thing. It’s the Met Ball! Because you have to look at every piece of cutlery; the details are intense. And then you wake up thinking about the ballet shoes for the girls; is the satin ribbon right? I’ve gone mental. Jamie thinks I’m mad, asking, ‘Are you gonna be all right? After the wedding, I’m hoping you’ll get back to normal!’”

Of her vision of the wedding, Moss says: “I wanted it to be kind of dreamy and 1920s, when everything is soft-focus. The Great Gatsby. The code name was GG for a while. That light and that kind of fun decadence. It’s rock-’n’-roll Great Gatsby!”

It follows, then, that John Galliano, who designed Moss's wedding dress, was inspired by Jazz Age photographs of F. Scott's wife Zelda Fitzgerald. Moss says she wanted “a classic Galliano, those chiffon thirties kind. I’ve lived in his dresses for years, and they just make me feel so comfortable. But it’s so much more couture, couture, couture. Oh, my God, the work that’s going into the dress!”

As Vogue tells it: Moss and Galliano "discussed everything on the phone, and then, when John was out of rehab for the first of four marathon fittings, he brought her 'bags full of bits, and pulled tulle and sequins and veils and flowers out. And then we just kind of pinned things together, like the old days, you know?' The skirts are symbolically licked with the beaded plumes of a mythical phoenix, 'delicate and defiant, like Kate.'"

"She dared me to be John Galliano again,” the designer added. “I couldn’t pick up a pencil. It’s been my creative rehab.” The relationship goes both ways, though. Just before Moss, ever the model, sets off to her wedding church she requests “a few words, a story to inspire her — she loves a bit of direction!” Galliano says. “I told her, ‘You have a secret — you are the last of the English roses — and when he lifts your veil he’s going to see your wanton past!’”

Later, the favor is returned: When Kate's father thanks Galliano for “the beautiful dress,” every wedding guest stands in ovation, causing the designer's eyes to well up.