1. Analysing Magazines - ELLE Magazine<br />By Sian Lynes<br />Title consideration<br />“ELLE” translated in French means “she” as a magazine that is specifically aimed at young women. <br />Publisher of the magazine<br />The magazine is published my Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. Inc. It is also responsible for publishing Elle Decor, Cycle World, Car and Driver, Road & Track and Woman’s Day. Hachette Filipachhi Media U.S. is part of the larger Hachette Filipacchi Médias , one of the world’s largest magazine publishers. In France, it publishes 47 magazines including Elle France. ELLE UK costs £3.80 per issue and being a monthly publication there are 12 issues per year. In the first half of 2010, ELLE UK had 195,625 issues in circulation. ELLE UK has its own website Elle.uk.com, which was launched in November 2010 as the growth of the magazine increased. <br />The target audience for the magazine<br />ELLE targets the young woman aged 16 - 30, interested in the latest fashion and beauty trends. The advertisements in the magazine are generally fashion and beauty brands advertising latest products or fashion lines aimed at females, so the reader would have to be earning money with disposable income to purchase any of the products. Articles in the magazine focus generally on appearance, with topics ranging from exercise workouts to the latest fashion must-haves. <br />The cover of the magazine<br />Celebrity and music star Lily Allen braces the cover which immediately appeals to the audience as it is a face they would recognise. Lily poses with a subtle and ‘model-like’ look on her face; this gives Lily and the cover a high-fashion appeal. Lily also bares her hands on her cheeks with her hips posed to the side which portrays a strong and independent female. The clothes worn on the cover of ELLE is highly important, in this case Lily bares a dress made of lace and a patterned star fabric. With this overall look, it is clear that the target audience is a young female interested in fashion and celebrity lifestyle. “ELLE” has a long and elegant font positioned at the top of the magazine with large spacing between each letter. Lily’s face submerges one of the Letters in “ELLE” but as the magazine is a well known magazine it does not affect the recognition of the magazine. This elegant typeface is continued on the subtitles of the magazine, which vary from black and white font colours. These subtitles give the cover a very simple and stylish feel to it, and are responsible for giving short insights into what features inside the magazine. With just these simple subtitles, it focuses more attention on the cover girl, Lily Allen and her interview which is one of the key features of this issue. However, ELLE does have a similar look to other leading high-fashion magazine “VOGUE”, with its chic spaced out font as well as baring other celebrity features on its cover. However, it differs in content in the fact that ELLE features high street fashion as well as couture where as VOGUE is renowned for just its couture content. <br />The ‘style’ of presentation of the magazine <br />ELLE’s presentation on the cover is very simple. The subtitles are based to the side of Lily’s shot with a larger eye catching phrase in front of Lily’s dress. With no other pictures on the cover and just text, it gives the magazine an expensive and smart look about it. Overall, the presentation is based on the colour of Lily Allen’s photo which has a purple background to it. Therefore the colour of the font (black and white) is chosen to contrast with the colour theme of the photo. Overall, with this complimenting colour theme, centre image and side titles it gives a stylish cover that will appeal to its target audience. <br />The ‘mode of address’ of the magazine<br />ELLE begins addressing its reader with an Editor’s letter, which addresses the reader as “you”. ELLE has a range of article split into Beauty/travel/Fashion/Features/Edits/Cover which is on its content page. Mainly, Beauty and Fashion are its focus points being a fashion magazine, with articles “How to work autumn/winter trends” and a “Beauty hotlist”. <br />The advertisements that appear in the magazine<br />Mainly the products being advertisements are fashion brands, cosmetics and perfumes. The fashion brands which include for example Chanel and Gucci are haute couture and so can range from a hundred pound per item to thousands of pounds. Advertisements for cosmetics include products like mascara to facial creams. These are in a more affordable price range and could range from ten to thirty depending. These products are clearly aimed at women perhaps ages 20 – 35 who wish to keep young and keep stylish. Particularly, the fashion brands feature as the magazine is a fashion magazine and people will buy it to find the latest trends; which will be available at these stores. The models that represent all of these products are women, appropriate for the magazine target audience. The audience there may relate to the models as they are portrayed as fashionable, young (majority) and sexy. Therefore the audience may want to be more like the models depicted in the magazine if they buy the product they are representing. <br />Representations in the magazine<br />Women are represented more dominantly in ELLE magazine rather than men, for obvious reasons that it is a women’s magazine. However, they represent women as independent and strong figures for their readers. For example, Lily Allen who features on the cover and an article within about her business aspirations represents a strong female who knows what she wants. Males however feature dimly in the magazine; one male is featured alongside a model as a sort of sex symbol to sell a perfume. In contrast to this, Patrick Dempsey (45), an actor, features in a Q&A article where still he is appeared as a famous sex symbol and eye candy which many women reading the magazine would want to read. The fact that males are portrayed as sex symbols and in contrast women are portrayed as independent and fashionable is very conflicting. The reason behind this may be because today, debatable or not, that women are still seen in society as lesser of their male counterpart. The fact there is fewer males in the magazines make sure their audience can relate more to the magazine/articles and to not feel secluded. However, the magazine does not feature women of older age (50+), this may be because older women (the majority) do not show a particular interest for fashion culture which the magazine widely focuses on.<br />The competition for the magazine <br />As a fashion magazine, ELLE competes with the likes of VOGUE, and In Style magazine. VOGUE circulates 1.25million issues where as ELLE is just behind with 1.1million (in the U.S.). Being its main U.S. competitor, In Style has a larger 1.8million in circulation. In the U.K. Glamour Magazine is ELLE’s biggest competitor too, with 500,000 in circulation. Whereas ELLE grasps just 200,000 in circulation reported for 2010. Similarly, Glamour focuses on high fashion as well as high street fashion which ELLE may focus on but not in excess unlike Glamour. The prices also contribute, Glamour only £2 and ELLE being £3.80 is a large difference and may be a valid reason why it circulates more. Glamour may also offer discount in their magazine at certain high street stores, which ELLE does offer regularly (if have done in the past). Glamour may hold some faint ideologies as they support women in political or high governing positions; for example Michelle Obama graced the cover of U.S. Glamour. <br />