Allure (magazine) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Allure is the leading U.S. women’s beauty magazine, published monthly by Condé Nast

Condé Nast Publications

Condé Nast, a division of Advance Publications, is a magazine publisher. In the U.S., it produces 18 consumer magazines, including Architectural Digest, Bon Appétit, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Vogue, as well as four business-to-business publications, 27 websites, and more than 50 apps...

in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. It was founded in 1991 by editor in chief Linda Wells, who has been at the helm of the magazine ever since. From its inception, the magazine has been widely recognized for its intelligent, groundbreaking, and much-imitated coverage of beauty. A signature of the magazine is its annual Best of Beauty awards—accolades given in the October issue to the best, most effective beauty products on the market after a stringent and comprehensive editorial review.

History

In 1990, S.I. Newhouse Jr., chairman of Condé Nast, and then editorial director Alexander Liberman approached Linda Wells to develop a concept they had for a beauty magazine. At the time, Wells was the beauty editor and the food editor at The New York Times Magazine.

The magazine’s prototype was shredded shortly before the scheduled launch date and, after overhauling everything (including the logo), Allure made its debut in March 1991. The magazine’s original format was oversize, but this prevented it from fitting into slots at grocery-store checkouts and required advertisers to resize their ads or create new ones. After four issues, Allure changed to a standard-size glossy format.

Impact

Allure focuses on beauty, fashion, and women’s health and doesn’t shy away from controversial topics. At a time when thousands of women were undergoing what they believed to be a safe surgical procedure, Allure was the first women’s magazine to write about the health risks associated with silicone

Silicone

Silicones are inert, synthetic compounds with a variety of forms and uses. Typically heat-resistant and rubber-like, they are used in sealants, adhesives, lubricants, medical applications , cookware, and insulation....

breast implants. Long before the national outcry concerning “heroin chic,” Allure reported on the growing use of this drug among fashion models. And as a so-called Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

ian hair-straightening treatment was gaining popularity, Allure tested the formulas and found dangerous levels of formaldehyde

Formaldehyde

Formaldehyde is an organic compound with the formula CH2O. It is the simplest aldehyde, hence its systematic name methanal.Formaldehyde is a colorless gas with a characteristic pungent odor. It is an important precursor to many other chemical compounds, especially for polymers...

in many salons’ preparations. The magazine also warned against widely popular fat-melting injections that were not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration

Food and Drug Administration

The Food and Drug Administration is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, one of the United States federal executive departments...

and had caused dangerous side effects.

The magazine’s circulation, initially 250,000 in 1991, is now over 1 million in 2011.

Many first-rate writers have contributed to Allure. Among them are Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller

Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,...

, John Updike

John Updike

John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic....

, Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri is a Bengali American author. Lahiri's debut short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies , won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and her first novel, The Namesake , was adapted into the popular film of the same name. She was born Nilanjana Sudeshna, which she says are both...

, Michael Chabon

Michael Chabon

Michael Chabon born May 24, 1963) is an American author and "one of the most celebrated writers of his generation", according to The Virginia Quarterly Review....

, Kathryn Harrison

Kathryn Harrison

Kathryn Harrison is an American author.-Background and education:Harrison's maternal grandparents raised her in Los Angeles, California...

, Frank McCourt

Frank McCourt

Francis "Frank" McCourt was an Irish-American teacher and Pulitzer Prize–winning writer, best known as the author of Angela’s Ashes, an award-winning, tragicomic memoir of the misery and squalor of his childhood....

, Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende Llona is a Chilean writer with American citizenship. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the "magic realist" tradition, is famous for novels such as The House of the Spirits and City of the Beasts , which have been commercially successful...

, and Francine du Plessix Gray

Francine du Plessix Gray

-Biography:She was born September 25, 1930 in Warsaw, Poland where her father, Vicomte Bertrand Jochaud du Plessix, was a French diplomat - the commercial attaché. She spent her early years in Paris, where a milieu of mixed cultures and a multilingual family influenced her...

. Elizabeth Gilbert

Elizabeth Gilbert

Elizabeth M. Gilbert is an American author, essayist, short story writer, biographer, novelist and memoirist. She is best known for her 2006 memoirs, Eat, Pray, Love, which as of December 2010, has spent 199 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list, and was also made into a film by the same...

’s essay “The Road to Rapture,” published in Allure in 2003, was the precursor to her international best-selling book, Eat, Pray, Love (Viking Adult).

Allure has also published images by some of the top photographers in the fashion industry, including Michael Thompson

Michael Thompson

Michael Thompson may refer to:*Mike Thompson , United States Representative from California's 1st congressional district*Michael Thompson *Michael Thompson , American guitarist...

, Mario Testino

Mario Testino

-Early Life:Testino grew up in Lima, the eldest son of a businessman. When he was young he wanted to be a priest. Testino recalls being unpopular at school because of his flamboyance. He was good at math and went on to study economics at Universidad del Pacífico, where his insistence on wearing...

, Patrick Demarchelier

Patrick Demarchelier

Patrick Demarchelier is a French fashion photographer.-Life:Born near Paris in 1943 to a modest family, he spent his childhood in Le Havre with his mother and four brothers. For his seventeenth birthday, his stepfather bought him his first Eastman Kodak camera...

, Tina Barney

Tina Barney

Tina Barney is an American artist photographer best known for her large-scale portraits of her family and close friends, many of whom are well-to-do denizens of New York and New England....

, Marilyn Minter

Marilyn Minter

Marilyn Minter is an American artist currently living and working in New York City. Marilyn Minter has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2005, the Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, Les Rencontres d'Arles festival in 2007,...

, Carter Smith, Steven Klein

Steven Klein

Steven Klein is an American photographer based in New York.-History:After studying painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, he moved into the field of photography...

, Steven Meisel

Steven Meisel

Steven Meisel is an American photographer, who obtained popular acclaim with his work in US and Italian Vogue and his photographs of friend Madonna in her 1992 book Sex...

, and Helmut Newton

Helmut Newton

Helmut Newton, born Helmut Neustädter was a German-Australian photographer. He was a "prolific, widely imitated fashion photographer whose provocative, erotically charged black-and-white photos were a mainstay of Vogue and other publications."-Early life:Newton was born in Berlin, the son of Klara...

.

Cover subjects have included Jennifer Aniston

Jennifer Aniston

Jennifer Joanna Aniston is an American actress, film director, and producer, best known for her role as Rachel Green on the television sitcom Friends, a role which earned her an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.Aniston has also enjoyed a successful film career,...

, Jennifer Lopez

Jennifer Lopez

Jennifer Lynn Lopez is an American actress, singer, record producer, dancer, television personality, and fashion designer. Lopez began her career as a dancer on the television comedy program In Living Color. Subsequently venturing into acting, she gained recognition in the 1995 action-thriller...

, Julia Roberts

Julia Roberts

Julia Fiona Roberts is an American actress. She became a Hollywood star after headlining the romantic comedy Pretty Woman , which grossed $464 million worldwide...

, Angelina Jolie

Angelina Jolie

Angelina Jolie is an American actress. She has received an Academy Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards, and was named Hollywood's highest-paid actress by Forbes in 2009 and 2011. Jolie is noted for promoting humanitarian causes as a Goodwill Ambassador for the...

, Reese Witherspoon

Reese Witherspoon

Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon , better known as Reese Witherspoon, is an American actress and film producer. Witherspoon landed her first feature role as the female lead in the film The Man in the Moon in 1991; later that year she made her television acting debut, in the cable movie Wildflower...

, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen

Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Fuller Olsen are American actresses and entrepreneurs.Both have appeared in television and films since infancy. Since then, they have continued their celebrity through numerous television programs, films, interviews, as well as commercial endorsements...

, Victoria Beckham

Victoria Beckham

Victoria Caroline Beckham is an English singer-songwriter, dancer, model, actress, fashion designer and businesswoman. In the late 1990s, Beckham rose to fame with the all-female pop group Spice Girls and was dubbed Posh Spice by the July 1996 issue of the British pop music magazine Top of the Pops...

, Beyoncé, Fergie, Britney Spears

Britney Spears

Britney Jean Spears is an American recording artist and entertainer. Born in McComb, Mississippi, and raised in Kentwood, Louisiana, Spears began performing as a child, landing acting roles in stage productions and television shows. She signed with Jive Records in 1997 and released her debut album...

, Jessica Simpson

Jessica Simpson

Jessica Ann Simpson is an American recording artist, actress, television personality, and fashion designer whose rise to fame began in 1999. Since that time, Simpson has achieved many recording milestones, starred in several television shows, movies, and commercials, launched a line of hair and...

, Kate Hudson

Kate Hudson

Kate Garry Hudson is an American actress. She came to prominence in 2001 after winning a Golden Globe and receiving several nominations, including a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, for her role in Almost Famous. She then starred in the hit film How to Lose a Guy in 10...

, Christina Aguilera

Christina Aguilera

Christina María Aguilera is an American recording artist and actress. Aguilera first appeared on national television in 1990 as a contestant on the Star Search program, and went on to star in Disney Channel's television series The Mickey Mouse Club from 1993–1994...

, Rihanna

Rihanna

Robyn Rihanna Fenty , better known as simply Rihanna, is a Barbadian recording artist. Born in Saint Michael, Barbados, Rihanna moved to the United States at the age of 16 to pursue a recording career under the guidance of record producer Evan Rogers...

, and Gwen Stefani

Gwen Stefani

Gwen Renée Stefani is an American singer-songwriter and fashion designer. Stefani is the lead vocalist for the rock and ska band No Doubt. Stefani recorded her first solo album Love. Angel. Music. Baby. in 2004. The album was inspired by music of the 1980s, and was a success with sales of over...

.
(See List of Allure cover models).

Best of Beauty Awards

Allure began its Best of Beauty awards program 14 years ago, at the initiative of Wells, to help readers choose among the vast array of makeup, skin-care, and hair-care products on the market.

Allure has two sets of awards, one judged by the magazine’s editors and the other by readers. A “winners’ seal” logo, developed by Allure, appears on many of the winning products. To ensure that its judgments are neutral, Allures ad department isn’t involved in the selections.

In 2010, the magazine developed an iPhone app that highlights the winning products and tells users where they can buy them based on their location.

Editor in Chief

Linda Wells graduated in 1980 from Trinity College in Hartford. Connecticut. She began her journalism career at Vogue

Vogue (magazine)

Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...

, where she wrote and edited stories about beauty, health, nutrition, and fitness. In 1985, she joined The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

as a reporter, ultimately becoming the beauty editor and the food editor of The New York Times Magazine

The New York Times Magazine

The New York Times Magazine is a Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It is host to feature articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors...

.

Wells's editor's letter has been praised for tackling a variety of topics with honesty. Women's Wear Daily gave her an "A" rating in its Editors' Report Card column acknowledging her "backbone".

In 2006, Wells, with her editors at Allure, wrote her first book, Confessions of a Beauty Editor (Bulfinch).

Awards (for Allure)

The National Magazine Award for Design (1994)

The Editorial Excellence Award from Folio (2001)

The Circulation Excellence Award from Circulation Management (2001)

“Ring Leader,” an essay by Natalie Kusz from the February 1996 issue of Allure, was selected for The Best American Essays 1997 (Houghton Mifflin).

The magazine has been on Adweek’s Hot List in 1993, 1994, 1995, 2003, and 2007.

Allure has received 29 awards from the American Academy of Dermatology, 9 journalism awards from the Fragrance Foundation, and the Excellence in Media Award from the Skin Cancer Foundation.

Awards (for Linda Wells)

The Achiever Award from Cosmetic Executive Women

Cosmetic Executive Women

Cosmetic Executive Women, commonly abbreviated CEW, is a major trade organization for the cosmetics, fragrance and personal care industry.-History:...

(2001)

The Matrix Award for magazine leadership from New York Women in Communications, Inc. (2009)

In the media

Wells, along with Allure editors Michael Carl and Kelly Atterton, have appeared as judges on the Bravo TV series Shear Genius

Shear Genius

Shear Genius is an American reality television series on the Bravo network that focuses on hair styling. The show first premiered on April 11, 2007....

.

Allure editors have appeared as experts on programs such as the Today show and 60 Minutes

60 Minutes

60 Minutes is an American television news magazine, which has run on CBS since 1968. The program was created by producer Don Hewitt who set it apart by using a unique style of reporter-centered investigation....

, and Allure stories frequently receive national attention.

Hilary Duff

Hilary Duff

Hilary Erhard Duff is an American actress, singer-songwriter, entrepreneur, and author. After working in local theater plays and television commercials in her childhood, she achieved fame playing the title role in the Disney Channel television series Lizzie McGuire. She also reprised her role in...

played an Allure intern in Cheaper by the Dozen 2

Cheaper by the Dozen 2

Cheaper by the Dozen 2 is a 2005 film produced by 20th Century Fox. It is the sequel to the family comedy film Cheaper by the Dozen . Shawn Levy, the director of the first film, did not return as director for this sequel, which was instead directed by Adam Shankman . Levy was a producer of the film...

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.