WSJ. magazine fails to serve its readers

Reuters blogger Felix Salmon is not a big fan of the WSJ. magazine because he believes it caters to the fashion industry too much and users a recent article about boots as a prime example.

Salmon writes, “Conley mentions in passing, in his piece, that after Deckers lost the lawsuit in Australia, it failed to pay certain legal costs of the winning side, as required under Australian law. If he ever asked Deckers counsel about this, there’s no sign of it in the story. Instead, he concludes with a paean to a highly-successful company:

Although UGG is not the haute couture brand it was years ago—the darling of fashion spreads, the envy of A-list gift bags—its sales are bigger than ever. That “alpha consumer,” the mother picking up her kids at private school in the Range Rover? While she may no longer roll up in a pair of the latest UGG boots, her counterparts at the neighboring public school are pulling away in Explorers full of UGG-boot-wearing adolescents. UGG Australia has become a mainstream brand, always in stock—found in several stores in any mall—and begrudgingly approved of even by its critics for its comfort and utility. It’s an appropriate irony; the humble boot of the masses has come full circle—albeit with a trademark this time. And that’s fashion, according to Simonton. “Things come back,” he says, “but they’re never quite the same.”

“Well, ‘irony’ is one way of putting it: the humble boot of the masses is still a humble boot of the masses, but now it’s wrapped up in aggressively-enforced trademarks, ensuring that all the profits from that humble boot accrue to a single multi-billion-dollar multinational corporation. But yes, ‘that’s fashion.’ And you can be sure that a glossy fashion-focused magazine is never going to cut against the grain of the fashion industry when it comes to issues surrounding trademark law and intellectual property.

“Which is why it’s crazy that the WSJ tries to cover the fashion industry from within the covers of a glossy fashion-focused magazine. The conflicts are far too big — and, as this story shows, the winner in those conflicts is always going to be the big fashion multinational, rather than the magazine’s readers.”

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