What's up with Harper's Bazaar lately?

First, it was the Twilight-themed cover for the December issue. I'll admit that I liked the subscriber cover and even thought it was interesting and artistic. And, OK, I read the interview with Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, though I know absolutely nothing about the Twilight series, save for one very long e-mail summary my friend Emily sent me once. But now, The Cut has reported that Harper's Bazaar has commissioned thirteen-year old blogging sensation Tavi Gevinson to write a column about the spring collections. At first, I thought the announcement of Harper's Bazaar was clearly a typo. Surely, they meant Seventeen or Teen Vogue, not Harper's Bazaar, the magazine that gave us Edward Steichen, Carmel Snow, George Hoyningen-Huene, and Louise Dahl-Wolfe, some of the greatest fashion luminaries to ever grace the page. No, it just couldn't be.

Oh, but it is.

Why has Harper's Bazaar felt the need to hop on the gimmick bandwagon in recent months? Are sales down that much? Is Glenda Bailey just being ironic? I don't get it. This period of oddness goes back to the Angelina Jolie cover for which Bazaar used an old photo of Ms. Jolie and photo-shopped it into a cover, along with a corresponding article for which Ms. Jolie provided no quotes or comments. I do not believe that concept was well-received and I doubt Bazaar will do that again. True, the cover came during a "J-month" (i.e. an unexciting month in fashion), but I was still a little disappointed with the lack of imagination exhibited by that cover.

I am so distraught over the idea of a thirteen-year old writing a fashion column for Harper's Bazaar, of all magazines, that I don't know if I'll ever be able to take an active interest in Bazaar again. It's nothing personal against Tavi, of course. I've visited her blog many times (awesome use of photos and images, by the way!) and I wholeheartedly believe that her personal style is unique and sensational, incredibly impressive for someone so young. Aren't kids that age usually swathed in look-alike Abercrombie & Fitch? So, kudos to Tavi for expressing herself through fashion. Virginia Woolf would certainly be proud.

With that being said, I just don't know how credible the fashion advice or commentary of a thirteen-year old could be. She's been following fashion for, what, a year now? Some of the people reading Harper's Bazaar have been following the fashion industry for forty or fifty years, often longer. It just feels insulting to those loyal readers to have their fashion advice come from a child. What sense of the history of fashion could she have? Let us not forget that even Sally Singer (Sally Singer!) was once lambasted by Karl Lagerfeld for "having no sense of the history of fashion" for making a poor comparison between the work of Mr. Lagerfeld and that of Olivier Theyskeins for Rochas. Karl Lagerfeld was so offended by this that he felt the need to send off a heated letter to Vogue. Hence my ability to quote from that letter. So, if Sally Singer, Vogue's fashion news/features director, is lacking a sense of fashion history according to Karl Lagerfeld (someone who knows fashion!), I think we can deduce with absolute certainty that a thirteen-year old is as well.

Sure, novelties are fun, but they also grow old and tired.

I'd like to see Harper's Bazaar return to what it does best- cutting-edge fashion, spectacular artistic design (what Bazaar has always been known for), award-winning editorials, and influential journalism. Too much is at stake for Bazaar to follow the bandwagon off into obscurity.

I'll read Tavi's column with an open and curious mind when Bazaar arrives in my mailbox in a couple of weeks, but I still expect more from my favorite magazine. And, quite frankly, its readers deserve more.