Tavi Gevinson's New Website Is Live

By Jenna Sauers  |  September 6, 2011 | 5:40pm
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Fashion blogger, high school student, Jezebel contributor, and fashion writer Tavi Gevinson launched her new site, Rookie yesterday, which has already published plenty of interesting stuff, including an editor’s letter in which Gevinson lays out her vision for the publication. Gevinson says that experiences like participating in the Chicago SlutWalk motivated her to found a site where teenaged girls could have “someplace online for the discussion to continue.” Gevinson also says one of her main goals is to create a site with a minimum of gimmickry. “After being in all these meetings with publishing companies and advertisers and stuff, it’s like everyone just wants to trick people into reading their website. If the content is good, people will read it.” And she’s aware that her audience is often marketed to. “The teenager was kind of invented and started out as just a market. I think it’s important to know that as a teenager, especially a teenage girl, so many people want your money, and that’s also often dependent on telling you that you need to improve yourself with all these products. It’s good to have that awareness — there’s some of that to Rookie, but really more in spirit than straight-up preaching media literacy.” She didn’t end up teaming up with Sassy and XOJane.com founder Jane Pratt and her backers, Say Media, because “I want to have control. I realize there’s no way to talk about it without sounding like a dictator but I care a lot about all the work that’s gone into the site and I would hate to be in a position where I didn’t know exactly what was going to happen to it…There’s certain things I don’t know about the future, and if we have to go on hiatus I would like to be able to do that and not feel like I’m not doing my job right or something.” Which is not to say that she’s going to be a timid boss: “Women and girls are taught to ask for things in a way that’s kind of especially shy or especially careful. But when we’re working on deadlines, it’s become easier for me to just, like, straight-up ask for things and say that there’s something I would like to be fixed in some article. And everyone’s a feminist and understands our crazy schedule.” We’re not exactly the target demographic, but we’ll certainly be watching this space with interest. [MTV Style, The Cut]

Some things you will see in the latest commercial for Dior’s J’adore perfume: Charlize Theron pretending to be a fashion model, Grace Kelly dressing backstage, Marilyn Monroe cradling a bottle of fragrance, and Marlene Dietrich wearing a tuxedo. Yes, it’s a reanimated-zombie-celebrity-endorser-palooza from Dior! What you won’t see is a designer, or any suggestion that the couture collection Theron and the other stars are wearing actually came from someone in particular, that it was thought up and designed by a person. For about a half a second, you see a set of older male hands pin something to something. And that’s it. Christian Dior still doesn’t have a creative director since the departure of John Galliano in March. [YouTube]

Susan Sarandon is in a Uniqlo ad. Huh. [WWD]

Adele is on the cover of October’s British Vogue. [Vogue UK]

One image from Versace’s upcoming H&M collaboration lookbook leaked online. Abbey Lee Kershaw looks…colorful. [Fashionista]

This post from Garance Doré about how she — eventually — came to enjoy exercise is kind of hilarious and actually gives our bone-idle arse hope that one day we might be able to do yoga in our apartment for more than five minutes without starting to think about what we’re doing that night and where did we leave our sunglasses and did our room-mate take the magazine we’re reading or did we just drop it behind the radiator somehow and why the cat looking at us like that? The side-by-side Garance v. Gwyneth comparison is just the icing on top. [Garance Doré]

Women’s Wear Daily thinks that a concept Steven Meisel explored in his August Vogue Italia cover story with Raquel Zimmerman is too close to a story he then did for W‘s September issue. You can see both shoots, which are black-and-white and shot in studio, here. Here’s WWD‘s idea of the stakes: “The fallout will be worth watching. If it damages W‘s relationship with Meisel, [editor Stefano] Tonchi will lose out on a big-name photographer he’s craved for the magazine. If Tonchi doesn’t act, it will demonstrate the lengths a fashion magazine editor will go to appease a photographer who holds considerable influence in the industry.” [The Fashion Spot, WWD]

A former Jimmy Choo designer named Kim Kwang is launching his own line of (painful-seeming) high heels. [TLF]

And Tod’s is adding a “Signature Collection” of handbags made of embossed leather. Anne Hathaway does the shilling. A clutch will set you back $1,165. [WWD]

The Met’s Alexander McQueen show was a raging success — more than 661,000 served, more than $15 million raised. And the Buckingham Palace exhibit of Kate Middleton‘s McQueen wedding dress is proving almost as popular. More than 350,000 people have turned up in to see the dress Middleton was wearing when she became a Duchess in the six weeks it’s been on display, and over 500,000 are expected by the exhibit’s close. [People]

Marc Jacobs Tweeted a photo of the workers in his sample room, who naturally all had to work through the Labor Day weekend because fashion week starts Thursday. To make things more fun, they dressed up for the holiday all in white. [@MarcJacobsIntl]

If you want to buy a soft Lanvin doll made by HIV-positive Swaziland women, and you have €250, you’re in luck. A “percentage of sales” goes to a charity that supports the women. [Vogue UK]

  • Alber Elbaz spoke at the Royal Opera House in London about the fashion calendar, and why he doesn’t do drugs. The whole thing is worth reading, but here are some highlights: “Today, designers are expected to produce work that is bigger, better, faster and — these days — cheaper. A singer can quit once he or she has made ten great songs, a director can finish once he or she has made five amazing films, a writer just needs to write three great books. Now let’s look at designers — they produce six to eight shows a year, most designers have a 20-year-long career, so I need to create about 250 collections in that time. Not even Danielle Steel could write 250 books. You start to understand why some designers do strange things, why some designers talk to themselves, you have to find a way of dealing with it all.” The Lanvin designer jokes, “I don’t take drugs because if I did I’d love them — I’d be a junkie. And because I’m Jewish, I’d probably be a dealer too.” He also says, “One day, I received an SMS from a friend in New York — she was in a taxi on the way to court to face her arsehole ex-husband, and she said to me ‘Alber, I am wearing a Lanvin dress, and I feel so protected.’ That to me was the biggest compliment I ever received.” [Vogue UK]
  • Carine Roitfeld: “Fashion has become an industry, one that increasingly stifles creation. Sometimes I go to runway shows and I feel like I am at a medical convention, or a corporate seminar. There’s no excitement anymore, no amazement, none of the madness you could experience even a few years back.” [The Cut]
  • Street style photographer Tommy Ton describes being seated in the front row at Dolce & Gabbana for a photo-op as an “awkward moment”: “That first time I was put front row at Dolce & Gabbana with Garance Dore, Bryanboy, and the Sartorialist. We just felt so out of place, especially with laptops placed in front of us. It was very unexpected, but of course I’m more than grateful it happened.” Photos of the four bloggers, posed in the front row with laptops that weren’t even their own, promptly illustrated a million “Bloggers Vs. Print Journalists: Trends Electric Boogaloo” stories. [The Cut]
  • Remember when Emma Watson cutely bragged that she basically did her Lancôme commercial totally by herself, start to finish? Well, it’s a shame that commercial kinda actually sucks. [YouTube]
  • Michael Kors launched a new website, DestinationKors.com. [@MichaelKors]
  • Sears says the Kardashian Kollection, which it soft-launched weeks ago, has been “very successful.” Apparently, “key items sold out in a week and a half.” Maybe because they were already marked down to 30% off? [WWD]
  • Watching Paz de la Huerta flash her knickers three ways in these Agent Provocateur spots is actually kinda funny. [TLF]
  • Model Lauren Bush officially became Lauren Squared this weekend, when she married longtime beau David Lauren. Mazel tov. [People]
  • Kelly Cutrone is giving a TED talk at Oxford University. Obviously. [Racked]
  • Band of Outsiders is giving away a Mexican wedding cake cookie this Fashion’s Night Out. Cookies. [OC]

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