In reply to KaWai:

Suede was an excellent Black women fashion magazine ... but SADLY it only lasted four numbers ... a real shame!

Suede Magazine on "Hiatus"

February 23, 2005

Essence Spinoff Pulled Back for Rethinking

Suede magazine, the Essence spinoff that aims toward a hip, multicultural audience, is going on "hiatus" after four issues because it launched too quickly and needs time to regroup, Essence officials said late today.

The magazine debuted in November as a quarterly and began a monthly schedule with the February issue. "We realized we had set ourselves up for a pace that we couldn't sustain," Michelle Ebanks, president of Essence Communications Partners, told Journal-isms.

Almost all of the magazine's 46 employees are expected to be placed elsewhere within Time Inc., Ebanks said. Time Inc. announced in January it was buying control of the magazine.

'Suede's unique approach to fashion defined a new category," Ed Lewis, president of Essence Communications Partners and co-founder of Essence magazine, said in a statement. "The magazine is smart, exciting and provocative. However, although some of our most talented people have been working on Suede, it has become clear that more time and resources would be needed to further develop this brand. This decision will give us the opportunity to step back and reevaluate the concept and its place in the market.'"

Editor Suzanne Boyd "is the living, breathing incarnation of the magazine her New York bosses hired her to create—young, savvy, well-heeled, with a rock-solid belief that blacks rule fashion," Canada's National Post wrote soon after Boyd took the job. Boyd is a native of Halifax who grew up in the West Indies. She "is absolutely staying with Time Inc.," Ebanks said.

Suede guaranteed advertisers an audience of 250,000, which was split evenly between newsstand sales and subscriptions, Ebanks said.

In January, Samir Husni, a journalism professor at the University of Mississippi known as "Mr. Magazine," told Journal-isms that Suede was "a great idea" but that it might be too much of a "fantasy magazine," compared with a traditional service publication. "If you are an African American woman" leafing through the pages of Suede, he said, "you wonder, is this out of reach?" In addition, he said, "so far it is next to impossible to create a multicultural magazine."

Ebanks said, however, that readers and advertisers responded favorably, because "there's a fatigue with more of the same. That caught the attention of advertisers."

As an example of Suede's uniqueness, she cited an article in the March issue, on the "Fab 40," "the most fabulous people in fashion," that includes Jennifer Lopez and Andre 3000 of OutKast. "It's breathtakingly beautiful," she said.

In reply to KaWai:

Madame C. J. Walker
1867- 1919
First African-American Millionaire of the Early 20th Century

blackmoneymagazine.blogspot.com/ 2007_08_30_ar...

PS.>>> the story that goes with the pic I posted previously is the following ... it makes interesting reading to support my believe that the worst enemies of BLACK WOMEN REPRESENTATION are exactly those videos produced by certain Black Musicians who seem to think of women as just a piece of 'throw away meat ' ... My apologies for the phrasing, but how can be that there is so much OUTRAGE aimed at FASHION MAGAZINES for being the so called ' RACISTS' ... but in a way at the same time there is so much hypocrisy and TOTAL SILENCE when it comes to portraying BLACK WOMEN in videos in a such DETRIMENTAL AND DENIGRATING WAY !!

' It seems i get on the rappers alot so lets take this time to get at the sisters.
[yeah chics could get it too].
Beauty supply stores in the ghettos all over America,there are some things they all have in common 90% of the customers are black women and 90% of the beauty supply stores are Korean owned[i like to call em the Korean Weave Cartel]. I think it is a shame that the first black female millionaire was
Madame C.J Walker who made her riches off of hair care pNow her heirs the negro woman have become servants to the perms and weaves that made her rich. Don't get me wrong I have nothing against perms and weaves I'm all about money. What gets me upset is black women are making koreans rich in a beauty supply industry that rakes in over 9 billion dollars a year. Black owned businesses only make up 10% of this industry. Wake up my unbeweavable black women,take back the industry that is nothing without your addiction to weaves ,perms and extensions. you need to bring some of that wealth back to the hood where it belongs. My message to all my black women is instead of aspiring to be a video chic,a model,stripper or the next Superhead,how about you girls put together some of those singles from the clubs and open some beauty supply stores in the hood and make some real,self respecting,legal money. After all I still have hope that the black woman's greatest asset is not her Boodunkadunk, but her intelligence and resiliency. You know the black women of old who raised their children against all odds i.e our mothers and grandmothers the strong black women. Instead what we have are the new generation of phat ass video groupies who thinks success is being naked in the next 50 cent video LOL}. In the words of Don Imus my nappy headed h_ _s i mean sisters need to wake up and smell the pink oil moisturizer because the true gold is in them dar weaves. Madame C.J Walker must be turning in her grave.
Madame C.J Walker's house this would be a MTV Cribs episode if she was alive amazing all of this off of perms and weaves see sisters there is another way to success besides brass poles and videos

P.S - As always it takes a white man to shed light on our problems check out the documentary below

P.P.S - If this video makes you angry like it did me there is an organization that was started to fight this inequity against The Korean Weave Cartel. They will help you start your own business so if you have time between the brass pole and the next video shoot check it out their name is B.O.B.S.A http://www.bobsaone.org/
A black owned beauty supply association. Now remember the Golden rule my sisters she who has the Gold will rule[in this case the Gold is weaves and perms]

$$$MaxamillionDolla signing off

In reply to KaWai:

.... I hope you didn't miss the implications of following bit ! ... as if it is just wanting to perpetuate that IMAGE about Black Women .... so I do wonder if the writer of this very negative critique regarding the Black issue of Italian VOGUE realises it !... if the following statement is the measure of what it should be to run a Black Fashion Magazine ... then I'm afraid hope may be lost !

"Now on to Ghetto Fabulousness this is a love hate story I love Toccara Jones beautiful face, a real sized feminine silhouette and man what a pair of tits!!!! Wow!! But, same old same old. What would a black issue be with out a Ghetto Fab story to end the issue typical and tired? Yet I have to give props where props are due, she is amazing and big ups to Toccara Jones for showing the world a real black woman with tits and ass, and a beauty at that. How ghetto rich! "

In reply to Galileo's Universe:

Tyra Banks is trying to break the stereotyped, by showing young women that reflects the country's demographic on her ANTM show, and present them in classy ways in photos. Hign fashion magazines such as Vogue needs to give black people more job opportunities in the areas of fashion editors, executive editors, casting directors. Only if they are more equal in the driver seats in the fashion industry, could their influence be felt on pages.

In reply to Galileo's Universe:

She had her start on Tyra Banks' America Next Top Model.

In reply to Galileo's Universe:

I know the fashion industry(magazines)don't really take Tyra Banks' America Next Top Models winners and runner ups seriously, as they haven't broken into the mainstream of high fashion, but I think her efforts definitely wins applauds in terms of showing non white models in the same ways as high fashion magazines do with white models.