This Week in Elitism: Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, and...

...a Vintage Floral Dress Worn With a Leather Bomber Jacket, Yellow Tights, and Metallic Flats*

I am a subscriber to four magazines. I would like to think that the huge variety of their subject matter indicates that I’m a nuanced, sophisticated reader, with varied but high-class taste. Each week/month, I gleefully await the arrival of The New Yorker, Domino (a vintage-y interior design journal), Self (a health and fitness monthly), and Yoga (because even if you don't care about yoga, it won’t NOT come courtesy of your generous local yoga center). Each fills a space in my reading life: intellectual engagement, love of trés chère furniture and pretentious home tours, love of easy/healthy recipes, and calming for my frazzled nerves through chanting. And this month, 3 of those 4 were also supplemented by a free yearly magazine: Fashion Rocks. Apparently, each of my interests qualifies me as someone who might like the area of pop culture where fashion and rock music converge. Or maybe it’s just because they’re all published by Condé Nast?

Fashion Rocks is more than just a magazine, though, with colorful layouts, interviews with musicians about who they’re wearing, and the millionth interview with Justin Timberlake (who now says “I don’t want to be Mr. Sexy Back forever.”): it’s also a huge televised concert, in which musicians, designers, and actors (who want to be musicians and designers, or were just there trolling for models to hook up with later) are shuffled across the stage with barely a second to spit out scripted puns about the next performer. Why did I watch this, you might wonder. Well, because it was basically designed to maintain the attention of someone with ADHD for television, like me. More than that, though, I was amused by the pantheon of random people thrown together to make up the show, with no purpose exactly.

And it included a few of the Blogulator’s mainstays: see right. However, there were no awards, no order, or point, it seemed...it was a vanity fair, each star obviously working hard to look fairest of all. I was happy to discover that the money given by the sponsors will go to Stand Up To Cancer, a behind the scenes transaction that had nothing to do with the antics on stage (lead by the music/fashion icon Denis Leary?) Ooh, and the huge party for stars (and us average people, watching at home) already has a spin-off: Movies Rock, in which music and movies converge. Wow, it will be hard to know where to go next with this, huh? Hmm... could they possibly push the boundaries of the divisions of media once more and put on a TV Rocks magazine/concert extravaganza? If they do, bravo, CBS, bravo. It would be a milestone for pop culture integration and friendship. Maybe that was the point all along.

Check out this article on jezebel.com for further review...

*This title is a reference to an ensemble worn by Jenny Lewis and praised by Fashion Rocks magazine for her "rock-star sass."

This entry was posted by Nicole, on Saturday, September 13, 2008. You can leave your response.