PR WEEK INTERVIEW

http://www.prweek.com/uk/news/1011567/Editors-Desk-David-Hellqvist-Dazed-Digital/

Dazed Digital, the online sister of monthly magazine Dazed and Confused, has just hired David Hellqvist to be its commissioning editor. Dazed Digital posts exclusive videos interviews, behind-the-scenes fashion reportage and exclusive features. PRWeek catches up with Hellqvist to find out what he wants from PROs.


David Hellqvist: Dazed Digital editor
Describe Dazed Digital
Dazed Digital is a unique editorial platform; a web-based magazine with daily updates of original content. Like the Dazed & Confused magazine, we focus on in-depth and intelligent coverage of worldwide fashion, music, art and photography, using our network of contributors throughout the world.


You have just joined. Are you planning any changes?
There will be a Dazed Digital design overhaul later on this year, but in terms of editorial coverage it won’t change a great deal.


Who are your competitors and what makes you different?
There isn't really any direct competition. Other sites might have either a bigger audience or a more niche expert area, but we cover our brief in an insightful way with original content. This means no one else can claim the same authority in our line of work. We have made it our job to unearth worldwide talent using all the means that make the digital presence our strongest asset.


What makes a good story for you?
A new angle, an interesting person, a boundary-pushing brand or an exciting event.


Of which story are you most proud?
Personally, I like the stories with a slight current affairs angle. I was happy with our election coverage, because we made it appeal to a younger audience. I’m also pleased when we can give a young designer, musician or artist his or her first bit of press and media attention.


What tips can you give PROs to get coverage?
Try to imagine if it would fit our audience. Often PROs just take a chance and email over completely irrelevant issue, events and brands and end up wasting both mine and their own time.


What are your own personal media must-haves?
Dazed & Confused, The Guardian, Twitter, Fantastic Man, Monocle, Fashion in Politics.com, AnOther Man and Nowness.


What is your latest circulation figure?
We have 2.5 million page views a month and 200,000 unique visitors, but we also use our ever-growing social media network to communiacte with our audience. Currently, the Dazed Twitter following is 102,000 and the Facebook page have 46,000 fans.


What is the best contact email for the editorial staff?
David.h@dazedgroup.com

Fashion Jury in Grazia

Letter to the Guardian - print and online

Political U-turn

Why can't the Sun and the News of the World take a normal political standpoint, and support a party in a way similar to all the other papers? (Who's feeling blue?, 5 October). Why is switching sides all of a sudden synonymous with revamping most of the political content to look like a propaganda brochure for the Conservative party? Surely these things can be done in a more subtle way, Rupert/James/Rebekah? It almost makes me miss the Sun of the Good Old Days.

David Hellqvist London

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/19/letters-media-guardian

Fashion in Politics interview on Viceland.com

http://www.viceland.com/fashion/2009/05/some-people-really-want-to-be-judged-on-appearances/

Some people really want to be judged on appearances

Whatever people claim, when it comes down to it, fashion is all about making people like you. Even if your personality smells like a glove compartment full of arseholes, you’re only one sexy pair of jeans away from popularity and power. Everybody says they hate politicians, but in reality most politicians are actually pretty good at getting people to like them – so much so that they get to control the world. Obviously, then, they use fashion to help their dominance. David Hellqvist links the two on his blog, Fashion In Politics.

Why it took so long for some blogger to link the two is anyone’s guess. Hellqvist’s blog uses all that crap we know about fashion to try and decode the inner-mind of all those people with egos so big they want to rule us — otherwise known as politicians.

Vice: Being interested in fashion and politics is pretty unusual. Most fashion people are pretty scared of politics, right?
David Hellqvist: Yeah, that’s because traditionally fashion designers aren’t meant to interfere in politics. The thing is, most politicians don’t understand what a powerful way of communicating fashion is, except the despots and dictators, of course.

Can fashion ever really be political?
A lot of the time fashion is square and predictable, but sometimes it’s anarchic and rebellious, which are political things. It’s easy to print slogans on t-shirts like Vivienne Westwood does, but that’s boring. The political standpoint should be made by the wearer, not the designer. For example, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wears a beige windbreaker and a white shirt to try and make out he’s one of the people, while Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez is a master at showing off his socialistic convictions by wearing a red beret or a red lambs wool pullover .

Why did you set up the blog?
People say they find politics boring but they do care about who the people leading them are. Fashion is a big part of that cult of personality and celebrity. So I wanted a blog where I could write about all of that.

Do you wish you were a politics writer?
No, a politician! I’d style myself on Fidel Castro or Chile’s former dictator Augusto Pinochet, but not in terms of politics, obviously. I would rock the Fidel look with some khaki combats on my days off and wear a Pinochet-esque black cape from YSL for state openings. Throw in a pair of Cutler & Gross sunnies and I’m all set to go.

Who are the most stylish people in politics?
The evil politicians always outdo the good ones when it comes to style. People like the Ugandan leader (and rumoured cannibal) Idi Amin. Or Jean Bedel Bokassa, the ruler of the Central African Republic in the 60s, who spent a third of his country’s budget on his crowning ceremony and declared himself Jesus’ 13th apostle, or Zaire’s leopard-print loving leader Mobuto Sese Seko. But it’s not just dead despots who make snappy dressers. Muammar Al-Gaddafi is always matching his hats and dresses and North Korea’s Kim Jong-il, with his comedy hair, platform shoes and amazing over-sized sunglasses. Sometimes he even turns out in just his bathrobe — that’s a dictator with sartorial attitude.

WORDS: DARYOUSH HAJ-NAJAFI
PHOTO: RICHMOND LAM

My interview in Canadian newspaper Toronto Star

Fashion's love affair with androgyny hits a fever pitch this fall

CAROLINE MALLAN
SPECIAL TO THE STAR

London–Who sets the rules in fashion?

Floral prints and lacy details equal "girl" while pinstripes and crisp woollens are code for "boy."

While there are plenty of designers who have made furtive dashes across fashion's traditional playing field over the years, in the mainstream, the fence that defines what is male and female is, for the most part, holding pretty firm. Though androgyny is having an impact on the way we dress, the gender rules as we know them have been set for a long time.

To the puzzle of how we got here in the first place, both fashion designers and historians single out the changing role of women in society as the catalyst for the fashion conventions that we follow today.

Traci Dix-Williams, a British fashion historian, points the finger at the Victorians.

"There is a very strong feminist belief that many of the clothes were designed to be restrictive to the point where they kept the women in the house," she says of the wide bustles and lacy crinolines that literally prevented women from fitting through the front door.

"Clothing was a great tool when it came to keeping women in their place at that time," she explains of clothes that were almost too beautiful – and definitely too fragile – for women to venture very far.

As to the fancy versus plain looks that dominate male/female fashion, Dix-Williams says in the 17th century, it was the men who were "the peacocks."

"They were the ones with the jewels and the frills and the codpieces and rich colours," she says. "While women were the ones in the background, there to keep the house and produce the children in greys and browns."

In 16th-century Tudor times, male vanity included padding their calves to make their legs look larger and stronger in their tights. This is also when that 1980s power-dressing essential – the shoulder pad – was first popular.

But through the industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries, men adopted a more staid attire in order to convey the seriousness of business.

It was time to shed the frivolity of ruffled sleeves in the name of commerce and to reinforce their role as the provider and protector of their women. The showy side of their lives, the obvious signs of success, would be expressed instead in the way they dressed their wives.

"Clothes were about self-promotion, the more layers of your wife's dress, the more money you had," Dix-Williams explains.

Add prized lace and even more expensive richly coloured fabrics and the wife was transformed into a canvas with which her rich husband could impress.

Bright colours were derived from natural dies that would fade after just two or three wears. Keeping a woman in bright colours, especially blues and purples and ruby reds, was a badge of the rich.

Fast-forward to today: While many fashion houses still play by those rules – confident that femininity sells – others are revisiting what constitutes male and female looks.

The Japanese have been doing it the best for the longest time according to David Hellqvist, features editor of Androgyny magazine.

"I think the Japanese designers are ahead on this and, more recently, Hedi Slimane at Dior Homme," he says of the designer who dramatically re-tailored men's catwalk fashion. "When he was working with the tailors making the suits, he just kept telling them to keep cutting, and keep cutting and take it in more."

The result was a reinvented menswear label that employed some of the tricks of womenswear designers in cutting a tight silhouette that emphasized a man's body.

Despite the name, Hellqvist says Androgyny is primarily about challenging conventions, be they in art, design or fashion.

He says the magazine likes to explore the "grey tones" between the traditional views of men and women.

"I think there is a great desire for that creativity, everybody is just hungry for it, for a new door to open into what we wear and how we look," he says.



http://www.thestar.com/living/article/497479