Kim France, the editor who invented Lucky magazine in 2000 along with James Truman, who was the Condé Nast editorial directer at the time, has left the magazine. She was replaced by Brandon Holley, who worked at Condé Nast in 2007 until Jane, the magazine she was editing, was closed. Since then, Ms. Holley has been working as editor in chief of Shine, Yahoo‘s site for women.
Brandon Holley is the new editor of Lucky magazine.
Lucky, when it was first published in December 2000, was considered a major innovation or a huge abomination, depending on who was doing the considering. Although women’s magazines had always served as a nexus between aspiration and commerce, Lucky baldly celebrated shopping as a kind of sport.
It was, in retrospect, ahead of its time, a print rendering of a shopping portal on the Web. It was well received by both the news media and advertisers, in part because it was a well-crafted magazine that did not take itself too seriously and in part because Ms. France had significant magazine credentials. She had worked at Sassy, Elle, New York, 7 Days and Spin.
But as the recession deepened and shopping became less of a blood sport than a guilty pleasure, Lucky suffered a significant loss in advertising pages. Even as a weak recovery has brought other magazines part of the way back, Lucky has continued to languish. In the most recent Publishers Information Bureau statistics, advertising pages in Lucky were down 7.3 percent from April to June, compared to the same months in 2009; meanwhile, many other magazines directed at female readers recovered.
Given that Ms. France conceived a new category of magazine that did significant advertising business over the course of a decade, the news release announcing her departure was terse, without the usual filigree about her accomplishments; of Ms. Holley’s appointment it said: “She replaces Kim France, who is leaving the company.” That was all about Ms. France.
The appointment of Ms. Holley, who has extensive digital credentials, signals a level of seriousness around the Web components of Lucky’s business, but it could also foretell a time when Lucky — the brand — might exist only in a digital form. Condé Nast has shown very little sentimentality around preserving underperfoming magazines; it closed four publications last year. And executives there apparently decided that Lucky, which has had three publishers over the course of its existence, needed a fresh editorial approach.
Ms. France, who took inspiration from Japanese shopping magazines at the time and innovated an American version, was said to be reluctant to fundamentally alter what she created. Reached by e-mail, she sent a statement through a spokeswoman.
“I am exceptionally grateful to Condé Nast and Si Newhouse for what has been a tremendous opportunity, and something I will remember with only fondness,” Ms. France said.
The recent lack of sentiment in pushing out people and titles has people on cat’s paws at 4 Times Square, a headquarters that had long seemed to live a life beyond economic consequence. There continue to be rumors that Bon Appétit, which is the company’s sole food publication after Gourmet closed, will be moved back from the West Coast, and other magazines will be getting a hard look as well.
