With seven American fashion magazines already telling millions of women what to wear, it was hard to imagine that the fledgling Mirabella might come up a winner. But the adult, upscale answer to today's youth-oriented competition has found a rich niche since its launch in June 1989. Baby boomers hungry for an intelligent magazine of fashion combined with informed life-style features are finding Mirabella surprisingly to their taste.
The buzz among fashion insiders is that Mirabella is beginning to make Vogue and Elle look old hat. "Mirabella is the magazine fashion women are talking about," says Lenore Benson, president of the Fashion Group International, a New York City-based trade association. "Today women want to see more than just pages of clothes." Advertisers have also taken notice of the magazine, which now reaches 400,000 readers. Mirabella's ad revenues shot up 44% during the last six months of 1990, to $10.6 million.
Casting aside the signature skinnies and grinnies that characterize the glossy pages of Elle and Vogue, Mirabella in its fashion pages features lesser-known models with figures of more realistic proportions. Instead of highlighting fantasy fashions, it appeals to the 30-to-40-year-old woman by showcasing practical, often affordable clothes. Mirabella's greatest departure, however, is its eclectic menu of offerings. Fully half the pages are devoted to business, culture and beauty features. A monthly news section dissects the good, the bad and the baffling from the runways of Paris, Milan and New York, and tracks the latest in fabrics, furniture and architecture. In place of breathless beauty tips, Mirabella may poke fun at questionable treatments.
The magazine's guiding spirit is Grace Mirabella, who has spent 40 of her 61 years in the fashion world. Toward the end of the 17 years she spent building Vogue into a powerhouse, Mirabella harbored a vision. "I felt it was time to reposition the fashion magazine from a book of endless pages of clothes to a style magazine that readers would pick up and stay with for a few hours," she recalls. When she was fired in 1988 by S.I. Newhouse, who wanted a younger look for Vogue, media buccaneer Rupert Murdoch came forward with a proposal that Mirabella found irresistible.
Backed by Murdoch's dollars, Mirabella hired two former Vogue colleagues -- her creative director, Jade Hobson Charnin, and features editor, Amy Gross -- to develop a voice that would speak to mature, contemporary women. Hypersensitive to comparisons with Lear's, she feels her feature offerings can compete with Vanity Fair's and the New Yorker's. The latter is still a stretch, although recent contributors -- including Francine du Plessix Gray and Roy Blount -- have toughened Mirabella's edge.
Barring a deep recession, Mirabella is expected to break even within the next year. Murdoch's News Corp., which is laboring under an $8.4 billion debt, indicated in March that it would be willing to entertain bids for some of its magazine properties -- Mirabella included. The news has caused little disturbance at Mirabella. "It would have no effect on my business or my people," says Julie Lewit-Nirenberg, the magazine's publisher. "I'm very sanguine."