Cutie Gone Wrong (+ Mini, Smart, Cub)
I used to get SMART magazine a lot. When it started, it had the sub-header "Cutie For Boys", which they dropped after a while. Back then both CUTIE and SMART had really good photography in the layouts and ads. In the last five years or so, they aren't as fun anymore though, partly because neither has as many conceptual photo spreads anymore. The catalogue-type sections have taken over most of the pages.
But I really liked the cover of this recent issue featuring Narimiya. This pic (above) was the small inside cover one. It's slightly different from the front cover pic, which is here:
http://img45.photobucket.com/albums/v137/gummykid1/px2/narimiya-smart0704-L3.jpg
BTW, speaking of CUTIE and SMART, does anyone ever read MINI? When it started, it was billed as "Smart For Girls". It caters to a slightly older crowd than CUTIE, and the clothes are trendy but not as many crazy combos like Cutie. (A friend of mine told me that once she saw a girl at a party who was attempting a "wacky Japanese" look obviously inspired by CUTIE but not in a good way, apparently she just looked dumb, like with cutouts of anime characters stuck all over her clothes, etc. My friend commented to the person she was with: "CUTIE GONE WRONG", meaning only for the friend to hear, but unfortunately right when she said that, the loud music stopped, and her voice boomed out across the room, and the un-cutie girl whipped around and just *glared* daggers at my friend, who then beat a hasty retreat from the angry fashion victim LOL! It's a good lesson about keeping your big mouth shut! ^^;;)
Anyway, I think MINI has nice clothes, and they're pretty cool and all but I don't often feel compelled to buy it bcs the layouts are a bit too much on the low key side for me. Although it's still miles above American fashion mags, taste-wise. (I won't even mention Canadian fashion mags -_-;;)
But where was I going with this...Oh yeah, recently there's another new magazine, CUB, which is sub-headed as "Boy's Cutie". Full Circle? Narimiya has already been on the cover twice, and it's only on the third issue. I guess that CUB is meant to be more like SMART used to be in the good old days, and after looking through an issue, I have to say that yes, it's a lot like classic SMART, but without the editorial photo spreads (except Narimiya's). They even have a regular feature that used to be one of my favorite sections in the old SMART, which is the part where they look at people's apartments, and their collections of crap, etc.
Finally, I wonder if SMART will still have Kubozuka on the cover, post "flying" incident...one of the reasons I always liked SMART, always lots of Kubo...