Today’s fashion rule – don’t cross Lucinda Chambers.

Back in May she was fired from her job as editor at British Vogue, but it was the manner of her firing that really rattled her cage.

After 35 years on the job she was sacked in three minutes – her description of the incident on Vestoj:

It took them three minutes to do it. No one in the building knew it was going to happen. The management and the editor I’ve worked with for twenty-five years had no idea. Nor did HR. Even the chairman told me he didn’t know it was going to happen. No one knew, except the man who did it – the new editor.

That is brutal, and now Lucinda has fired back. HuffPost SA have a decent summary of some of her best zingers:

Chambers is brutally honest about one “crappy” Vogue cover she hated and the reason she’d already stopped reading the magazine.

“I’m not ashamed of what happened to me,” Chambers told Vestoj, adding, “I know [my photoshoots] weren’t all good – some were crappy. The June cover with Alexa Chung in a stupid Michael Kors T-shirt is crap. He’s a big advertiser so I knew why I had to do it. I knew it was cheesy when I was doing it, and I did it anyway.”

Hating on a cover is one thing, but hating on the fashion magazine industry is quite a bombshell:

“There are very few fashion magazines that make you feel empowered. Most leave you totally anxiety-ridden, for not having the right kind of dinner party, setting the table in the right kind of way or meeting the right kind of people,” Chambers [below] said.

“Truth be told, I haven’t read Vogue in years,” she confessed. “Maybe I was too close to it after working there for so long, but I never felt I led a Vogue-y kind of life. The clothes are just irrelevant for most people – so ridiculously expensive.”

She added that “in fashion we are always trying to make people buy something they don’t need. We don’t need any more bags, shirts or shoes. So we cajole, bully or encourage people into continue buying. I know glossy magazines are meant to be aspirational, but why not be both useful and aspirational? That’s the kind of fashion magazine I’d like to see.”

Shots fired.

The interview on Vestoj was briefly taken down, before being reinstating it on Tuesday, and that in itself is very telling:

“In terms of the reasons why it was removed, they are directly related to the industry pressures which Lucinda discusses in her interview,” Vestoj Editor-in-Chief Anja Aronowsky Cronberg told the Times. “As you know, fashion magazines are rarely independent because their existence depends on relationships with powerful institutions and individuals, whether it’s for tickets to shows, access in order to conduct interviews or advertising revenue.”

Business is business, but they don’t come more vapid than the fashion mag game.

[sources:vestoj&huffpostsa]