MEMO PAD
Byline: Lisa Lockwood / With contributions from Jacob Bernstein
Versace Night Live: “I’m sort of a frustrated fashionista,” says “Saturday Night Live’s” Maya Rudolph. “I went to Parsons for a little while but chickened out on the fashion thing.” Apparently the fashion experience has come in handy. She’s turned it into a Donatella Versace sketch that started in December and was reprised on this weekend’s show.
In the latest Versace installment last Saturday — which followed one last December where Mick Jagger appeared as Karl Lagerfeld — Ian McKellen played Yves Saint Laurent and told Versace, among other things that “she smells like diesel fuel.” Rudolph flashes her underwear and asks him, “What does an old queen do when he retires?”
So has Donatella responded? “We just heard the other day that she wants to be in the next sketch, which is very exciting. Tell her to come on down. We’re dying to have her.”
TALK BY THE POUND: Those wondering what the March issue of Talk looked like can wonder no more. Holly Millea’s cover story on Courtney Love has been picked up by Entertainment Weekly (where it will appear next week) and British style bible The Face, which turned it into its April cover. But there’s one thing readers won’t see: a stunning portrait of Love with daughter Frances Bean shot by Jean Baptiste Mondino. Love wouldn’t allow the shot to be published.
The Love article is not the only indication that Talk finally had, to quote its former editor’s favorite word, buzz. Last week’s Audit Bureau figures showed the magazine’s readership was up a healthy 22 percent in subscriptions and 5.7 percent in newsstand sales in the last six months, just prior to Hearst publisher Cathie Black’s showing up at Talk’s offices in late January in a perky ponyskin jacket and announcing to the magazine’s 80-odd staffers that they’d be joining the unemployment line.
The numbers bode well for Talk’s former editorial director Maer Roshan, who is in talks with David Pecker of American Media about helming his own magazine. Roshan isn’t talking, but at a Media Bistro event for gay editors at mainstream magazines last week a slew of his former staffers, some of whom are rumored to be working with Roshan on his magazine, showed up to hear their old boss, including Andrew Lee and Laura Brown (no relation to Tina.) No word on design director Rina Migliaccio’s whereabouts. Perhaps she was home working on the mock-up.
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BLYTH’S NEW ROLE: Myrna Blyth, who has served as editor in chief of Ladies’ Home Journal for more than 20 years, as well as editor in chief of More, has been named editorial director of Meredith Corp.’s New York-based magazines and new product development.
In her new role, Blyth will oversee editorial for LHJ and More magazines, as well as new products, among them Living Room, a lifestyle magazine for a younger demographic.
Succeeding Blyth as editor in chief of More is current editor Susan Crandall. She has been with More since its August 1998 launch and, before that, served as executive editor of LHJ. A search for a new editor in chief for LHJ is under way.