New Elle editor Roberta Myers cautions against reading too much into the demise of her last magazine, Mirabella. 
    She rejects claims that the death of Mirabella signaled the beginning of the end for women's books.
    Far from being a dying market, the women's segment is vital and dynamic, she says, with new magazines being launched and the very definition of the fashion magazine up for reinterpretation.
    "Women’s magazines need to be responsive to women’s changing needs, but the truth is that they are," says Myers.
     In a recent article in Salon magazine, Ann Marlowe, a former Mirabella contributor, argued that the usefulness of gender as a signifier of tastes and preferences has diminished, making the women’s magazine an increasingly obsolete marketing vehicle.
    But Myers doesn’t think that’s the case.
    "That article felt Swiftian to me," she says. "It was an interesting jumping off point, but I don’t think the conclusion was really true."
    Myers takes the helm at Elle at a time of flux for fashion magazines and for women’s magazines in general.
     "Women have changed, and their relationship to fashion has changed," says Myers.
   "We have more money, we have more power," she says. "Real women are now as much the arbiters of style as designers are."
     Since she was last at Elle two years ago as a senior editor, the market has undergone dramatic changes, with the rise of the internet and the increasing difficulty of securing newsstand space both affecting magazine publishers. 
     The last few years have also seen the definition of the fashion magazine expanding as advertisers endemic to the category have turned to new books and other emerging venues to reach consumers, says Myers.
     Shopping magazines like InStyle and Lucky represent a reconception of the fashion magazine and a new set of options for fashion and beauty advertisers, she says.
     There’s also been a fair bit of change of late among the established market leaders: Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar and W.
    In the last year, Conde Nast parent Advance Publications purchased Fairchild Publications, bringing two of the top four fashion books, Conde Nast’s Vogue and Fairchild’s W, under the same roof. 
    Though Conde Nast and Fairchild are being operated as separate companies for all practical purposes, the potential exists for the two titles to leverage off each other, making life unpleasant for competitors.
    What’s more, Harper’s Bazaar has energized its presence in the market with a dramatic redesign undertaken by new editor Kate Betts.
    Bazaar’s ad pages were up 20.9 percent to 588.44 in the first four months of this year. Its ad revenue was up 25.7 percent to $32 million in the same period, according to figures from the Publishers Information Bureau.
    Elle’s gains, meanwhile, have been more modest. Its ad pages were up 3.9 percent to 693.31 in the first four months of 2000, with ad dollars up 12.7 percent to $40.6 million.
    Vogue continues both to lead the category and to post considerable gains. Ad pages in Vogue were up 9.6 percent over last year’s, to 1,056.88, while ad revenue climbed 20.1 percent to $64.2 million.

-Jeff Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life.

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