Lit Gloss

ARTS AND CULTURE

By Liz Spikol

Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted Oct. 31, 2007

Hear ye, hear ye, media sluts. There's a new glossy magazine on the stands. Only it's not glossy (that wouldn't be hip)--it's matte. And awkwardly large-format. Corduroy, says the sparsely worded editor's letter, is so named because the crew behind it wants it to be "comfortable, simple and just a little bit stylish." Its comfy agenda? "To profile people who lead interesting lives, but more importantly, people who have something to say." Cover girl No. 1 is child actor turned singer Jena Malone, who poses in a tiny nightshirt and gray sweater, a cigarette in hand, waving to an imaginary public. Though she's "the first to admit she's not a musician," Malone has decided to become one in part because "Susan Sarandon invited me to an Ani DiFranco concert and it fuckin' changed my life." It's a welcome change for this young woman, who feels that "acting is fucking powerful" and that Hollywood "did shit to her." Other profile subjects are similarly bland, like Degrassi: The Next Generation's Lauren Collins and young actor Chad Faust, who was in the TV show The 4400. The writing is press-release perfect, studded with superlatives and sentences like: "Finally, it seems as though Rain Phoenix is on her way to finding her heart's desire." But Corduroy has its moments. There are exquisite photographs by Anthony Goicolea--huge C prints of young boys, dressed identically, in some imaginary wooded campground. You can't figure out what they're doing together, but it feels sexy and certainly more interesting than Duncan Sheik saying "I hate chardonnay." In sum, I wouldn't count on this Corduroy being in your closet for a long time. It's got some holes in it.