(Note, this essay is also posted in Anne’s In Business column.)

I may have been the first fashion and style writer to call out big concerns about Emmanuelle Alt’s visionary capacity to lead Vogue Paris, but I’m no longer alone.

It’s fine for Alt to lead the magazine in a new direction, but creative, captivating originality and freshness must rule. Carine Roitfeld is a tough act to follow. If she goes into the magazine business as rumoured, let Vogue Paris pray it’s only a semi-annual or quarterly.

The disappointment in Vogue Paris is pretty keen at The Fashion Spot (TFS), although not universal. There is no agreement on anything at TFS, which is a reflection of life as we know it. If one is keeping score, the negatives have the current lead, and they are fierce.

Simply stated, the world doesn’t need another Madame Figaro, an existing publication that’s no dull dame but an acquired taste with plenty of experience under her belt. If Alt wants to desexualize French Vogue — a trend we reject, but it’s her show along with Vogue Paris president Xavier Romatet — that’s her prerogative.

Estrogen Balanced Creativity

Let’s be clear. My beef with Emmanuelle Alt isn’t that she’s a sensuality vegetarian, because as PETA showed us long ago, a woman can do some amazing things with vegetables and without baring her breast.

I might like testosterone but also understand that the linear thinking of so many men has gotten the world in a heap of trouble. We need estrogen in our mix!

Creativity doesn’t require nudity to get people’s attention. As an example, I cite these fantastic blender ads from Young & Rubicam Tel Aviv.

‘Only the Exceptional Last’, makes art of fruits and vegetables for blender brand Magimix. These wonderful images have memorable pow factor, romancing the hell out of vegetables and life in the kitchen, with modernity and a big smile factor. (via Daily Smarts)

Breasts vs Throwing Out the Baby with the Bath Water

The minute I read Emmanuelle Alt’s plans to desexualize Vogue Paris, the alarm bells went off on AOC. (Feb 8, 2011) The initial visual differences between Alt and Roitfeld are about far more than baring a breast or two.

These images gives us a taste of before and after Roitfeld. Same model Anna Selezneva is lensed by Claudia Knoepfel & Stefan Indlekofer in a spring jewelry (May 2011 vs March 2011) editorial.

We wrote on April 26, ‘Vogue Paris is feeling very Ralph Lauren’, a brand that’s one of the world’s greatest, but also one with DNA that reflects America’s de-sensualized approach to living and emphasis on money, status and achievment.

Ralph Lauren is about romance and ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’, not seduction and smelling the roses. One doesn’t expect to see honey dripping off a woman’s mouth in a Ralph Lauren ad.

Under Carine Roitfeld, the honey is not only dripping off her chin but onto her toenails. Hands in touch with female libido go wandering on a naked man’s butt in the business of selling jewelry. This is provocation Roitfeld style.

Eniko Mihalik | Terry Richardson | Vogue Paris April 2010 AOC Private Studio

Creativity vs Plagarism

As Fashion Director for Victoria’s Secret I roamed the world seeking inspiration for design. Sometimes it was just a detail that inspired me; other times it was the entire item that I purchased. One of my proudest professional moments was spending months in Asia working with glass blowers to perfect their techniques and also quality of materials.

I bought a $350 perfume bottle in Paris, took it to Taiwan and knocked it off to sell at $35, with an 80% IMU. Placing both on a table in front of our chairman Les Wexner, I asked him to pick the original. This is relevant because Les Wexner has superb taste and has surrounded himself with only the best French and British handmade luxuries for decades.

Mr Wexner chose the Taiwan bottle, and I jumped up and down, saying ‘yes!’. Standing in front of the fire pits in 110-degree heat, wearing as little clothing as professionally possible, working with a translator to communicate to the glass blower — while sweat literally dripped off my body — had paid off.

This is how I roll. And while creativity and individuality pulse through my blood and sweat, ‘severely inspired’ design moments are also key to a successful career.

The problem is that the French are supposed to be divinely creative 24/7. Creativity and originality are part of the national culture of France; and American retailers would be lost without it.

High Fashion Editorials, Then and Now

For Emmanuelle Alt to do a 180-degree turn on sensuality in Vogue Paris is one change. My kind of ‘severe inspiration’ with perfume bottles is another. Do we expect more from Vogue Paris than the October 1997 cover (left) and the May 2011 cover (right)?

The instant that the recent Isabeli Fontana (left) editorial hit TFS, an astute commenter called out its strong resemblance to Vogue Italia’s February 1989 shoot of Linda Evangelista (right). The buzz took off in TFS and AOC coincidentally called out that fact ahead of others who now take credit for that fact.

It was a right place, right moment action reflecting no skill on our part.

In our case, we credited TFS because I’ve always been a stickler on admitting both sources and when I’m a creativity prostitute, as with the French perfume bottle. Others feel differently.

Truth In Self Promotion

It amuses me to read two websites A and C, headed by the same editor-in-chief patting each other on the back for having the nerve to belatedly open thy mouths on the Linda Evangelista/Isabeli Fontana editorials and — perhaps — criticizing Vogue Paris.

There’s an old saying that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but in truth, I am laughing.

If you think Wall Street financial derivatives are complicated, think again! Try learning the interconnectedness of a complex network of robo websites and ‘original content’ websites that appear to be distinct entities, but when you did deeply into the fine print, they’re all under the same obviously intelligent editor.

A couple weeks ago, lead website C asked me to change a quote credit from website B to C. This is a highly unusual request in my career. I would never have the nerve to interrupt another businessperson on this issue, clearly understanding the value of people’s time.

The issue wasn’t that I misquoted or misrepresented the truth, but that C wanted the quote credit from me.

My reponse was that our policy is to quote the website where we actually read the material, and the writer.

If I’ve taken a quote from Jezebel, I don’t quote their original source but Jez who is often responding to content or an issue outside Gawker Media. In my naivete — or stupidity — I also explained that this writer on B had said some nice things about a piece I wrote for Benjamin Kanarek Blog. So I wanted to give back the link love. (Perhaps I confused B with a similar-sounding W, but there’s no more time for this nonsense.)

To paraphrase, the return response from C was ‘Anne — you idiot — you are quoting a robot. That website isn’t even an original website. You quoted a robo!!! Translated, the male inference — God, and I thought you were smart, Anne.

Well I’ll be damned! Website B looks like a duck; quacks like a duck. Alexa.com treats it like a duck, but it’s actually a black swan of some kind. An imposter.

When you’ve run a $50 million business unit, was the head of product development and then fashion director for one of the world’s biggest brands for 10 years, when you’ve started more than one small business and are now determined to create a new venture as a writer, philanthropy fundraiser for needy women and eventual Internet retailer, you learn not to sweat the small stuff.

The dumb blond got duped by a website she thought was for real! No problem. I’ve had worse business crises in my career.

Hyprocrisy in Action

When I read now that yet another website headed by this same person — website A — which has nothing to do with the big robo site — website B — is thanking website C, which I believe was the original website in this digital motherlode — for being first to call out the Emmanuelle Alt /Linda Evangelista plagarism question, I find that damn ironic.

Neither A or B or C — or D,E, or F also owned by this same guy — went first. The Fashion Spot went first, as far as I know, and we followed immediately being in the right place at the right time.

I’ve expressed my concerns about Emmanuelle Alt’s capacity with consistency from the moment she said she was taking out the nudity in Vogue Paris and with each issue. That’s long before A,B,C,D,E or F expressed an ounce of concern.

If Emmanuelle Alt’s creative iintegrity or tendency to look backwards is now of concern to said website group A and C, perhaps they would provide their own boiler plate of interlocking websites to readers, so that when A makes a big praise shout out to B or C, the little people understand it’s kind of like Donald Trump talking.

Not The Donald Talking

For the record, I’m developing both Anne of Carversville and Sensuality News and AOC Shop as complementary but different websites. And I do not recycle content on one website, calling out my brilliance on the other. Transparency rules in our little medialand because I want readers to feel that they are in one holistic creativity hub.

When I challenged C on a lack of consistency of voice — damning one day and praising the next , which confuses the heck out of me— C explained that this group of 10 writers is free to disagree and say the opposite, because it’s the writer talking not the website.

Don’t read C looking for consistency or point of view. I find that 2 writers do most of the talking on C but fine — it’s 10 if they say so.

Pure, unadulterated writing, creativity and vision will carry the day for websites in the future, not intricate network of blogs, robot-generated websites and theoretically autonomous websites all owned by the same people and writers acting as if they are independent.

We are all working very hard to solve a digital business model for the future, and It’s damned difficult. Skill, authenticity, original content and genuine creativity will carry the day. Recycled content web schemes will bite the dust in the coming years.

As for using these apparently autonomous websites for self-promotion and praise that appears to come from colleagues but is in reality, oneself talking … that’s something rotten in the state of Denmark.

To critique Emmanuelle Alt’s potential for recycling earlier content within this context is just a lot of nerve. Anne