New Bazaar, same market

Just like the supermodels at the fashion shows at which it claims to have the best seat at the side of the catwalk, Harper's Bazaar, formerly known as Harpers & Queen, is about to undergo the latest in a succession of costume changes.

This one is an outfit glittering with bling: each collector's edition copy of the new title will be decorated with 120 crystals, courtesy of the Austrian sparkle specialists Swarovski.

It is the National Magazine Company's way of getting standout on the news-stand, alerting the public that the title commonly known in Britain as Harpers is now called just Bazaar – which is what it launched as back in 1929 as the British edition of an American publishing phenomenon, the oldest women's fashion magazine in the world.

Since then, the magazine has switched identity with a regularity normally associated with those appearing on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted. The most recent of those changes took place just 18 months ago, with the magazine dropping the "& Queen" from its name in order to sever its links with the Sloane Square set, and substituting a teensy "Bazaar" in its place above the Harper's masthead. The editor, Lucy Yeomans – admitting she was already fearful of confusing readers – said the re-branding would be quite "impactful enough". But now Harpers has had yet another makeover.

Rival publishers are crowing, claiming that NatMags, which is also overhauling the men's title Esquire, is in turmoil. Harpers, they say, is a magazine with an identity crisis – the pampered posh girl who is trying to hide her roots and be taken seriously as a true fashionista.

Well, Jodie and Jemma Kidd made that transition, and there are signs that Harper's Bazaar is doing so too. Earlier this summer, the Periodical Publishers Association named the title as Consumer Magazine of the Year, beating off competition from Vogue and Grazia, which were both shortlisted. The judges's citation, read out at the Grosvenor House hotel in London, praised the reconfigured magazine for its "beautifully presented design". Since Yeomans took over in 2001, sales have risen from 85,000 to 105,500, and will increase still further in the biannual figures released this month.

Sitting in her Soho office, fingering the first hot-off-the-presses copy of British Bazaar, she says she is looking at what will be a record-selling edition. Running to 400 pages, the issue is so bulky it was almost too much for the printers to handle. Harper's Bazaar likes to change clothes but, unlike some of the women it writes about, no one could accuse it of being too skinny.

"This was always our plan, to go to the big logo," Yeomans, who is still only 36, now admits. "But we felt that to go straight from Harpers & Queen, which always had the emphasis on the "Harpers", to the big international Bazaar logo would be too much of a leap for our readers."

Harpers & Queen was always bracketed with Tatler magazine as a chronicler of the adventures and trials of British high society. But this latest rebrand gives a clear signal, says Yeomans, that she has totally abandoned that field. "I think we did that quite a long time ago, but now the perception is that we've abandoned that area. [We are] not old society with a capital 'S', not Lord and Lady So-and-So. People come to us for our fashion, our arts coverage and features and travel and beauty. We still have party pages, but then Vogue has party pages, and Grazia is one big party page."

As Yeomans talks, her publisher, Tess Macleod-Smith, looks over her shoulder, cooing with delight at the new product. "The typographics look beautiful," she says. "There are so many good things. These pages look ab-so-lute-ly brilliant."

Picking up Yeomans's theme, Macleod-Smith says that Vogue, Elle and Grazia are Bazaar's competition, especially now that it is part of a global brand with 23 international editions. "What we've wanted to do is position ourselves as a very strong alternative to Vogue and Elle, and that's paying off now. For a long, long time Vogue hasn't had any competition."

How worried Vogue will be about this threat is another matter. According to Peter York, the style commentator who wrote for Harpers in the Eighties, there is still a lot of distance between the two magazines. He calls Alexandra Shulman, the editor of British Vogue, "the automatic high-fashion pundit of choice on everything, and you don't see anything comparable with Harper's. When you talk to women you don't hear them quoting it, you don't hear them talking about it."

Yeomans would argue that York is not among her target audience. Asked why a fashion-obsessed young woman might buy Bazaar over Vogue, the two women pause before suggesting that Shulman's title would not run the "Vanity Fair-style" features that will sometimes be found in Bazaar – for example, a piece penned by Yeomans after accompanying Imran Khan on an election tour in Pakistan.

It is easier to identify the points of difference with Grazia. "Because they are a weekly, they haven't got the time to do the kind of work we do, the showcase pieces, the beautifully written 3,000-word articles," says Macleod-Smith. "They have not got the kind of substance we have. I love Grazia but it's a 10-minute read. I quite happily leave my Grazia, I give it away, I leave it on the tube."

As Yeomans leafs through her own magazine, the first thing she picks out is a photo-led story following the parallel careers of David Bailey and Don McCullin. "They've both been married four times and they ended up marrying Catherines as the final love of their lives." (Catherine Fairweather, McCullin's wife, is travel editor of Harper's Bazaar.)

To emphasise the difference between the British Bazaar and the American Bazaar (which also sells in the UK, but only at around 1,000 copies per issue), this first collector's edition has a very patriotic feel: Georgia Frost, the 17-year-old new face of Burberry, is on the cover; inside, the lead feature is a "ones to watch" article on Britain's "40 Under 40". Those nominated, including Samantha Cameron, are photographed in Paul Smith T-shirts "which he did at a day's notice".

Yeomans may not court the aristocracy, but like most editors she craves the big names – the meritocracy, as she would have it. Matthew Williamson, the designer, guest-edited a recent edition, and Sam Taylor-Wood and Manolo Blahnik have both written for Yeomans.

She once told these pages that her dream was to sit around a Glastonbury campfire with Kate Moss and Damien Hirst. At this year's festival she had to be content with wading through the mud with Giles Deacon, another designer friend and Harper's Bazaar guest writer. She is planning a big party in November, a Moet-sponsored bash at which an eclectic mix of musical talent has been invited to perform.

Asked whether Bazaar is intrigued by Victoria Beckham's attempts to make a reputation in the world of fashion, Macleod-Smith instantly shakes her head, saying "I don't think our readers are interested in her", though Yeomans acknowledges she "has a look" (American Bazaar editor Glenda Bailey, by contrast, is fascinated by Posh: see p6).

For Macleod-Smith, the success of the repositioning of Harper's Bazaar is very much a business proposition. Merely placing the small "Bazaar" above the masthead 18 months ago immediately provoked a surge of interest among advertisers, and an extra 250 ad pages since – doubling the magazine's profits.

She thinks the latest redesign, which has been overseen by Tom Usher after he was recruited from Arena magazine, will bring in a wealth of fresh advertising. She starts pointing out the new arrivals in the ad pages of the September issue. "Marks & Spencers – the first time we've ever had them. We've been chasing Stuart Rose for a while. And Topshop! We have Topshop, Monsoon, Whistles – all our growth has been in fashion brands, top end and the high street as well."

There was a time when readers of Harpers would have turned up their noses at advertisements for Topshop on the luxurious pages of their favourite magazine. Macleod-Smith says that the distance between the two brands has evaporated, and that NatMags has long been courting the influential high-street fashion outlet. "We would have loved to have had ads from Topshop in Harpers & Queen, but there's no way they would have ever done so, because it would have been wrong for Topshop to be associated with a brand that was so exclusive."

The Swarovski crystal issue (described as "tacky" by one female fashion commentator) will be accompanied by reams of point-of-sale advertising to let readers know that this is the revised Harper's Bazaar, not some entirely new magazine. Trials of the new logo in the traditionally conservative market of the North-west of England have suggested that the name change will not drive down sales, says the publisher.

Later in the year, a new Bazaar website will launch, more than a decade after British Vogue established itself online. By linking the digital and print propositions in a joint brand-based strategy, and offering readers the chance to buy online the pieces they fall in love with on the glossy pages, NatMags hopes to offer something different.

Macleod-Smith is a shrewd operator, who formerly worked at rival Conde Nast and who makes frequent references to Stephen Quinn, her opposite number at Vogue. She claims Quinn does not enjoy as cosy a relationship with his American counterpart as she does with American Bazaar, and that he does not appreciate the importance of rolling out a brand. "Stephen, who I adore, and who is my ex-boss, doesn't like anything 'brand Vogue'. He finds that a most repulsive way of looking at it."

Yeomans too worked at Conde Nast, though quit after just one day at Vogue when she was offered the editor's chair at Harpers. To her embarrassment, she had to give Shulman news of her departure by mobile phone, as the Vogue editor was attending London Fashion Week. Now she is hoping once again to loom large in Shulman's rear-view mirror, having finally positioned her own magazine where she wants it. "Next year it's going to be called Baz," she says, laughing and holding her hand over the last three letters of the famous Dido-font masthead. "No, I promise it isn't."

Glenda Bailey's crystal-ball editing style restores 'Bazaar' for its big 140th bash

With a track record that includes turning Marie-Claire into an international brand and bringing Bazaar, the oldest women's fashion magazine, back from the dead, Glenda Bailey hardly needed Paris Hilton to go to jail on her behalf to make her reputation.

But that is precisely what the ditzy American heiress did by taking part in a Bazaar photoshoot with her friend Nicole Richie, pretending to a carry out a jewel heist in a Peter Lindbergh photoshoot headlined "Partners in Crime" that ended with Hilton and Richie being locked up. An accompanying interview with Hilton was titled "Paris' Rap Sheet". Unhappily for the subject, less so for the editor, the feature showed an uncanny foresight, with publication coinciding with Paris being jailed in real life. The affair has only added to the Bailey legend.

"Our on-sale date coincided with Paris's actually going to jail. Even though, of course, we had produced that fashion story three months in advance so nobody knew that was going to happen," she says from her New York office.

"People do say I edit by crystal ball and I try my best to live up to that reputation."

Having grown up in a working-class family in Derbyshire, Bailey now inhabits an Ab Fab world but with an accent that is closer to Jane Horrocks's "Bubble" than Meryl Streep's editrix in The Devil Wears Prada, Miranda Priestly (reputedly based on her rival Anna Wintour, editor of American Vogue).

Since she took over at a beleaguered Bazaar in 2001, Bailey has driven up news-stand sales, traditionally a difficult area in the US, by 38 per cent. She has increased advertising sales by 16 per cent year-on-year, and for 45 consecutive issues.

She attributes her success to having brought Bazaar back to its roots as a fashion magazine and believes that the name has a powerful international presence. "I've always believed Bazaar is an iconic brand, it's like Coca-Cola. It's all about the beauty and fun of fashion. So many fashion magazines take themselves far too seriously, you shouldn't look at a fashion magazine and feel like you are studying for an exam."

Bailey's Bazaar is "news-based" and reflects her fascination with the trends of modern life. "I think a lot of fashion magazines risk becoming dinosaurs because they don't reflect the culture they live in," she says.

The arrival in America of the Beckhams is a big story for her and she has already commissioned Posh to style her friend Katie Holmes for a Bazaar cover shoot.

"I went to the [Beckhams's] party on Sunday night and had a wonderful time and I have to tell you in LA everybody wants to meet Victoria and David. Other celebrities, agents, PRs. It was really thrilling to see such a warm welcome," she says. "Flying out to LA there were three girls on the plane who had copied Victoria's haircut. These were people I just happened to notice on the plane and I thought 'What fantastic influence she has already had'."

Another example of Bailey trying to "marry" popular culture with Bazaar's fashion coverage was the magazine's portrayal of The Simpson's at Paris fashion week. "You have Homer visiting Karl Lagerfeld, wearing exactly the same outfit as Karl, looking very intently at Marge wearing Chanel Couture. Then you have her being introduced to Donatella. All of a sudden her hair is not piled on her head but is exactly the same shape as Donatella's. It's original and clever. I guess that's the key for me."

All the designers featured in the piece asked for copies of the original artwork, a reflection of the relationship that Bazaar tries to nurture with the industry. As a former designer herself ("not a very talented one – I soon realised I was not going to be the next Karl Lagerfeld but that I loved magazines"), she has contacts in many of the big fashion houses.

So much so that she now sees herself as a "Kofi Annan" figure within the business. "The power of Bazaar has huge influence," she says. "I feel like the peacekeeping force in our industry because we are in the unique position of knowing all of the owners of companies, the designers, and every aspect of the industry."

In November, this ancient title, 25 years older than Vogue, marks its 140th anniversary. Unsurprisingly, Bailey is planning to celebrate.

"I'm going to have a party. I love parties. When we launched my Bazaar, Sting sang, which was great fun," she says. "For my [editorial] team we've had Debbie Harry sing to us and Patti Smith came to play...we've had Gloria Gaynor. We work really hard and I want my team to have a good time – it's as simple as that."

Ian Burrell