Shefalee Vasudev, Editor, Marie Claire India

Shefalee Vasudev, Editor of Marie Claire India, has clearly set her mind to Indianise the high quality of fashion and beauty features that the magazine is known for worldwide and initiate a vibrant value-based features content as its key-differentiating element from other lifestyle women’s magazines. Vasudev plans to bring this internationally renowned magazine brand closer to the global Indian woman's idea of a magazine as a worthy companion.

During her 13-year stint as a journalist, Vasudev has written for various newspapers, including Asian Age and Hindustan Times, as well as various magazines. During her stint in India Today, she wrote and reported extensively on gender issues. Social investigative reports like those on female foeticide, trafficking of girl children, child sexual abuse and women and children in religion have been the focus of her work.

Now donning the role of Editor of the fashion magazine, Vasudev plans to make Marie Claire a magazine that talks about real women and their lives by interpreting stories of contemporary India. In an interview with exchange4media’s Sumita Patra, Vasudev shares more about the magazine and the competing environment.

Q. Tell us something about Marie Claire’s target readers?

20-35 years, urban, educated and open-minded women.

Q. What was the objective behind launching Marie Claire in India? There are already many big titles in that space. What was the need for one more magazine?

The need is defined by the many needs that Indian society has. We had few needs 50 years back, we had more needs 25 years back, and even more needs five years back. Readership product symbolises the evolution of the society. There is a certain fickleness involved in one’s approach towards a product, the readership product is also the end result of a certain restlessness that the new consumer has.

A magazine like Marie Claire combines very strong feature content in a fashion magazine so far not seen in India. When you say there are so many titles you see Elle, which is a fashion and style magazine, you see Femina, which is like everything for everyone kind of magazine, you see Cosmopolitan, which is for the young and is about relationships, and you see Women’s Era and so on and so forth. What Marie Claire offers is very elegant fashion, top-notch global fashion. It’s a fashion magazine, but one that also does campaigns, carries features, does investigative reports – all packed into a women’s magazine format. This combination is not existent in India. So, it’s a great means of combining meaningful journalism with a fashion magazine.

Q. Marie Claire talks about the urban Indian woman, the issues she has to grapple with, etc. Why only this section of society?

Because they can afford the products that we are showing in the magazine. We have few features/stories on rural India, but the entire magazine is not targeted at the small towns. Disposable income is very important to understand this cluster of ideas. The magazine gives you hints on style and to incorporate that style and trends, you need to have a high disposable income. So, if you target someone who can’t afford it, you are alienated, you intimidate the people and you leave them feeling cold. So, the fact is when you show so much, women should be able to buy it, and hence, the magazine is targeted at people who can afford to spend, and I am not ashamed of admitting it.

Q. Can you elaborate on the reason for coming up with this campaign?

Because the law has entirely given us a scene to indicate that the more India is becoming modern and supposedly global, the more timid morality has become. You would expect that in this new India broadmindedness morality should be given its right place, but it is not. Actress Khushboo’s remark on premarital sex was blown up to bizarre levels of controversy. There were problems on Valentine’s Day, Carol Gracias’ dress falls off at the Lakme Fashion Week and the Deputy CM of Maharashtra says carry out an enquiry to find out whether it was deliberate immorality.

So, what is morality and who decides on morality? It is the prerogative of a magazine like Marie Claire to take up an issue that is not necessarily against men. It’s about men and women. We need to make morality a freer ideal so that’s why we went with this rather than look at dowry, female foeticide, etc., to begin with, which will be our concerns in subsequent issues.

Q. What would be the other factors?

I think we do fashion which is very doable. We try to simplify fashion. We tell you to get the look for less money. This is a Marie Claire specialty. So, it comes to the level of how women will think when they are at home when they look at the magazine and fashion and beauty editors pre-empt those queries for you. It’s not just the features, the magazine is a composite of realness across the menu.

Q. Your inaugural issue had Preity Zinta on the cover. Do you intend to follow this trend of using celebrities?

We decided to put known people on our cover to begin with. We will not have complete strangers staring back at you from the cover. We will do local and international celebrities for a while and then let’s see what the readership response is, let’s see who the people want to see on the cover. We might change our plans accordingly. It’s about evolving. We haven’t arrived at any answers yet, we just want to evoke few questions.

Q. How would you characterise the primary focus of the editorial content of Marie Claire? How different is it from say Cosmopolitan, Savvy, Femina, Good Housekeeping, etc.?

I just told you a bit about the difference. If you look at Marie Claire, you can see the difference. The difference is that of packaging a news magazine content with fashion and beauty. You asked me what will be the primary focus of the content, see we see the world through trends and fashion, but even when we do a campaign as strong as this one, we started with a campaign against moral policing, which is called ‘Let me be me’. It’s a strong idea that we will run for a year. It tells you why the campaign has been put in a women’s magazine. It packages a Bollywood face who we feel is feisty and fearless.

It has seven prominent personalities standing up for the campaign saying ‘Let me be me’ in other ways and it has comments from all over India as to why moral policing should be banned, Marie Claire has a passion element. The magazine is very stylised. Even when we do social stories, social features, we do it through the element of elegance and design and trend. There is fashion reportage which is a fashion magazine’s core. There is a fusion of design sensibility because we are becoming glocal in our head. We have shown that through fashion.

So, the whole magazine sees a cross pollination between fashion, which is a representative trend of new India, and the social feature, which is the need of the hour. The only journalism to do in India is meaningful journalism, you cannot avoid fashion features and social features when you talk about the new Indian woman.

Q. What led you to choose the tagline ‘Let me be me’?

This was incidentally my idea. I feel there has to be an individuality that women need to be puffed up about. It’s all about a need and filling that need gap. We felt almost no one in the women’s magazine genre upheld this freedom of self and the freedom of expression. We believe in experiencing and expression, so there has to be a line that symbolises that. That’s the core editorial focus that we will raise the bar and we will reassure and help the Indian woman be her individual self. We support choice, so whoever she is, dark or short, tall or fair, rich or poor, there has to be a comfort level with her sense of self and that’s why ‘Let me be me’ – don’t try to transform me. So, a magazine that actually shows you 300 products across its 228 pages is actually telling the woman that the products will work only if you are your own self and that’s what we talk about.

Q. So, basically the core idea was to give women a chance to express their individuality?

And to be bold with the sense of the self. We all explore it, but we must learn to stand by it. Having it inside us is possible for all of us, but to be able to live it outside and to accept it in others is also important. Choice is also very difficult when others make that choice and sometimes regret it. Choice is never one way, so when you say ‘Let me be me’ it’s not about me wanting not to wear make-up, it’s about tomorrow somebody turning around and saying listen, please don’t dictate terms to me, this is what I am, take it or leave it. So, choice is a kind of communication – that’s what this magazine is all about.

Q. How do you propose to connect with the readers’ psyche?

By doing stories on real women, for real women, by real I mean shifting our focus from the glamour world, the Page 3 world that I completely detest. Page 3 is the problematic area, it’s a very cornered class of people, it’s a media created social class of people. We want to do more real stories that do not make Page 3 people unreal, but when we talk about real we want to talk about conflicts, we want to talk about concerns, we want to talk about battles and we want to talk about women in the Army, the moods of rebellion.

Q. Can you elucidate some more on the magazine’s content? How will you differentiate yourself from the competition?

The treatment will be different. Then, there is a positioning difference. There is an element of great surprise in Marie Claire and it will treat the even most serious of subjects with lot of dignity, elegance and a smattering of humour and wit.

Q. How is Marie Claire India different from Marie Claire internationally?

It looks pretty much the same, the branding is the same. The difference is in the flavours, there are Indian stories in Marie Claire India as we have to keep in mind the Indian readership. The reality of women in India is different from the reality of women in Europe, and the magazine clearly addresses that. Every editor localises and interprets the brand for her readers and that’s how the whole shifting process comes. We take great care to ensure that we do only something that inspires and provokes us here.

Q. Do you also plan to have some content tailored for male readers?

I don’t really buy your question 100 per cent. When our destinations are the same, when our goals are the same, when we are citizens of the same country, why differentiate between male and female readers? There is a commonness of concerns that we share. After a point male and female issues merge to become one. I think editors should stop bothering so much about the difference. I am unable to distinguish it really. Both men and women will find the magazine interesting for its worth, it’s a readership product.

Q. Your inaugural issue features a campaign on moral policing, which will run for a year. What are the other campaigns that one can look forward to?

A year is a long time to work on one campaign and it will run without the association of a cover girl from next time. From next month, our cover girl will not be the face of the campaign, but you will see at least one story inside the magazine that will subscribe to ‘Let me be me’. It will be about moral policing and we will run stories in different formats, but the cover girl will not be associated with the campaign from next month (August 2006).

After a year it would be idiotic if I plan another campaign. Every campaign must have a goal, the importance of running a campaign successfully is to have short term and long term goals, so we have a goal for 12 months. Our next campaign will depend on what becomes the issue of our time. Frankly speaking, I could not have planned on moral policing in June 2005. When I joined Outlook magazine in June 2005, moral policing didn’t make sense at that time, it started making sense September onwards, it gathered storm by then. So, you know there has to be some space for topicality, there has to be a sense of urgency, a sense of need, otherwise journalism becomes rooted in old times. So, as we go along we will know what the next campaign should be.

Q. Lastly, what is your opinion on advertorials?

I haven’t had the chance to form an opinion yet. When the advertorial comes we will take a call. There is no advertorial yet in Marie Claire, so it is premature for me to comment on it.

Q. Is this trend of using campaigns followed internationally as well?

Yes. Many Marie Claire magazines have run successful campaigns on issues that are germane to their society and have been very successful, not only in terms of magazine sales, but also in creating the right kind of atmosphere in which a campaign should be discussed, debated and taken to fruition.

Q. How do you intend to build Marie Claire as a brand?

Since we are a fashion magazine, we intend to make Marie Claire’s association with fashion something to remember by, and that includes instituting a fashion awards sooner or later, where Marie Claire will choose the emerging designer of the year, the dress of the year, etc. Marie Claire should be able to spot trends to the extent that the awards recognise emerging designers and define fashion awards in India. We want the tagline ‘Let me be me’ to become a household name.