Pretty woman crashes servers
It is a chestnut of the periodical publishing business that if you want to sell a magazine to women, put a pretty woman on the cover. And if you want to sell a magazine to men — put a pretty woman on the cover. New York Magazine scored big this week with that hoary old truism when it put Lindsay Lohan on the front. The clever bit was that the magazine got celebrity snapper Bert Stern to re-create the legendary Marilyn Monroe 1962 shoot for Vogue magazine, six weeks before her death, with Lohan playing the role of the sex symbol. News of the cover story spread around the world faster than a grass fire with a tail wind, as they say in Texas, and the magazine's servers crashed under the weight of the demand.
Celeb trivia: In the 1962 session, Stern persuaded Monroe's stylists to leave him alone with the star. "At the Lohan shoot, the crowd included Lohan's manager, her security guard, and her younger sister, Ali; a makeup artist and assistant, a hairstylist and assistant, a stylist, a manicurist, a sentry to watch the borrowed diamonds; Stern, his manager, and two photo assistants." As this Stern photoset on flickr shows, Monroe was unique. Still, as NY mag proved this week, you can sell lots of copies with a comically untalented copy of an original. Talking of talent, seeing that this is Oscars Sunday, here is the finest female acting talent. All of it.
