Brandon Holley

Featuring Blake Lively, Lucky's September cover gives us an idea of the changes new EIC Eva Chen has brought to the glossy.

As you may have heard by now, Eva Chen has replaced Brandon Holley as the new Editor in Chief of Lucky, effective immediately. Chen's appointment followed her being brought onto Lucky by Conde Nast artistic director Anna Wintour as a consulting editor, to help save the failing magazine. And while we still don't know what lies ahead for Holley, we do know more about the reason for her sudden departure.

Major editorial shakeups are happening at Lucky magazine: editor in chief Brandon Holley is out, and former Teen Vogue beauty director Eva Chen has been named as her replacement.

When Anna Wintour was promoted to Conde Nast's artistic director she said her role would be like a "one-person consulting firm." In addition to her duties as Vogue's editor in chief and Teen Vogue's editorial director she would meet with the editors of Conde's other titles to offer advice and strategy. Lucky magazine, with its drop in ad pages over the last few years (the mag dropped 38 pages in 2012) and flagging circulation, is at the top of the list, it seems.

Launching at a time when bloggers are perhaps more valuable than ever to brands--and at a time when brands are still trying to figure out how to connect with and how best to use bloggers--Fohr card has signed on some pretty big names.

Welcome back to our new column, Desk Side! Sorry, PRs, we stole your lingo and in this new feature we’ll go to the desks of some of your favorite des

Last night's Lucky Shops VIP shopping night was a bit of stylish mayhem in the middle of Manhattan's Meatpacking District. I estimate there were at least a zillion people in attendance, all carrying reusable Lucky shoppers loaded with discounted designer duds and nibbling away at the most adorable miniature hors d’oeuvres I've ever seen. A decent smattering of celebs mingled amongst the crowd as well, also scouring the racks for deals and trying on sparkly costume jewelry. There were two whole floors of excellent bargains, with most stalls offering 30 – 50% off of retail prices, and some even more.

June Ambrose is Getting a VH1 Show: The stylist to Jay-Z and Alicia Keys will get her own show in early 2012, but don't expect a Rachel Zoe copy; she'll dress her big clients but also give style and brand advice to emerging talents. {Stylelist} Your Exclusive Prada Bag Is Actually Made in India: Prada used to source their materials from India and ship them to Italy, but now they're cutting out the shipping costs by making them at the source and then charging more for the cheaper-made piece. They're reasoning? The "Made In India" label is exclusive. {Racked} Lady Gaga Sued Her Own Fan Site: Gaga's team sued the operators of LadyGaga.org (est: 2008) claiming they “intentionally registered the domain name to capitalize on Lady Gaga’s fame." But the site doesn't actually make any money, only gives love to their Queen, so the courts ruled against it. Odd for someone who claims to love her fans so much, don't you think? {Styleite}

Love what you read in the pages of Lucky every month? We’re glad to hear it. Like any good relationship, we love you just as much...so much that we want you to come and work for us. We’ve teamed up with Revlon to find the next Lucky Life contributor and are in need of some great lifestyle writing. The grand prize winner will get $10,000 and the opportunity to work with our editor-in-chief, Brandon Holley and the whole Lucky team. Sound like your cup of tea? Click over to LuckyLifeEditor.com! Show us what you’ve got and then tell your friends—the more votes you get the better. So...what are you waiting for?

Bergdorf Goodman and Lucky magazine have spent the last month searching for this fall's Faces of 5F, aka ordinary girls who'll star in the department store's fall contemporary ad campaign. Yesterday marked the final step--an in-store casting, where 25 finalists were narrowed down to five. The winners will not only appear in the fall campaign, they'll also be featured in Lucky's October issue. On hand to help judge the competition were Bergdorf’s creative director, Aidan Kemp, and Brandon Holley, Lucky’s editor-in-chief. We had a few moments to speak with Holley about her affinity for the finalists, as well as many of Bergdorf's most coveted labels.

The NYT's Thursday Styles' section has a lengthy profile on Brandon Holley and where she aims to take Lucky. The piece goes in depth on the reasons Holley was brought in, shedding light on the ways in which Lucky was failing. It was very informative! Here's what we learned: 1. Brandon Holley is a bad ass and we have a serious girl crush on her. She shaved the sides of her head and wore ripped tees at punk shows at the 9:30 club in DC when she was a teenager. Then, in her 20s, she started her own Riot Grrrl band, first called Bikini Machine (a la Bikini Kill), then renamed Gangster of Love (much better), and she designed fur bikinis for her all-girl band to wear on stage. The band wasn't into the furkinis though ("There was a revolt," Holley told the Times.) She was part of the LES scene that saw Max Fish open and become the nexis of said "scene." She got into magazine writing because she was planning to write a book about her passion, American muscle cars, and ended up writing a story for Paper about them after meeting one of the mag's founders, David Hershkovits, at Max Fish. Her husband plays piano for Sesame Street. She lives in Red Hook. “I love fashion and I love clothes and I love the way people dress, but I don’t cry at a Marc Jacobs show," she says. 2. Holley will bring "more words" and "prettier models" to Lucky. When Lucky started in 2000 as a curated shopping magazine, it was ground breaking. According to the Times, it turned a profit faster than any other title in Condé Nast history and spawned many imitators. But then it stuck with that same formula year after year and ad pages plummeted in 2009 prompting founding editor Kim France's ousting and Holley's installment. To shake things up she says she plans to give stories a little more meat and use more conventionally attractive models to lure advertisers back. 3. Watch for Luckymag.com to become a “social shopping experience.” We already reported on how Holley plans to bring bloggers into the mag, launching a fashion and beauty blog network called “Lucky Style Collective." More on this from the NYT: "Ms. Holley wants to transform Luckymag.com into a “social shopping experience,” akin to eBay and etsy.com, where readers can create their own digital boutiques, perhaps giving a page in the print edition every month to the woman whose boutique sells the most."

When Brandon Holley took over as EIC at Lucky, everyone assumed that she would infuse some of her recent online publishing experience at Yahoo! Shine into the ten-year-old magazine. She told us at the Lucky Shops event back in November that she would be incorporating bloggers into the publication, and it appears Lucky has taken the first steps towards this. In the Editor’s Letter in the February issue, Holley recounts how she had a big staff meeting where everyone from interns to editors were required to bring a list of their favorite fashion blogs. She ruminates about how democratic bloggers’ voices are, how the consumers are becoming the experts. And now, Lucky is launching something called the “Lucky Style Collective--a fashion-and-beauty blog network devoted to those voices.” It’s unclear exactly what this will look like, but the mag is kicking it off with a semi-annual Lucky Fashion and Beauty Blog Conference in NYC to correspond with NYFW this February. Blog experts, photographers, and Lucky’s editors and staff will be on hand to offer words of wisdom and practical advice. Holley also wrote: “And we’ll have a slew of cool kids on hand to teach you how to neglect the rules of proper punctuation so you sound like a real blogger.” (Um, we won’t comment on that one.)

Media is evolving at the breakneck speed of Twitter and traditional print outlets and new media ones are constantly reorganizing and reshuffling mastheads to ensure that their publications continue to rake in advertisers and stay alive. The world of fashion media is no exception. This year there was so much playing of editorial musical chairs, we devised little flow charts to try to keep it all straight. From Carine Roitfeld's shocking departure from Vogue Paris to the fat-hating Marie Claire blogger who pissed just about everyone off, here are the top ten fashion media stories of the year.

Last night, the Lucky Shops weekend-long event kicked off here in NYC with a “VIP Shopping Party” to celebrate the mag’s 10th anniversary. Hilary Duff hosted, looking sophisticated and relaxed in DvF. Brandon Holley, Lucky's new EIC, held court and welcomed everyone to her party. I cornered her and asked about her plans for the shopping glossy. On Andy Spade and the “new and improved” Lucky: “I don’t know what Andy’s doing yet! I ripped out pictures from Lucky that I loved. I took out some stuff that I thought was a little sleepy. I ripped out some pictures from European magazines. We looked at blogs online, really inspiring things that we want to bring in. We want to bring the bloggers into the magazine. And then I said “Go!” You’ll see a little bit of my influence in January and February, but the Andy Spade coat of paint will be in March.“ On celebs: “We want to bring in more celebs. We just shot Kate Bosworth, and we’ve got some really great, exciting cover people. [The magazine’s] 10 years old--it’s time to give it a little shake-up.” On how she’s going to increase Lucky’s online presence: “We want to do a really big community platform online--bring together fashion blogs, create an open social platform, and then possibly thread e-commerce throughout where it makes sense. Women love to shop and this magazine does it so well. You know when you buy something and you just want to tell people what you just bought? There are so many social aspects of shopping and that’s where we need to be. We need to own that. Imagine where I am! I missed magazines but I loved online and now I get to do both.” OK, so on to the shopping.

For the seventh straight year, Lucky Magazine is turning NYC's Metropolitan Pavilion into a discount shopping paradise and we got the scoop on this year’s deets. More than just a glorified warehouse sale, Lucky Shops 2010 will include cool extras like music, refreshments and giveaways. It will all kick off with a "VIP Shopping Party" hosted by Hilary Duff to celebrate Lucky's 10th Anniversary and the mag's new E-I-C Brandon Holley. The catch? You have to buy tickets, and while it might seem silly to pay to go shopping, it could be worth it if you’re willing to make the commitment. The tickets are reasonable, depending on what kind of access you want. Plus, the list of participating designers--which you’ll find after the jump--is really good, especially at up to 70% off.

Nice bomb to drop the day before Fashion Week. Former ElleGIRL and Jane editor-in-chief Brandon Holley has been named editor of Lucky. She will succeed Kim France, reports WWD. Most recently, Holley was content director at Yahoo! Shine, the portal's channel for women. Holley is a good fit for Lucky, which houses plenty of former Jane and Sassy staffers, including creative director Andrea Linett. While the copy is minimal and fairly sterile, the market pages and designer profiles are the dream of a certain type of editor. The clothes, products, and accessories--from brands like Mayle and Lyell to Rebecca Minkoff--are things these women would actually wear. And Holley fits into that mold--slightly indie, but not snobby.