Kim France

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."

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.

GQ's Best Independent Men's Stores: GQ has compiled a list of the ten best independent men’s stores in America. From Opening Ceremony in LA, to The Webster on South Beach, GQ claims that these are the stores that are shaping the style of men. {GQ} The Best Beauty Products, Ex-EIC Edition: When Kim France left her position as editor-in-chief of Lucky, all the great perks ended, as well as the free beauty products. France rounded up her favorite beauty products, including the ones she will pay for now that she's not getting them for free. {Slate} No Burberry For Robert: Robert Pattinson apparently declined a £1 million offer to be the new face of Burberry. When asked why he was denying the offer, Pattinson replied "I'm an actor, not a model." {Vogue UK}

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.

It's difficult to pick up Lucky magazine and not feel a desire to shop take over your entire being. If, in the future, you could actually shop out of