In 2010, Emily Weiss was working on a Vogue photo shoot in Miami when she and Doutzen Kroes got to talking about self-tanner. Weiss was, at the time, an assistant to a freelance stylist. Kroes was among the highest-paid models in the world, and (it emerged) a big fan of L’Oréal Sublime Bronze ProPerfect Salon Airbrush Self-Tanning Mist. “She was like, ‘All the other ones are crazy,’” Weiss later recalled. This one, Kroes insisted, was different—she said it didn’t even smell. Weiss picked up a bottle at the drugstore and was converted. She pitched a Vogue beauty editor and wrote up the recommendation, in what became her first byline for the magazine.
The episode contained, in miniature, the forces Weiss would harness in her career. There was the fast, casual intimacy of talking about beauty products— the conversations about lip gloss or deodorant that could make a bar bathroom (or a photo-shoot trailer) feel like a slumber party. There was the value of personal recommendations, which held up even when the person doing the recommending was perhaps not unbiased. Kroes was a L’Oréal “Ambassador”; getting people to buy such products as Sublime Bronze ProPerfect Salon Airbrush Self-Tanning Mist was her job. But Weiss wasn’t put off. An apparently heartfelt recommendation could inspire not just a purchase but some pro-bono promotional work, too.
Denne historien er fra September 25, 2023-utgaven av The New Yorker.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra September 25, 2023-utgaven av The New Yorker.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
GET IT TOGETHER
In the beginning was the mob, and the mob was bad. In Gibbon’s 1776 “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” the Roman mob makes regular appearances, usually at the instigation of a demagogue, loudly demanding to be placated with free food and entertainment (“bread and circuses”), and, though they don’t get to rule, they sometimes get to choose who will.
GAINING CONTROL
The frenemies who fought to bring contraception to this country.
REBELS WITH A CAUSE
In the new FX/Hulu series “Say Nothing,” life as an armed revolutionary during the Troubles has—at least at first—an air of glamour.
AGAINST THE CURRENT
\"Give Me Carmelita Tropicana!,\" at Soho Rep, and \"Gatz,\" at the Public.
METAMORPHOSIS
The director Marielle Heller explores the feral side of child rearing.
THE BIG SPIN
A district attorney's office investigates how its prosecutors picked death-penalty juries.
THIS ELECTION JUST PROVES WHAT I ALREADY BELIEVED
I hate to say I told you so, but here we are. Kamala Harris’s loss will go down in history as a catastrophe that could have easily been avoided if more people had thought whatever I happen to think.
HOLD YOUR TONGUE
Can the world's most populous country protect its languages?
A LONG WAY HOME
Ordinarily, I hate staying at someone's house, but when Hugh and I visited his friend Mary in Maine we had no other choice.
YULE RULES
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”