There are a number of reasons why people buy magazines; they have more pictures, they carry longer stories about the latest news and gossip, and they simply provide the entertainment that readers seek. Elle magazine and Cosmopolitan magazine are amongst the leading fashion magazines sold worldwide.

The history of Elle

Elle, which means she in English, is a French women’s magazine. The magazine focuses on issues related to women’s fashion including health, entertainment and beauty. The magazine was founded in 1945 by couple Pierre Lazereff and Hélène Gordon. The magazine rose to popularity so much that it was considered to decree what fashion is as opposed to reflecting the fashion trends. That was back in the 1960s when the magazine had accumulated a readership of 800,000 people.

The magazine then acquired a slogan which said, “If she reads, she reads Elle.” The magazine was struggling in 1981 to maintain readership, and that was when Jean-Luc Lagardère and his business partner Daniel Filipacchi purchased Hachette magazines as well as the struggling fashion magazine. The magazine was soon afterwards launched in the United States and 25foreign editions followed.

Elle in the present

Currently, there are 42 international Elle magazine editions which are sold in more than 60 countries around the world. With regards to ownership, the magazine is property of the French Lagardère Group. There are 27 websites dedicated to the magazine globally, which attract about 1 million web visitors monthly. The magazine is said to hold 73% of subscription readers while the other 27% purchase single issues.

The history of the Cosmopolitan

The cosmopolitan is also an international women’s magazine, which started out as family centric magazine back in 1886 and was shortly afterwards transformed to a literary centric magazine. The Cosmopolitan magazine, which is also referred to as Cosmo, was dedicated to women around the 1960s.The magazine started out as a magazine focused on the family and it was released by Schlicht & Field way back in 1886.

The magazine was able to reach a readership of 25,000 people within its first year, but two years down the line Schlicht & Field closed down business. In 1889 John Brisben Walker bought the magazine and transformed it into a fore-runner in the fiction market. William Randolph Hearst purchased the magazine in 1905 and the publication took on an investigative approach.

The magazine ran fewer fiction pieces in the 1950s and in 1965 it was remodeled as the New Cosmopolitan. In w967 the magazine was renamed as Cosmopolitan and in the early 1970s it officially became a women’s magazine. Cosmo Girl was launched in 1999 and it was a spinoff of the Cosmopolitan magazine targeting female teenagers. However, the international teenage magazine closed down in 2008.

Cosmopolitan in the present

The magazine contains articles centered on relationships, health, careers, celebrities, fashion, self-improvement and sex. The magazine is published by the US Hearst Magazines, which also publishes Elle in the US. The magazine is currently printed in 32 different languages and has 63 foreign editions distributed to over 100 countries.

The cosmopolitan magazine and Elle magazine have come a long way from their inception and they continue to maintain high readership numbers throughout the globe. The latest issues of the international magazines can be bought from newsstands across the globe, downloaded on readers and Tablets or accessed online from their respective websites. Please logon to acclaimsubscriptions.com, for further information.

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