The BEST and WORST of May Fashion Magazines?

Best Model Over 24 — Daphne in Dazed & Confused
In the giant stack of magazines we looked at this month, there were a surprising number of women — well, two — who were noticeably not young. Daphne here was the best dressed.


Honorable Mention for a Model Over 24 — Fashion
This Canadian Fashion editorial from their "age" issue is also delightful.

(And hopefully the magazines didn't just cast these women because they have white hair, which, magazine editors may have reasoned, goes just great with spring's boring all-white trend. At least this unexpected casting makes the white stuff more interesting.)


Best Models of Indeterminate Age — Vogue
This is Natalia Vodianova posing with child stars Hailee Steinfeld, Chloë Moretz, and Elle Fanning in an innocent slumber-party setting. Miraculously, they all kind of look like they're the same age in the face, especially in the shot on the right.


Best Model Under 24 — Willow Smith in Elle
Nope, not making the beyond-tempting remark about her whipping something back and forth. You're welcome.


Most Bored Model — Kate Moss in French Vogue
"Hurry up and throw the foil on me so I can go back to sleep already."


Buffest Lady Arms — Raquel Zimmermann in Vogue
Who knew?


Best Weird Desert Editorial — British Vogue
For a long time magazines published loads of editorials of models in overgrown fields or dry forests, with upholstered furniture and canoes placed haphazardly on the riverbank. The new trend seems to be to shoot girls in barren deserts with a tribesman, the inclusion of whom always feels so uncomfortable. This spread, shot by Tim Walker and starring Agyness Deyn, is one of the better ones we've seen. (But it's hard not to be biased when the pictures include cat models.)


Most Tired Styling Trend — Italian Vogue
Too often when magazines cast a black model or group of black models for shoots, they style them in some vaguely stereotypical fashion, in tribal-inspired looks, for example (hello, head scarf!). Here it looks like Italian Vogue dressed them up for church, too.


Best Royal Wedding-Themed Editorial — British Vogue
Can you imagine if Kate had worn that? Not that she could have because it's Dior and, with Galliano's firing, just loaded with politics, but the dress is still quite pretty.


Worst Western — Dazed & Confused
Now we know that looking like a timber yard is probably not something to aspire to.


Most Perplexing Styling — W
There's something mesmerizing about how the clothes make it hard to tell where her legs end and her arms begin.


Best Lady Gaga Page — GQ
Our favorite is the turquoise egg thing, minus the sperm, that you can put over her whole head.


Most Monotonous Facial Expressions — Lady Gaga in Harper's Bazaar
You see? See why she needs all the headgear? She has roughly one expression.


Actress With the Most Time on Her Hands — Mia Wasikowska in W
Mia has been in the past two issues of W. It's great that she's free enough with her image to let them do weird things to her, like stick things all over her face. On the other hand, one wonders if she also just has a lot of free time with which to let them do it.


Best Celebrity Cast — Harper's Bazaar
Bridesmaids was great. Thank you, Bazaar, for paying tribute.


Worst Concept — Paper
Paper got together groups of New Yorkers who tweet each other, and the resulting groups of people were just so odd. Somehow Andrew Mukamal from that show about People's Revolution that ran for a season on Bravo is still milking it. It's unclear if his friends here are models, his real friends, or just his Twitter groupies.


Most Unnecessary Use of Mirrored Mannequin — Marie Claire
It's like, did the human model bail at the last minute? Or is this the closest Marie Claire is allowed to get to a girl-on-girl concept?


Most Tired Headgear — Teen Vogue
An unofficial rule could probably be made that anything shot for a teen magazine that is not a hat but encircles the entire head over the hair can be safely omitted.


Worst Hair — Vogue
Perhaps we're saying good-bye to all those fedoras of the last decade with a mad case of hat hair. But that's still better than the fedoras.


Best Elephant — Vogue
Disregard the corniness of the whole movie and the way Reese Witherspoon looks like Tinkerbell to the Elephants and focus on the elephant, which is just wonderful, because as the ultimate animal chic flick Born to Be Wild proved, elephants are wonderful.


Most Unnecessary Housekeeping — British Vogue
Woman + vacuum + baby + dishes = next!


Best Poodle Integration — Numéro
There she is hanging with her poodle — and there she is wearing it!

(The Cut)