No Flair

When Flair magazine came out last winter, it inspired a host of wisecracks and a clutch of New Yorker cartoons about the hole in its cover, the chopped-up pages and accordion inserts that unfold for a foot or more. But Flair's stories on such things as Americans in Paris, fox hunting, and how the Duchess of Windsor decorates her house failed to Stir up the same interest among readers or advertisers. Publisher Gardner (Look, Quick) Cowles and his wife, Flair Editor Fleur Cowles, who had dreamed two months ago of boosting their circulation guarantee from 200,000 to 250,000, got the realities of the situation as the real figures came in. In October and November, said Cowles, 30% of the magazines sent to newsstands were returned.

This week Flair's 100 staffers got the bad news: with its next (January) issue, Flair will fold. Twenty-four of the employees (including Editor Fleur) will be absorbed into other Cowles publications; the rest will be discharged. The reason for Flair's demise, said Mike Cowles, was that paper was too expensive and hard to get. And if Flair tried to expand, he said, it might have been hit all the harder by possible paper rationing next year.

But journalists (no doubt including Mike Cowles) knew the real trouble: in striving valiantly for the unusual, Flair had had too little old-fashioned journalistic flair itself. In the trade the gossip was that Flair had lost upwards of $1,000,000.

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