Girl with Roses

In the Paris flea market, Fleur Fenton Cowles once bought a golden pin shaped like a swallow's wing, which she thought "a symbol of flight, excitement, beauty." Last week, as Fleur's new monthly magazine Flair spread its wings, a reproduction of the pin adorned its bright scarlet cover. To Editor Cowles, it was a moment of high excitement and typographical beauty. But more dispassionate observers considered the maiden flight hardly as breathtaking as all that.

Like the pre-publication dummy (TIME, Sept. 12), Flair's Vol. I, No. 1 was full of tricks. Samples: a "window" in the cover permitting a partial view of the next page, an accordion foldout, a page of Fleur's own self-assured handwriting in gold ink on blue paper, pages of odd sizes and varied textures. To readers familiar with Fleur's wearing of a rose as a trademark, Flair's frontispiece was the most Fleurish --and Freudian--touch of all: it was a reproduction of Girl with Roses by Artist Lucian Freud, grandson of Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.

Despite the intentions of Editor Cowles and Managing Editor George Davis to make Flair "spectacularly different, completely unconventional," the new magazine often seemed like a blurred carbon copy of such well-established originals as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and Town & Country. The best things in the first issue: French Artist Raymond Peynet's amorously whimsical drawings, a sepia and black Baedeker of Morocco, a new Tennessee Williams short story.

But if the first issue had more artifice than art, nobody was selling Editor Fleur or Publisher (and husband) Gardner Cowles short. Issue No. 2, already in the works, was much improved--cleaner and simpler layouts, bigger pictures, less prune whip and more meat. And Publisher Cowles and brother John Cowles, whose picture magazine Look (circ. 3,039,811) and news digest Quick (which claims 700,000) were doing handsomely, were prepared to underwrite Fleur's Flair for as long as necessary. The confident circulation guarantee for Flair's first year: 200,000.

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