"Reinventing the wheel" is a common article.
"I can totally see some of them being used in one of those glossy fashion magazines. Y'know, the kind that cost nine bucks and are 97% ads."
Magazines devoted to fashion, with some articles on other topics relevant to their readers (lifestyle, people, and other things). As noted in the quote, they are heavy on advertising, but this has had the benefit of keeping the format of these magazines relatively consistent, as opposed to the Magazine Decay of other print genres.
Many fictional works, particularly Work Coms, are set around the offices of a fashion magazine. It works well for giving guest stars the full benefit of the Rule of Glamorous.
Tropes common among these include:
- The Beautiful Elite (since the editors want the models to look as good as the clothes)
- Conspicuous Consumption (the clothes and accessories being shown are usually for affluent buyers)
- Costume Porn (when highly detailed clothes are featured)
- The Fashionista (if an article is about one)
- Impractically Fancy Outfit (sometimes these outfits are featured, over the grand, but practical, clothes)
- Merchandise-Driven (spreads showing clothes will note who made each piece, and how much they cost)
- Model Couple (when two or more models are shown in a spread, they are likely chosen to visually compliment each other)
- Modeling Poses (when each outfit will likely get just one picture in an issue, the models will do their best to show the best of the outfits)
- Pimped-Out Dress (evening dresses still can be quite detailed)
- Fairytale Wedding Dress (bridal magazine dresses are often elaborate)
- Pretty in Mink (is is common for fall issues to have a spread about various fur items)
- It's Fake Fur, It's Fine (if an article or spread focuses on fake fur)
- Simple, yet Opulent (many outfits will not look that detailed, but are still use expensive fabrics and workmanship)
- Up Marketing (despite the tons of ads in these magazines, they are still selling high end items)
Compare Fashion Show, Rule of Glamorous.
Magazines:
- Brides
- Cosmopolitan (although with less of a focus these days over other things like lifestyle and relationship articles)
- Elle
- Esquire
- Harpers Bazaar
- In Style
- Gentlemans Quarterly, aka GQ (a male-focused fashion magazine, but often runs lads-mag-style photo shoots of women in skimpy clothes)
- Marie Claire
- Modern Bride
- Vanity Fair (named for the book, Vanity Fair, but otherwise unrelated)
- Vogue (now it's so full of ads that sometimes the table of contents is on page 100 or later).
- W
Fashion magazines featured in fiction
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Films — Live-Action
- Poise magazine in 13 Going on 30. And their rival SPARKLE.
- Cover Girl has Vanity magazine. Their search for an unknown model to grace the cover of their "golden wedding issue" drives the plot.
- Death Proof has a character that's a model trying to find out if she's in this month's issue of Allure. Her and a friend get very exciting when they discover a cashier in rural Tennessee is selling this month's copy of Italian Vogue.
- The Devil Wears Prada: Runway magazine, a copyright friendly version of Vogue, with Miranda being a thinly-veiled take on it's editor Anna Wintour. The sequel makes it even clearer by using Madonna's "Vogue" as the backing music for the trailer.
- Quality magazine launches the "Think Pink" campaign in Funny Face, followed by a search for "the Quality woman."
- In the House of Wax (2005) remake, Carly is mentioned to have been offered an internship at In Style magazine.
- Janet in Rope writes for Allure, a column on "how to keep the body beautiful".
Literature
- Men's fashion magazines are mentioned in A Brother's Price. The men in them wear much tighter, more revealing clothes than Jerin is willing to consider, and he thinks they are not proper, but it's different for the nobility.
- Runway magazine in The Devil Wears Prada (book series).
- Bu-Bubble in Unseen Academicals.
Live-Action TV
- The Bold Type has "Scarlet" magazine.
- In the Charmed episode "Wicca Envy" Rex tells Phoebe he can get her a job at a fashion magazine (of course he's lying). Ultimately subverted though as, three seasons later, Phoebe does get a journalism job but as an advice columnist instead.
- Blush magazine in Just Shoot Me!.
- Revenge has Voulez, founded by Margaux LeMarchal to prove to her father that she would make a suitable heir to his media empire.
- That's So Raven features Raven winning a design contest for one of her dresses to be featured in a high-profile fashion magazine. And in the fourth season she actually gets to work at a fashion magazine.
- Mode magazine in Ugly Betty.
Radio
- Our Miss Brooks: In the episode "Cosmopolitan Magazine", a photographer arrives from the real-life Cosmopolitan Magazine to do an article and photo-spread about an average American high school. The trope is somewhat averted, as at the time (1953) Cosmopolitan was an esteemed literary and general interest periodical, and not the slutty women's sex and fashion magazine it is today. The radio episode was broadcast to coincide with Cosmopolitan's publication of an article on Eve Arden and Our Miss Brooks An example of the application of media "synergies", at least fifty years before the modern word was coined.
Theatre
- In Lady in the Dark, the protagonist is the editor of Allure magazine but her life is not nearly as glamorous as the contents of her magazine.
Video Games
- In Barbie Super Model, Barbie appears on the covers of magazines in a matching mini-game.
Webcomics
- Rusty and Co.: Rogue is this universe's equivalent of Vogue. Next season issue's features Stabitha's ad for the spiked clogs on its cover. Thanks to "connections", Roxanne owns said yet-to-be-published issue and uses it like a Supernatural Repellent on Ezra the vampiress. Despite having none of the standard weakness of a vampire, it's enough to distract Ezra from attacking since she's so fashion-obsessed.
Ezra: This fight is on hold until I finish "1d100 Colors That Flatter Pallid Skin".