Sotnikova Elena editor biography

Share Elena Sotnikova Vice President of the Hearst Shkulev Media publishing house and the editor-in-chief of ELLE Rossiya magazine, who celebrated his twentieth anniversary this spring, spent its first master class in Ufa in the framework of Elle Day UFA in April. What did you do before you became the editor of Elle? I have never worked in the field of fashion before Elle.

By education, I am a teacher of English and German, I even managed to work at school, from where I just fled in four months. Then she accidentally got a translator to the Moscow Bureau of Reuters and in five years that I spent there, grew up to a full -time correspondent for economic issues. Interviewers usually touched by the fact that my specialization was non -ferrous metals - aluminum, nickel, and so on.

This did not stop the Frenchmen to take me to Elle. How did this happen? In search of a suitable person to the position of the editor -in -chief, people from Elle went around the whole Russian “gloss”, if it could be called that. Everything in the country was ready for Elle's arrival - both advertisers and readers were waiting for the magazine. Despite the fact that many dressed in clothing markets, the desire to learn to learn, imitate the best Western patterns.

Of the fashion mark, we already had Versace and Gianfranco Ferre, large jewelry brands were represented. In a word, everything was ready, there was no only chief editor. As a result, they decided not to bet on the experience of working in a women's journal, but rather on the contrary-to take a young, energetic person with some kind of sense of style, knowledge of English and the desire to learn.

My five years of experience in a foreign company played into my hands. Having said the patient in the Reuters, I flew to Paris for one day, an interview. They accepted me in French distant, even cold. They asked about how I see the magazine, the first issue. What could I say? I drew up a plan on the basis of what I managed to see in the French glossy magazines that I provided me in advance for familiarization.

Intuition worked in many ways. On the same day I returned home. I remember sobbing in a taxi all the way to the airport. I didn't like Paris. Honestly, I still do not like this city. And how was the magazine launched? My ideas about work in Elle were at first very romantic. I judged by my work in a foreign news agency. I thought that now journalists, photographers, stylists, makeup artists would come, and we will easily start a glamorous car.

As a result, I received a lot of articles, each of which conditionally began with the words about "the eardrum of rain on the roofs of the gray city." Photographers came, people calling themselves stylists.

Everyone had a great desire to work and, as we have, the same conceit. The team had a backbone of foreigners. For example, the first art director was American Eric Jones, a very talented person. But these foreigners lived and worked in Moscow before arriving in Elle. They were far from always helped by their "foreignity". We all, by and large, had to study from scratch. In the year you left the post of chief editor Elle.

Now I look at this situation with different eyes. Then, of course, I had a heavily experienced my departure. But if you look at things really, by the end of the tenth year of my work in Elle, I was very tired, I “blurred” my eyes, and the volume of the magazine continued to grow. It became difficult for me to cope with such catastrophic volumes, I was exhausted. My ill -wishers from the French side took advantage of this, and in the end I was removed from the post of editor -in -chief.

We must pay tribute to Viktor Mikhailovich Shkulev, who left me in the company and simply transferred me to another project. I moved to the magazine Marie Claire, which required an urgent “reboot”. As a result, Marie Claire managed to revive and take it to a good level by the year. At the same time, Elle quality began to inspire fears. And they returned me. How many materials do you have, and how many French Elle taken from the French?

We have eighty percent of our materials, more than half of our own fashion sites and almost all of our own production covers. I am proud that today our shootings and covers buy other magazines from the ELLE network. Why are there any glossy magazines? First of all, to entertain the audience and only then for its formation in matters of style or anything else.

It always amuses me when people begin to present the same requirements as a serious literature. The magazine is not a book. If you are looking for really serious, deep answers to your questions, refer to world literary classics. Although, having a certain analytical mind, a sense of humor and self -irony, you can learn a lot from Elle magazine. This also applies to fashion.

And, of course, do not forget that the glossy magazine is, first of all, a commercial project. He may have any mission. But, if the magazine does not bring money, this mission becomes not interesting to anyone. There are lovers to invest in niche non -profit publications, so to speak, "beauty for the sake."But this is a very unstable and, in my opinion, strange thing.

Earned money also helps us make a high -quality product. One follows from the other, and vice versa. We must be able to make an interesting magazine and maintain commercial thinking. Elena Sotnikova was born in Moscow. She graduated from the Institute of Foreign Languages. Maurice Torez in the specialty "linguist, translator." Elena has two children: daughter Maria and son Fedor, and she became her grandmother earlier than the second time a mother.

Spouse Alexei Dorozhkin also works in the publishing business, he is the editor -in -chief of Elle Decoration magazine. Ufa became the second city after Nizhny Novgorod, in which Elena visited the lecture.