2 Magazines Take a Simple Idea and Run With It

NEW YORK — The taste of a really good cup of coffee. The smell of roses. The feel of a cashmere sweater. In these days of cable modems, cell phones and SUVs, we sometimes forget to stop and enjoy the simple things in life.

Now there are two new magazines to remind us: Real Simple, debuting today, and Simplicity, which launched in late February.

“A lot of women, their lives, they’ve got one of those paper plates with those three compartments, except they’re always putting six things on top,” said Real Simple Editor Susan Wyland in an interview in her corner office overlooking Manhattan on the 41st floor of the Time Warner building.

“I just had a sense that there were a lot of women looking at that plate and saying, ‘Wait a minute. If my plate is so full, why do I still feel like something’s missing?’ ”

While many people are striving to find balance in their lives, achieving it is another matter. Eighty-seven percent of 25- to 45-year-old women who participated in a 1999 survey conducted by Yankelovich, a market research firm, said they were looking for ways to simplify their lives.

That includes Wyland, former editor of Martha Stewart Living. She often works 12-hour days. One day last week, a typical day for her, she was planning a future issue, talking with other editors about stories in progress, reviewing content for the magazine’s Web site (https://www.realsimple.com) and fielding publicity calls. This week, she has meetings in Detroit and Chicago. Next week, she flies to San Francisco and Los Angeles.

“It’s a little busy right now,” Wyland said, acknowledging a contradiction between the concept of her magazine and the reality of her life. “I really am trying in the midst of all of this to sort of keep it reasonable. And there are times I can and times I can’t, but I think that’s typical of many women’s lives. I’m still true to the goal.”

Comforting yet utilitarian, Real Simple is evenly divided into four parts: life, home, body and soul. The first issue includes advice on nurturing friendships, getting rid of junk mail, cleaning the bathroom and making one-dish dinners, among other things.

Does Wyland follow her own advice?

“I cook more. I’m throwing stuff away. . . . I’m working really hard at paying more attention to my friendships even during what is a really busy time for me,” she said, flipping through the magazine. “The laundry thing--I really wish I could get my husband to have only seven pairs of socks. I don’t think that’s ever going to happen.”

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Unlike Real Simple, which provides useful information readers can act on, Simplicity magazine is about “entertaining and inspiring,” according to its 28-year-old founder, Danielle Chang. “We don’t want to give you a laundry list of how to shave 10 minutes off your daily chores.”

She added, “Real Simple and Martha Stewart Living stress us out because they’re trying to pack too many actionable goals into our lives. We’re already overwhelmed by that. What we really need, to have a nice quality of life, is to savor the personal time we have.”

Wyland said her magazine takes a realistic approach. She acknowledged she has received mixed reviews of the bathroom cleaning advice but defended it, saying, “This is our least favorite job. Here’s how to get it done the fastest way possible so you have 10 minutes to sit in this nice chair we show you later in the issue.”

And does Chang practice what she preaches?

Yes. She explained her approach to life and the magazine over a leisurely lunch at New York’s Blue Water Grill. Afterward, on her way back to the office, she strolled through an open-air market in Union Square and bought some apples for her office’s reception area.

“For the messenger boys,” she said.

Chang came to the idea of Simplicity in November 1998 while working in Hong Kong for the investment firm Goldman Sachs.

“My life was so simple--I was living out of a suitcase in my hotel room,” she said. “I went from my hotel to the office and back. That’s when I realized simple doesn’t necessarily mean being happy.”

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According to her letter to readers in her first issue, “Simplicity is more a state of mind than appearances; it’s about caring for and being cared for by loved ones, creating a blissful sanctuary called Home . . . and leading a balanced existence where work, family and personal time play equally important roles.”

Nor does it mean selling your house, along with everything in it and moving to someplace like Georgia to start an organic farm, a course so many books on simplicity have suggested.

“Nobody wants to simplify their life if they think it means they can’t have anything,” said Wyland, whose magazine provides ordering information for most of the products it features. “It’s not about having everything. It’s about choosing carefully.”

In philosophy, Real Simple and Simplicity are similar, but in execution they are far different. Published by Time Warner, Real Simple is a more polished product. The photographs are lush, muted and comfort-focused, and the articles are high-concept and well-written. The magazine’s projected median reader is a 36-year-old woman.

Simplicity is independently published and investor-financed, targeting a younger, more urban demographic--women between 25 and 35. The layouts are bright, modern and somewhat fashion-driven, but readability seems secondary to design. With all the headlines in lower case, it is hard to tell where one story ends and another begins. Simplicity has one full-time editorial employee, Sherry Amatenstein, a founding editor of iVillage Web site.

Still, it’s a good start for a woman with almost no publishing experience and a big idea, if one with unfortunate timing. Chang began work on Simplicity in January 1999. She was unaware that Real Simple was in the works until August.

“It came as quite a shock. You don’t want to have Time Warner as your largest competitor,” she said. “But it does legitimize the market.”

Susan Carpenter can be reached at [email protected].