Met Home Gets the Hatchet

It feels like déjà vu. Metropolitan Home is the latest decorating magazine to go under the guillotine.

Only yesterday Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. announced the closure of the magazine fondly known as Met Home to the urban, sophisticated home decor cognoscenti.

December 2009 will be the last issue of a surprisingly stable publication that has been under the leadership of Editor-in-Chief Donna Warner for 17 years.

Metropolitan Home was not the first shelter magazine closure for the parent company. Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. shuttered Home magazine in 2008, and is in the throes of an open house for increasing ad revenues and maintaining stable readership for its' remaining luxury title Elle Décor.

Mediafinder.com, an online database of North American periodicals, has reported the loss of more than 300 magazine titles this year. In 2007 and 2008, around 1,200 publications folded.

Time Inc.'s Southern Accents, Cottage Style and InStyle Home; Hearst Corporation's O at Home; Conde Nast's House & Garden and Domino; Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc.'s Blueprint; and Meredith Corporation's Country Home are some of the better-known decorating magazines that have bit the bullet.

If style-icons Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey cannot make it in the home decorating marketplace, there is little chance for style-specific chic magazines like Metropolitan Home.

Problem is people buy décor-based magazines -- as opposed to lifestyle magazines that cover home design, like Real Simple -- when they really want to decorate.

Then they buy individual copies at a premium and/or subscribe to monthly issues for a bargain in exchange for decorating ideas. Unlike with other print media hurt by the Web, people who decorate their homes love to flip through the pages of magazines, and clip 'favorite room' photos and paste them in 'design scrapbooks' to serve as personal inspiration or to show their interior designers. They relish scouring the magazine stands.

Internet sites with imagery also provide creative input, but because color and print quality varies, it is more useful, not to mention more easily portable, to have an actual magazine when shopping for interiors.

The bottom line is people are not seriously decorating much right now. The precursors to decorating -- remodeling existing spaces, moving to bigger homes and having disposable incomes -- are at a low. Recession hurts. The housing market does not help.

Take me. I love home design magazines, I write and style for them, and I like to think I have decent taste. But I am not in the decorating mode.

These days my mindset is to freshen up an old sofa with inexpensive store-bought slipcovers or throw pillows, not to purchase a new pricey custom-made sofa. I shop for accessories with economy in mind -- table lamps at Target or flower vases at Crate & Barrel. Lest I get too generic, I have also taken to regularly hitting flea markets and estate sales; I picked up a beautiful, slightly damaged 1930's iron statue for $45 this past weekend.

Truth is I am truly sorry to see Met Home go, but for now, until the economy recovers, that is just the way it is.

 

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Comments

[mercymercyme]

As a reader of Metropolitan Home, from the very beginning in 1974 when it was called Apartment Life, I was terribly disappointed to hear it had folded. And, to make matters worse, I had just renewed my subscription for two years. (To their credit, the circulation department is offering me a full refund.)

I am also a decorating magazine junkie and cannot part with them -- I have hundreds of issues of Architectural Digest, Veranda,Interior Design, Met Home, Elle Decor, et al. Like other readers, I may not be in a full-bore decorating mode at the moment, but these magazines serve a greater purpose than a "how-to" manual.

Decorating magazines are aspirational. They are serious eye-candy. They fulfill a longing we aesthetes have for good design and beautiful photography. They satisfy the voyeurs among us who love to peek into homes and live vicariously. Now it's all online.

Somehow, going online is just not as much fun as waiting for the postman to deliver the latest issue of Met Home. Somehow, pointing and clicking a mouse is just not as much fun as curling up in a comfy arm chair with a beautiful magazine and a cup of hot tea with lemon and honey.

[Charlotte Safavi - Huffpost Blogger]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I completely agree decorating magazines are eye-candy, and among their subscribers, there will always be those who simply love to look at interior spaces, not just for ideas but for enjoying beautiful homes. I also think it's wonderful that you have read Met Home from the very beginning.­..and I'm sorry to hear of your disappointment. Your armchair scenario sounds delightful!

[Gloria Blalock]

Wherever are we going to turn to for inspiration? Not just designers, we are always inspired by so much, but our clients! It's crazy!!!! Thanks for posting... always look forward to your posts.

[Charlotte Safavi - Huffpost Blogger]

Gloria, thanks for sharing. It is great to have the feedback of a designer as talented as you!

[Charlotte Safavi - Huffpost Blogger]

The announcement was made November 9.

[twets]

I agree that as a design magazine Met Home was probably not the all-embracing slightly "vanillafied" lifestyle magazine as Real Simple or Martha Stewart living - but as a harbinger of coming trends and designs for urban and city design it was the front runner. There is no equivalent to it. Elle decor is still too wide ranging and, as far as I am concerned, it is not sure if it wants to be twee, country, urban or radical - you never really know what you are going to get in each issue which is a waste of money if you are seeking serious design trends and ideas... It is really a sad end as I subscribed electronically from abroad to ensure I always got my issue of Met Home - I think a lot of city dwellers who like modern design will be much the poorer by its absence.

[Charlotte Safavi - Huffpost Blogger]

Thanks for sharing. I agree about Met Home's niche. The devotion of readers like yourself is critical to home magazines these days... I'm sorry this one is gone.