¦ Vogue editor says iPad a glossy bridge to Internet–¦ Haute couture hangs on despite financial downturn

By Astrid Wendlandt

PARIS (Reuters Life!) — The French edition of Vogue celebrated its 90th birthday with a lavish masked ball in an 18th Century palace in central Paris and said Apple's iPad offered a crucial bridge between the Internet and glossy paper.

French Vogue Editor Carine Roitfeld told Reuters the magazine had great ambitions for the iPad as it allowed it to both be as fast as the Internet required and give readers the same look and feel as the magazine.

"The iPad is a go-between because of the quality of the pictures (it offers)," she told Reuters. Many glossy fashion magazines have been struggling to define a strategy that complements their paper issue and promotes its sales rather than destroying them.

Half of Vogue's pages is strictly advertising.

Although the financial crisis has claimed some high-profile casualties such as Christian Lacroix and prompted critics to wonder if haute couture still had a future, Roitfelt was adamant: "There is a future for haute couture because there are more and more young designers who want to do couture shows," she said. "We are going to try to help these young guys."

At the party, many established names gathered around her, including Christian Louboutin, Miuccia Prada, Jean-Paul Gaultier and Barbara Bui.

The real fun of the ball, the participants said, was trying to guess who was behind the masks and partying nearly incognito.

The magazine chose the theme based on "Eyes Wide Shut", the Stanley Kubrick film featuring Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise, to reflect its irreverent character, the publisher of French Vogue, Delphine Royant, said.

"Vogue Paris is considered transgressive, provocative and we have used this label to advance femininity," Royant told Reuters.

As masked models and actresses strutted up the red carpet into the Pozzo Di Borgo Palace for the ball in central Paris, even the most experienced show business photographers struggled to identify them.

But still models Dita von Teese, Kate Moss, Tyra Banks and Gisele Buendchen were spotted.

"I had so much fun and really loved the fact that no one managed to recognise me," Christian Dior Chief Executive Sidney Toledano told Reuters.

Some models dressed up with quirky masks made of sprouting metallic spikes, others wore a face-engulfing lace structure, some men wore outfits worn by French doctors three hundred years ago or had masks painted around their eyes.

"I am really impressed that so many people have played the game. It is so creative!," Gaultier told Reuters, wearing a mask with high-rising feathers.

Champagne from Roederer magnums kept guests dancing until early in the morning.

Vogue was born in 1892 in the United States and arrived in France in 1920.

It then rode the wave of calls for women's freedom which started with the 1968 revolts. The French version has a print run of some 115,000 and is estimated to be read by some 1.2 million people.

The world's most beautiful women feature in its glossy pages, photographed by David Bailey, Sabine Weiss, Irving Penn and Helmut Newton.