For better or worse, Coles has also shaken up conventional wisdom about who should grace the covers of American Marie Claire in age when newsstands are heaving with celebrity cleavage and fly-away tresses. Some choices have had praise, others criticism. [...]
Grey's Anatomy star Sandra Oh, one of the first actresses of Asian descent to make the cover, raised both eyebrows and interest. The issue helped lift newsstand sales by 22 per cent.
For better or worse, Coles has also shaken up conventional wisdom about who should grace the covers of American Marie Claire in age when newsstands are heaving with celebrity cleavage and fly-away tresses. Some choices have had praise, others criticism.
Grey's Anatomy star Sandra Oh, one of the first actresses of Asian descent to make the cover, raised both eyebrows and interest. The issue helped lift newsstand sales by 22 per cent.
Ultimately though, staples such as Angelina Jolie (with whom Coles spent an afternoon) and Ashley Olsen have been the best sellers.
Photographer James White offers an on-set pick-me-up.
Sandra gets ready on the set
Sandra Oh showed up at L.A.'s Quixote Studio wearing a major, chunky skull ring that drew oohs and aahs. Her secret: It's actually a $10 novelty Secret Santa gift from Grey's Anatomy costar Justin Chambers. The studio shook with techno and hard rock until Oh requested Björk-all she needed to return to her ballet roots and dance for the camera. The shoot was so fun that Oh stayed behind afterward to hang and have a beer with the crew. Then on to a fitting for her molten--silver Golden Globes dress.Campbell McAuley creates Oh’s “lovely and luscious” ’do.
Celebrity-hair god CAMPBELL MCAULEY gives us the lowdown. He's the affable Aussie who tends to Hollywood's alpha locks-and created Oh's hot cover-girl look.
Q: What was the challenge?
MCAULEY: Sandra has great, thick hair, so I wanted to give it vibrancy and sex appeal and go for lovely and luscious. We started out tamer, but the more I shook it out, the stronger the images got-and Sandra can go there. She's such a grounded, true person; she really let go.
Transcript
Dana Stern, Entertainment Director: Tonight we are doing a party for Sandra Oh. She's our April cover girl and she has graciously agreed to come out and have a good time with us.
Sandra Oh: I'm really pleased with the direction that Marie Claire is really putting forth. Because I think there's a real market and a missing link in a lot of the beauty magazines or interest magazines that have to do, you know, with women who are hopefully at the top of their game but women who are not usually in beauty magazines. If there's just one face here, hopefully it will grow to more faces. I think it's a step in a direction I'm interested in.
Joanna Coles, Editor-in-Chief: There are some celebrities that want the limelight. They pretend they don't, but they actually do. And they want cameras there, they want cameras in their face. They pretend to shun them but actually they don't really exist unless they're on camera.
Sandra Oh is not like that. She's a real actress. She takes her craft very seriously.We wanted to give a party for her at Hyde which is a deeply cool club in LA at the moment. I'm sorry the camera couldn't come in and show you or tape it or whatever. That's the deal. Sometimes people just say "You know what, you can film me going into the thing but I really want to enjoy myself this evening". And she turned up with her boyfriend and she didn't want the two of them on tape together. She just wanted to keep that to herself and I respect that.
