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" Picture: Claire Danes wearing Prada, photographed by Alexi Lubomirski and styled by Leith Clark for Harper&amp;#039;s Bazaar Welcome to the October issue, which is accompanied by Bazaar\u2019s Beauty Best of the Best supplement, filled with recommendations from our expert team. As always at Bazaar, we aim to provide our readers with the most practical and helpful advice; but also to give depth to the subjects that concern us \u2013 fashion, beauty, art, travel, literature and the lives of working women such as ourselves. That\u2019s why, in this edition, you can read a brilliant piece by Margaret Atwood, who explores the inconsistencies and ambiguities of the beauty myth. \u2018In my own childhood,\u2019 she writes, \u2018the popular saying \u201Cbeauty is only skin deep\u201D [was] quoted by grown-ups as a palliative when some other little girl had a more attractive party dress. The implication was that a beautiful soul was more to be admired than a beautiful exterior, as in Beauty and the Beast, where the Beast wins love through a mix of engaging conversation, sentimentality and a stunning palace. However, we young girls noted that this combo worked only for males: the tale was not called The Unfortunately Plain Though Well- meaning and Affluent Girl and the Beast.\u2019 No wonder, as Atwood observes, it became \u2018obvious to us that in order to be transformed from a grubby kitchen slave to a gasp-making fascinator, you\u2019d need a supernatural godmother and a killer dress. Magic and fashion had a part to play, and they were joined at the hip. Oh, and don\u2019t forget the shoes. The shoes were very important\u2019. I hope that Bazaar, at its best, might be a combination of good friend and fairy godmother. Which is not to say that we can wave our wands and conjure you up a prince and a happy-ever-after (although I wish we could, especially for anyone who has suffered the unhappiness of a broken heart). But what we can do is show that a prince might not be the only answer \u2013 after all, why shouldn\u2019t we dress to make ourselves feel happy? \u2013 and glass slippers aren\u2019t necessarily the best way forward. That said, I still believe in the magic of fashion, in its ability to encompass otherness, as well as its capacity for escapism. And with any luck, our fashion stories in this issue \u2013 which range in location from the Cornish coast to a Swedish island and an Alpine landscape \u2013 might set your imagination free, wherever you happen to find yourself now. Elsewhere in the issue, we have an intriguing interview with our cover star, Claire Danes (don\u2019t worry, there are no plot spoilers of the next season for fervent Homeland fans such as myself, but some clues about its direction); and another in our regular series of Bazaar At Work. This month, we are looking at the relationship between fashion and female power, and discussing what it means to look confident, at a time when independence need not involve donning padded shoulders or a double-breasted masculine suit. There\u2019s much else besides to enjoy in this edition \u2013 a glorious report from the latest couture shows; a wonderful series of travel memoirs (produced in association with the Ritz-Carlton); and a selection of shoes that have more than a little magic about them. To quote Atwood (from an interview she did five years ago that has stayed with me ever since): \u2018People should live life as joyfully as possible.\u2019 Joy isn\u2019t always possible \u2013 and life can be harsh, of course \u2013 but perhaps that\u2019s what makes happiness so sweet: the knowledge that it should be relished, before another challenge comes along... *** MORE FASHION NEWS Claire Danes is\u00A0Bazaar&amp;#039;s\u00A0October cover starAngelina Jolie&amp;#039;s wedding dress revealedCara Delevingne and Kate Moss for Burberry "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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