Here are our picks for the very most of this month’s Elle, Lucky, Glamour, InStyle, Harper’s Bazaar and Marie Claire. (Vogue, as usual, will arrive fashionably late.)

Best Cover: A purple-hair-era Katy Perry on Elle takes the prize, if only for the very au courant nail art. (She still manages to squeeze her “Jesus” tattoo into the shot, though.) Given that the culture at large spends September shaking sand out of its beach tote, very few of this month’s cover stars—Jennifer Lopez, InStyle? Still?—have an imminent project to promote. (And Victoria Beckham, in a bubble bath on Glamour, isn’t even wearing clothes.)

Most Nostalgic: Harper’s Bazaar, in a cover line, advises readers to “Think Pink!”—a line from Funny Face, the movie based on Diana Vreeland and Richard Avedon’s time at Bazaar. (Cover girl Gwen Stefani, you’re great, but you’re no Audrey Hepburn.) Ms. Vreeland’s time at the magazine is elucidated in a piece that uses the word “Vogue” zero times. (Some anti-Vogue rancor is discernible at Glenda Bailey’s magazine: Another former Voguette, ousted French editrix Carine Roitfeld, gets a glowing profile in Bazaar.)

Best Editor’s Letter, Lede Division: “Naomi Wolf wants you to feel good. Really good,” writes Roberta Myers in Elle. (The feminist firebrand is profiled there and has a piece in Bazaar on dating.)

Best Editor’s Letter, Unintentional Revelations Division: Joanna Coles describes regretfully turning down her dream job as a journalist covering Parliament in the Marie Claire supplement @Work, which features Chelsea Handler on the cover.

Most Unlikely Suggestion: In her capacity as Glamour guest editor, Ms. Beckham writes that she suggested some future cover subjects from the indie-film universe: “Chloe Moretz, Clémence Poésy, Bella Heathcote ...” Maybe if Jessica Simpson falls ill!

Least Fortuitous Timing, Celebrity Division: Kristen Stewart, interviewed pre-cheating-scandal by InStyle. On Cartier’s Juste un Clou bracelet: “It reminds me of the person who gave it to me.” She wanted, and likely still wants, to go on a “very secluded” Mexican vacation.

Least Fortuitous Timing, Cinema Division: Both Elle and InStyle feature sneak peeks at what would have been this winter’s biggest movie, The Great Gatsby. After the magazines went to press, Gatsby was delayed until summer 2013.

Best Logroll: Marie Claire’s nine-page package on Project Runway, a show that features the magazine’s fashion director Nina Garcia. Before suggesting Runway-inflected trips to Parsons and Burger Joint, the author notes, “Sex and the City isn’t the only show that boasts the Big Apple as a main character.” Sure isn’t!

Best Advertising Opportunity: Justin Bieber’s perfume sponsored some of Lucky’s stickers (used to point out must-buy items—like Pinterest, but monthly!), as did uplifting toiletry brand Dove. Thanks to the good folks at Unilever, you can label Eva Longoria’s shorts “brave,” “graceful” or “STRENGTH.” [sic.]

Best Homage to Something Else Popular: Glamour informs us: “Hey, it’s okay ... to own 50 shades of gray ... cashmere sweaters.” Meanwhile, Elle titles its Katy Perry profile “Girl on Fire,” a reference to The Hunger Games, while Miley Cyrus is now getting magazine cover profiles solely in her capacity as Liam Hemsworth’s fiancée, also a nod to The Hunger Games. (Jennifer Lawrence clearly wasn’t available.)

Most Ubiquitous: Who knew Lana Del Rey was such a trendsetter? She gets a full-page spread, “Let’s All Look Like Lana!,” in Glamour (looking like Lana means having long hair) and is cited as a nail-care icon in Elle. Meanwhile, Solange Knowles, noted sister of Beyoncé, gets a photo shoot of her house in Elle and a two-page spread on her style evolution in Glamour.

Biggest Vitamin-Related Exclusive: “I wake up at 7 a.m., I shower, shave, eat breakfast, and have a double espresso, a cigarette, vitamins,” Marc Jacobs tells Marie Claire. “I wake up, have a double espresso and a cigarette, then I shower,” Mr. Jacobs tells Glamour.

Biggest Web-to-Print Leap: Fashion blogger Bryanboy, citing Carly Rae Jepsen in Glamour, a magazine that elsewhere features the “Shit Girls Say” video stars and the “Man Repeller” blogger.

Biggest Print-to-Web Synergy: InStyle has enlisted Katie Couric and Tommy Hilfiger as celebrity “Pinners” for their Pinterest pages; Mr. Hilfiger notes he is inspired by “classic autumnal colors.”

Biggest Print-to-Book-to-Print Leap: Elizabeth Wurtzel, for Harper’s Bazaar: “I want everyone to try as hard as I do to please be gorgeous, because it’s not that hard, girls. Looking great is a matter of feminism.”

Most Horrifying, Unsurprising Revelation: Lucky’s oral history of Guess reveals that Paris Hilton keeps a blow-up of her early-2000s jeans ad next to her bed.

Most Compelling Subhed: “Guest editor Victoria Beckham’s dear friend and go-to hair guy, Ken Paves, is on a mission to help at-risk women. Love that.”

Best Use of Profile-Speak: Miley Cyrus, per Marie Claire, is “a 19-year-old firecracker with washboard abs, a smoky laugh, and a filthy mouth.” Elsewhere her voice is described as “tangy and redolent of her native Nashville.”

Most Disconnected From Readers’ Reality: “Everyone I know with taste gets plates from Heath Ceramics,” says Jessica de Ruiter, stylist, in Lucky. “They use them at Axe.” (It’s pronounced “a-shay.”)

Biggest Indications Fashion Magazine Readers Aren’t In It For the Fashion: When asked, an Elle reader notes her biggest wish is not the Bottega Veneta dress Ms. Perry wears on the cover but “my mother’s love and my father’s approval”; a Glamour reader poll yields favorite designers including “anything Jennifer Aniston wears” and Old Navy.

Wendy Diamond and Lucky in happier times (Animal Fair)

Poor puppy: Our story on Wendy Diamond and her terminally ill Maltese Lucky took a sad turn this morning, when we were texted by animal rights activist and television personality.

"Lucky has passed," read the text. And yet the wedding bells are still ringing...

"The wedding will still go on to celebrate her life," Ms. Diamond wrote, adding that an obituary could be found on her webzine Animal Fair. "I am now fostering a dog and have been heaven sent. I need to adopt another lucky dog, but there will only be one named Lucky though

On Animal Fair, her obituary reads:

In her constant quest to give back (and get some treats in return), Lucky served as the Chair-Dog for the Katrina Pet Memorial, Grand Marshall of Barkus, as well as the American Cancer Society’s Bark for Life and hosted 1000′s of fundraisers in her lifetime. She was the only civilian dog admitted into the United Nations, and inspired the White House Pet Correspondents Benefit, St Pawtricks, Yappy Hour, Paws For Style, Howloween events, all to promote animal rescue and welfare. The Humane Society of New York has named a wing after Lucky! Check out AnimalFair.com to take a memorable look at Lucky’s many accomplishments and adventures!

RIP Lucky: Our thoughts are with Ms. Diamond, as all of us here at The Observer know how devastating it is to lose a pet.

Renovating architects left the front of the house unchanged to blend in with the block, according to Brownstoner. (http://www.brownstoner.com/blog/2011/10/the-insider-radical-reno-in-red-hook/)

Lucky editor Brandon Holley has a personal essay in Glamour magazine this month, describing a home invasion she experienced last March. An open window on the ground floor of her Brooklyn house was broken into in the middle of the night by a man who stood over the bed where she, her husband, and her two-year-old son slept, demanded their money and threatened to kill them.

The scene is chillingly rendered, but it's almost more interesting to hear the former Jane editor describe the hazards of gentrification. It's rare that an article about Ms. Holley fails to mention that she lives in Red Hook; the remote industrial neighborhood serves as shorthand for her many cool aspects (opened Max Fish, worked for Sassy, married a musician). After Jane folded, Ms. Holley ran Yahoo! women's site Shine from her home, sometimes in her pajamas.

New York visited the wood-frame house built in 1899 for a 2007 article on the de-gentrification of the neighborhood, when she was hosting a fundraiser for the Red Hook Initiative, the poverty-fighting nonprofit at which she volunteers (and to which she donated the writer's fee for the Glamour piece).

Adam Sternbergh wrote:

Holley’s house, which she bought with her husband in late 2004, then gut-renovated for a year, sits on a typical Red Hook block, by which I mean a dark, unremarkable stretch of three-story, vinyl-sided rowhouses along a cracked and wobbly street. When I first arrived, I have to admit I thought I’d written down the wrong address. But walking through her open door, I entered a totally different world: an artfully reimagined loftlike space with a sunken central room, concrete floors, and a large manicured backyard. Inside, the assembled guests enjoyed a "Taste of Red Hook," displayed on long tables with white tablecloths: gumbo from the Good Fork, sweets from Baked, and greasy, delicious huaraches from one of the vendors who work weekends at the Red Hook ball fields.

Five years later, Ms. Holley is back to getting dressed up and taking a car to 4 Times Square every day, but according to the essay, she's still something of an outsider in a neighborhood stalled in transition.

She wrote:

“You don’t fit in here,” Jerry, my busybody neighbor, had told me a few months before. He had been raised in rough-and-tumble Red Hook, Brooklyn, where I’ve lived for the past seven years. Perched happily on my stoop on my quiet block, I just smiled—I was used to his diatribes about yuppies. Our neighborhood has undergone a wave of gentrification, and I’m definitely a part of that. I shop at the little boutiques. I go to the new restaurants. I wear heels to work.

“You aren’t careful!” Jerry continued. “You don’t lock your door, you leave your windows open—you can’t do that around here!” As usual, I argued with him. Even though I grew up on a small farm in Great Falls, Virginia, I’m street-smart, I told him. I’ve never been the victim of a crime.

But I’m also not delusional. Red Hook can be a tough place. Back in the eighties, a cover story in Life magazine proclaimed it the “crack capital of America.” It’s home to the Red Hook Houses, New York City’s second-biggest housing project, and you commonly hear about gangs and crime there. So as much as I liked to spar with Jerry, his criticism unnerved me. Part of me had refused to let go of the easy way of life I grew up with. Until that morning in March.

"I can confirm that John is not the creator of the Twitter handle @CondeElevator," Conde Spokesperson Beth Jacobson told The Observer.

After a couple of mildly irritated tweets,  Mr. Jannuzzi published a good-humored denial on Lucky's website.

"According to The Daily Beast, sources say disciplinary action is only hours away and I'm shaking in my Tretorns," he wrote.

"On a personal note, according to another tipster, I'm 'not particularly well known'--I'll nurse my wounded ego later."

As far as we can tell, the only evidence it was him was that the account had followed him early in its brief life. It's somewhat ironic that the most hurtful things to come out of @CondeElevator weren't the elevator sound bytes themselves, but the anonymous barbs given to reporters, who, it must be said, led a witch hunt decidedly more aggressive than any internal Conde Nast investigation.

Maybe there's a lesson here! Oh, wait, definitely no. Meet @CondeElevator2.

But the most interesting line in Holley's resume is bartender at the landmark Lower East Side dive Max Fish (which, N.B., is not closing anymore).

After graduating from Barnard in 1989, she was part of a Lower East Side crowd that helped Ulli Rimkus establish Max Fish, the Ludlow Street bar/gallery that was an epicenter of alternative arts and music in the 1990s. Ms. Holley was one of the bartenders on opening night, the other being the artist Harry Druzd.

"It was a really great scene, and then it very quickly became Evan Dando and Courtney Love getting crazy in a booth," she said. "But it was still so much fun."

It was at Max Fish that Ms. Holley met David Hershkovits, who a few years earlier had helped start Paper, the downtown-oriented magazine. When he learned that Ms. Holley planned to write a book about one of her passions, American muscle cars, Mr. Hershkovits asked her to submit an article on the topic. It was the start of Ms. Holley's magazine career (the book was never written).

In case this anecdote is one of those only-news-to-me-because-I-was-in-second-grade-at-the-time things, here's a rundown of what, besides spraying it with cool girl fumes, Holley has planned for Lucky:

• "More words." (!)
• "Prettier" models (?)
• Pricier accessories
• A blog collective and a more social website (Remember how much she likes UGC?)
• Two spin-off magazines for kids and home, expected to launch this year

All fashion magazines are about shopping, so we've always admired Lucky's honesty, but we wonder how any printed mag can compete with the free, online, DIY versions like Polyvore.

kstoeffel@observer.com :: @kstoeffel

"I didn't leave Jane, Jane left me," Ms. Holley told The Observer on the phone this afternoon.

Ms. Holley decided that she didn't want to take over another magazine. "I talked to a couple of other print titles and something in my belly said, 'just don't do it,'" she said.

Condé Nast editorial director Tom Wallace, who worked with Ms. Holley on Jane, got her an interview with Yahoo and, for the last three years, she has been running Shine, Yahoo's site for women.

"We never lost touch with her," Mr. Wallace told The Observer. Now Ms. Holley is returning to Condé Nast to take over Lucky magazine from founding editor Kim France. She is only the second editor to return to the company after leaving (Lucy Danzinger, who used to edit Women's Sports and Fitness, returned to the company to edit Self).

"Brandon knows her way around Condé Nast," Mr. Wallace said. "Brandon also knows, because of her Shine experience, as much as anybody knows about building a success on the web."

Shine has been a success, and its traffic grew to more than 25 million unique visitors per month under Ms. Holley.

"I feel like I went to school for three years and now I can bring that back," Ms. Holley said. She compared Yahoo to MIT. "You have all these crazy, brainy geeks."

She said she is excited to bring her freshly minted web degree to Lucky.

"Lucky is an amazing magazine and perfect for what women are doing online," she said. "If you look at what women are doing a lot, what they're doing is looking at clothes and shopping and beauty."

We suggested that Ms. Holley is the first editor-in-chief at Condé Nast with extensive web experience — a new breed. She agreed.

"Our hope here is that the combination of her experiences will make her ideal for helping, enriching and strengthening the Lucky brand across many platforms," Mr. Wallace said.

Ms. Holley said that she is excited to help extend the Lucky brand on mobile platforms and grow more of a community on the magazine's website.

"I'm lucky enough to have done magazines, and now I've launched a women's online destination and all the parts that play in-between—applications and mobile," she said. "Then again, I miss the fashion well. I miss talking to crazy photographers and crazy stylists."

The Observer asked Ms. Holley if Condé Nast had changed since she left in 2007.

"Oh my gosh! It is so different," Ms. Holley said. "I am just getting a taste. Bob Sauerberg is bringing together all the digital and print worlds in a great way." Mr. Sauerberg was promoted to president of the company earlier this summer.

Ms. Holley said it isn't difficult to come back to the company after what happened to Jane.

"Jane was a whole different enchilada. It was in a place of transition," Ms. Holley said. "Lucky has got a strong business. It makes money. It doesn't lose money."

She said that Lucky has changed the world of magazines since it launched under Ms. France in 2000.

"One could only hope to do what Kim did," Ms. Holley said.

Speaking of, what exactly happened to Ms. France here? Was she pushed out given the pressures to generate revenue for new platforms, especially for a brand like Lucky's that seems rich with opportunity for the web and other digital platforms? Did she leave on her own?

It's unclear.

"I am exceptionally grateful to Conde Nast and Si Newhouse for what has been a tremendous opportunity, and something I will remember with only fondness," she wrote in a statement this afternoon, sent by the Conde Nast spokeswoman Maurie Perl.

"Kim created a brand," Mr. Wallace said. "There are very, very few people in our business who can say that."

"In my view and I can tell you in S.I.'s view," he added, "she's a great editor and we owe her a lot."

Earlier: The Return of Brandon Holley! Former Jane Editor Takes Over Lucky From Kim France

zturner@observer.com / @zekeft

Brandon Holley is returning to Condé Nast to take over Lucky magazine from Kim France, the company announced today. 

Ms. Holley left Condé in the summer of 2007 when S.I. Newhouse and Tom Wallace decided to close Jane. She soon found a job working on the launch of Shine, Yahoo's site for women. She has been working for Yahoo from her home in Red Hook, Brooklyn, according to an article this spring in The New York Times.

Ms. Holley is the only Condé Nast editor besides Self editor Lucy Danzinger, who used to edit Women's Sports and Fitness, to leave the company and later return to a different title.

The Observer has a call in to Ms. Holley. Here's the release:

BRANDON HOLLEY NAMED EDITOR IN CHIEF OF LUCKY

New York, N.Y., September 8, 2010 - Brandon Holley has been named Editor in Chief of Lucky, it was announced today by Thomas J. Wallace, Editorial Director of Condé Nast. Her appointment is effective September 20, 2010. Ms. Holley was the Editor in Chief and business lead of Yahoo! Shine, one of the largest online destinations for women, since 2007. She replaces Kim France, who is leaving the company. "Brandon is an extraordinarily innovative editor whose extensive experience in both the print and digital realms will be key to developing the Lucky brand across multiple platforms," said Mr. Wallace. Under Ms. Holley's leadership, Yahoo! Shine attracted 25 million visitors per month, according to comScore. Her appointment at Lucky marks a return to Condé Nast for Ms. Holley, who was Editor in Chief of Jane from 2005 to 2007, when it ceased publication. In 2001 she launched ELLEgirl where she remained editor until 2005. Ms. Holley served as senior editor at GQ from1998 to 2000. She was also part of the launch team of Time Out New York where she served as the dining and shopping editor from 1995 to 1998. She started her magazine career as a writerfor Paper magazine and worked as a fact checker for Rolling Stone. In 2002, Ms. Holley was named one of Advertising Age's Women to Watch. Lucky and Luckymag.com focus on shopping and style, showcasing what to wear and how to wear it, while making fashion and beauty fun and accessible. The magazine, which launched in 2000, has a circulation of 1.1 million.