Reading my daily dose of digital yesterday, I pulled three items in a row up on my screen that were about... magazines.
Style.com/Print - Style.com's inaugural large-format print magazine, available "on select newsstands." [Get it? The magazine's title is a URL, but it's actually print! GET IT?]
Vogue's Newsstand Sales Are Up This Year, Unlike Nearly Every Other Fashion Magazine (via New York Magazine) - Vogue's numbers are up (the only fashion title in the ever-fashionable black) by 7 percent. As WWD notes, that's a 17 percent difference, in the magazine's favor, from any of its competitors.
Upcoming Zappos iPad App Mimics a Fashion Magazine (via WSJ) - Zappos expects to launch its first attempt at recreating the catalog experience on the iPad in early December, just in time for the holidays. *[OK, yes, I know this is not actually print. But it wants to be.]
Huh? I thought print was dead! Haven't trends turned the page, and 300% of words worldwide are now read on an iKindle or something?
Right?!
[quite wonderful "OUT!Dated" recycled-magazine magazine by Tee Chee Yee]
No, not right. It is now -- in the midst of more websites, iPhone apps, RSS feeds and reading gadgets than I can count -- that the list of real-deal, glossy, fashion-centric publications is growing. Seems that it's not just folly, either; demand is high. Just watch the Style.com Twitter for an hour and see as it reposts the clamor from enthralled readers:
RT@ivvalentine: If you haven't gotten a copy of the@styledotcom mag: You're missing out on some serious#inspiration.
RT@EstherhLee:@styledotcom I'm obsessed with the magazine! Have read it 20 times and counting..
20 times, huh? When was the last time you re-scrolled a webpage 20 times?
And therein lies the key, I think, to understanding why fashion is, in this case, bucking the trend:
RT @BLANQIgirls:@styledotcom LOVE print mag! paper feels sturdy when flipping through amazing editorial/photos & nothing beats rip'n out pages that inspire!
Feels. Flipping. Um, rip'n. None of those verbs can be executed on a screen. There's just something about that magazine FEELING -- the heft, the big pictures, the gloss, the read-at-the-nail-salon-ability -- that the digital arena can't capture. In her article "Is Fashion the Future of Print?," the Toronto Standard's Style Critic, Sarah Nicole Prickett, spoke to The Kit periodical's publisher, Doug Wallace: “The print product is the same as and kind of different from our digital issue,” explains Wallace. “Tabloid size, glossy paper, the colour and richness of the visual experience is going to be richer, and juicier. I know I can’t really get the gleam in the eye of a model to look online the way it does in print, the way the retoucher does it for print.
Exactly. As much as I like the ease of tapping my way through i-D online, Lara Stone's latest pictorial is way more lush on the printed page. And what would I do with my spare time if I couldn't sit happily tearing out pieces from magazines to make mood boards and kitschy DIY collages? Prickett also has a really interesting point about why fashion, in particular, would engender the loyalty to paper (versus, say, architecture); it's NOT just picture quality. "Anyone who really loves clothes loves material, the swish, the feel. The tactility. Everyone I know who’s obsessed with fashion, no matter their age, is equally obsessed with magazines. You buy them, collect them, throw them out, trade them, cut them up, recycle them; in short, you treat them just like clothes." That couldn't be more true -- looking at myself, my hoarding and preserving of old magazines (currently stashed in chronological order in color-coded milk crates) is identical to the hoarding visible in my closet (which is jammed with things dating back a hundred years, and color-coded!).
Exactly. As much as I like the ease of tapping my way through i-D online, Lara Stone's latest pictorial is way more lush on the printed page. And what would I do with my spare time if I couldn't sit happily tearing out pieces from magazines to make mood boards and kitschy DIY collages? Prickett also has a really interesting point about why fashion, in particular, would engender the loyalty to paper (versus, say, architecture); it's NOT just picture quality. "Anyone who really loves clothes loves material, the swish, the feel. The tactility. Everyone I know who’s obsessed with fashion, no matter their age, is equally obsessed with magazines. You buy them, collect them, throw them out, trade them, cut them up, recycle them; in short, you treat them just like clothes." That couldn't be more true -- looking at myself, my hoarding and preserving of old magazines (currently stashed in chronological order in color-coded milk crates) is identical to the hoarding visible in my closet (which is jammed with things dating back a hundred years, and color-coded!).
And that's not all. Prickett points out that "There is a glamour, a rarefied sense of validation and authority, that is crucial to fashion—moreso, I think, than to other forms of art/commerce—and that can never be reproduced online." On the nose. Paying more for a cup of coffee and having to stand in line for it makes us feel like big shots; paying for our fashion news and taking the time to sit down with a big book rather than an iPhone gives us the same feeling of investment, of dedication, and of visible sophistication that we get from, say, shopping at Barneys, or swinging a luxuriously buttery leather tote bag (which you'll need to carry around all your new magazines).
Was that too many words, it being the internet and all? Sorry, I'm a nerd. In short:
LESSON: Fashion = touch + feel + glamour = Print.
*Postscript: If I'd finished writing this last night, I'd have beaten TrendCentral to the punch. But as of today, their latest trend report is entitled... yep... "New print magazines dare to launch in the digital age." Hey, at least I was right.
