‘Tangible & collectible': i-D back on shelves as gen Z revives fashion magazines
Like point and shoot cameras, vinyl records and brick phones, fashion magazines are having a revival primarily because of nostalgia-driven demand from gen Z.
On Tuesday, i-D magazine makes its long-awaited return to UK newsstands. The publication has been absent since its parent company, Vice, declared bankruptcy in 2023. Since then, it has been acquired by the model turned entrepreneur Karlie Kloss through her Bedford Media conglomerate. At a party to celebrate i-D's relaunch, Kloss described it as 'an extraordinary piece of fashion history', explaining that she bought it as she 'didn't want it to die'.
'There has been a significant growth in interest in both making and acquiring print magazines,' says Jeremy Leslie, an art director and founder of MagCulture, an online platform and shop that specialises in independent magazines. 'Young people are really interested in print. They use the internet but print is where the excitement lies. They want something that is tangible and collectible.'
While mass market magazines are suffering – the watchdog the Audit Bureau of Circulations said nearly half of the magazines it examined saw their print circulation decline by 10% or more in 2024 – luxury and indie titles are flourishing.
A spokesperson for the National Portrait Gallery in London, which is hosting an exhibition dedicated to the Face, the trailblazing magazine that championed youth culture throughout the 80s and 90s, said that in its opening month it received more than 28,000 visitors, 14% of whom were aged under 25.
Fifty years after Central Saint Martins launched its degree in fashion communication, demand for places is at an all-time high. The course helped spawn the careers of people including the former Esquire editor Jeremy Langmead and Ib Kamara, the current editor-in-chief of Dazed.
Meanwhile, 20 years after Grazia, Britain's first ever weekly glossy magazine, was launched, its circulation is up 46% year on year with high demand fuelling the launch of standalone biannual issues dedicated to beauty and interiors.
Thom Bettridge, the new editor-in-chief of i-D, agrees the narrative around the decline of print is nonsense. 'Print has been dying since the second I started working in print,' he says. 'I'm 10 years deep and it's still here.'
Bettridge has taken inspiration from Terry Jones, who founded the magazine in 1980. Delving into its vast archives, Bettridge homed in on Jones's DIY approach: 'It was a lot like people make stuff on the internet today. I see it as a precursor to that. Even though it was the deepest in the archive, it felt the most relevant for today.'
Bettridge's launch issue, entitled 'The Unknown Issue', features Enza Khoury, an 18-year-old from Ohio who was found through an open callout overseen by the Euphoria casting director Jennifer Venditti. Two additional covers feature Naomi Campbell and the singer FKA twigs – who previously appeared in 1986 and 2012 respectively, before they became household names. Bettridge has kept the title's signature wink logo and his aim is that each magazine is collected by readers. He and Kloss still have the issues they previously bought themselves.
Leslie, who stocks more than 800 magazines at his shop in Clerkenwell, London, says he is seeing more of a focus on the design of the magazine's spine: 'Customers are keeping them and stacking them on their bookshelves.'
The median price for an independent magazine hovers around the £15 mark. On eBay, old editions of Dazed fetch up to 10 times their original price (£7) while 90s editions of the Face command triple figures. i-D, which will be printed twice a year, costs £20. Bettridge describes it as incredibly dense: 'Even though it sounds like a lot, if you look at our peer group, some are 700 pages long, weigh 3kg and cost £50. We have tried to make it as accessible as possible.'
As for who is going to be consuming it, Bettridge doesn't have a typical reader in mind. Instead he describes them as 'a citizen of the internet'. Features include an op-ed entitled 'Don't be cool' and 'Four anti-trend solutions for modern life'. Bettridge says: 'Everyone knows about trends, you know, and no one wants to be trendy. Everyone wants to be unique.'
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