The Primacy of Fashion (as a Subset of Culture)
The IHT ran an interesting article this past week on the explosion of new publications in the fashion space called ‘A New Breed of Fashion Magazines Comes Into Vogue’.
The article focuses on 032c, a new print magazine from Berlin ostensibly covering “contemporary culture”. 032c is striking a cord with fashion-minded creatives worldwide who are increasingly shunning big media.
I doubt very much 032c’s fledgling distribution reaches Vermont, so I guess I’ll have to wait until after Labor Day before I get a glimpse. (I’m interested to see how it stacks up vs. Monocle).
In the meantime, I’ll chew on this quote from the IHT article by 032c’s editor, Jörg Koch, on why fashion features so prominently in the magazine:
“Fashion has been one of the lead disciplines of visual culture,” says Koch. “That’s why fashion is in there. If we had done this 30 or 40 years ago, it would have been film and theater. But fashion is far too important to be limited to Vogue.”
I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about the role of fashion (and culture in general) in our lives as we move up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. This magazine looks like it might provide some clues.
