The internet is made of kittens. Fashion, it seems, is too. It's no secret that Karl Lagerfeld's cat, Choupette, has taken over Twitter. Miu Miu made recent headlines when it sent cat-appliquéd western boots (with kitten, not Cuban, heels) down the runway at their resort presentation. And the popularity of the boldly flicked cat eye shows no sign of abating.
And then there's Puss Puss, a surprisingly chic lifestyle magazine about cats and the people who love them.
Puss Puss launched its first issue last summer after a successful Kickstarter campaign; it's since been picked up by an international distributor and chains such as Barnes & Noble. Because it sold out its initial four-figure print run, the publication significantly upped quantities to meet demand for the second issue, according to the magazine's founder, Russian-born, British-based Maria Joudina-Robinson.
But the success of Puss Puss is driven by more than fashion's affection for felines; it's part of a larger 'slow' magazine movement. While major media brands like Lucky have abandoned print publishing, lavish, less frequent independent productions are tapping niche lifestyle subjects as a way to play to an oversaturated fashion audience.
You could say their approach and sparse publishing schedule are to mainstream fashion magazines what the True Detective cable procedural is, in theory at least, to network television's NCIS – a higher level of production, an event to be anticipated.
A few years ago, a friend introduced me to Around the World, Manhattan's go-to shop for international fashion magazines and 'zines of every description – many of them enthusiastically arcane. If anyone emailed this store the memo about the death of print, it must have gone to its spam mailbox. It's the only retailer I've ever known to not only strictly forbid photography in an effort to protect its unique product assortment, but also to enforce a no note-taking policy.
Around the World isn't a beautiful bookstore. It's dusty, dingy and somewhat disorganized, but I could browse the stacks of smart (and not inexpensive) volumes for hours. Cats are my fancy, admittedly, but even if they weren't, I would find no shortage of similarly enticing lifestyle magazines to choose from. For example, The Rake, the spiffing men's-wear journal from Singapore, tailor-made for dandy fanatics. It alone makes up for the shop's laconic service.
Many magazines carried at Around the World are the spiritual descendants of Kinfolk, one of the original titles in the slow-magazine mileau; it's now on its 16th issue (it began publishing in 2011). They share a similar aesthetic in their musings and asymmetrical, almost haphazard layout design (featuring ample white space), photo essays, whimsical profiles and shoots that run many pages. They are all less magazine than journal, with production values – perfect binding and mixed paper stock – that make them keepsakes, and they are priced accordingly at $15 to $20 apiece.
Their priority is retail distribution, different from that of their online and mainstream counterparts, whose concern is going viral and racking up views, traffic clicks and shares on swiftly changing digital fodder. Brais Vilaso and Xim Ramonell call this oversaturation of information 'infobesity.' Their niche journal, Assistant, is also in its second issue this summer and as the title suggests, the theme is on emerging talents and lesser-known (but essential) figures who work in supporting roles in the fashion industry. The current issue's main feature is a 23-page joint interview and photo shoot with actor Xavier Dolan and director Gia Coppola. Assistant's pages are otherwise devoid of the usual suspects (industry heavyweights or the phenom designer du jour). There's a portrait portfolio of Les Cravates Rouges, as the uniformed young men who greet guests at events and shows in Paris are called, a profile of hand model Lisa Kenny Bass and an interview with journalist Suzy Menkes's assistant, Natasha Cowan.
"We are bombarded with so much information that producing a magazine that only comes out maybe every six months offers a luxury," Joudina-Robinson says. "To take the time to really work out and curate the stories that go into it slows you down." Her background is in design and art direction with fashion brands (she was part of the team that worked on Burberry's new lipstick campaign), but there was never any question of going to an established publishing company or a single private backer to fund Puss Puss. "A [crowd-funding] campaign gave me and the team the freedom to realize our own creative vision," she recalls.
There is serious content that balances out the kittens-and-heels shots. For example, the inaugural issue featured an interview with artist Ai Weiwei among his 30 beloved cats. Issue two has a history of the Black Panther Party alongside a profile of cat-loving chef Gizzi Erskine, and a piece on quantum physics (see: Schrödinger's cat). "The greatest achievement for me," she adds, "is to hear about somebody who is not a cat lover buying the magazine."
Nathalie Atkinson