Review: Vintage magazine

Finally, things are somewhat settling enough to post properly again. If you’ve sent me a magazine over the last few weeks, rest assured I’ll get to it. Meantime, you can also find me tweeting (and retweeting) magazine news @twitsplosion. And now, on with the show.

The main inspiration for Vintage is pretty clear. In fact, it’s declared openly in the second paragraph of the editor’s introduction.

“Inspired by Fleur Cowles’ Flair (published 1950-1951), a magazine that explored the possibilities of print, font, color, photography, and texture, while offering an array of articles—on art, music, fashion, food, travel, culture—written by noted artists and authors of the day …Vintage magazine brings to the fore, with the eloquent voices of today’s writers and artists, the impact of history on our present culture.”

Flair is a magazine I know pretty well – I have original copies of more than half its 13 issues, as well as the Flair 1953 annual and the giant Rizzoli Best of Flair book, which reprinted the magazine and its print effects almost in their entirety. At times portentous, prissy and focused on a small section of New York art-lovers, it nevertheless was a remarkable publication, as much for its playfulness in format (die cuts, different papers, fold outs – this in 1950-1, remember) as in its content (which featured such names as Tennessee Williams, Salvador Dalí and Eleanor Roosevelt).

A good inspiration to have then (except for its fate, which was to bankrupt one of America’s larger magazine companies), and Vintage certainly has no lack of ambition in its opening. It has lovely, nicely textured cover, and inside shows off some really nice die-cuts and effects.

The opening piece, which appears after the contents page but before the editor’s letter, is probably the magazine’s strongest in style and execution. It looks at the art and seduction of vinyl sleeves, with the article written on a mock-sleeve. A glossy sticker carries the headline and author credit at its centre.

Other articles include an illustrated diary (fictional? It’s not clear) from the 1950s about a young college girl visiting Paris, printed on thick tactile paper stock, a look at the history of Barbie (which, though interesting, seems almost entirely quoted from a single book about the doll), the history of the wedge shoe, hairstyles through the ages, a poem about visiting Warsaw, and the 1973 Ferrari Dino.

There are plenty of positives: the diecuts in the ‘hairstyles of the past’ piece are both playful and well-realised; an image from the wedge patent application is stuck on introduction page to the piece, hiding a modern wedge behind it; there are occasional full-bleed images of textiles that are both striking and fun. The spine is in part stitched with a wonderful red thread that sometimes peeps through.

There are also some missteps, in both design and content. When there isn’t a high design concept to hang it on, the design looks and feels amateurish, such as in the Barbie, Ferrari and Roman wine pieces. Putting the folios on the bottom of ad pages confuses the reading experience, and the magazine ends very abruptly, without much sense of pace.

The biggest problem, however, is with the presentation of the magazine’s basic concept. As beautiful an object it might sometimes be, I’m not clear who this magazine is for. It’s apparently about the impact of history on our culture, yet the articles aren’t presented in a way that makes you understand why they’ve been written, or how they connect to the world today. A lack of subheads or good ledes merely highlight the magazine’s weakness.

The original Flair, for all its faults, was very much rooted in the primary artistic and cultural movements of high-society New York at the time. Vintage reads like a magazine far less certain about when and where it belongs, let alone why anyone would buy it. Of course, I may not be the intended demographic, but I still think it needs to help guide the reader more towards each story.

I really wanted to like Vintage. A great deal of care was taken in designing and printing the effects used in this issue, without resorting to effects (eg foil, holographic) that would just be plain wrong for its intended theme. So far, though, the whole concept feels like it needs more work.

Vintage‘s gratifyingly thick paper subscription cards list the magazine’s price as $30 for two issues a year. That’s not an impossible price, especially for something so tactile and physical, but unless it focuses its content better, comes up with a better overall design, and adds clearer pacing to the whole mix, it threatens to have an even shorter lifespan than its inspiration.