DO NOT WASH READ CAREFULLY
The latest issue of fashion magazine Viscose comes with a washing label attached to it: “ONE SIZE FITS ALL DO NOT WASH READ CAREFULLY”. There’s also a handy breakdown of materials: “71% Criticism 19% Research 10% images”.
Issue one was designed to look like an actual handbag, so perhaps I should have been expecting something like this washing label. But still, it is a lovely surprise. Buffalo — another fashion title — is the only other magazine I have ever seen that undergoes a complete redesign every issue. Viscose launched less than a year ago and it is fast establishing itself as one of the most inventive magazines on the newsstand. A particularly satisfying element of this issue’s design is that it alternates uncoated black and white pages with glossy image sections, so that flicking through the magazine you encounter sudden flashes of colour.
The essays and criticism published inside are esoteric, but still readable. There are in-depth reviews of events only people really into clothes would care about (Miuccia Prada’s last solo womenswear presentation, for example). But there are shorter, juicier features too. Like a series of photographs of Lady Di’s pregnancy dresses, painstakingly recreated by the artist Victoria Colmegna as part of her investigation into young women’s pop-cultural obsession with fertility and birth, especially when prompted by its opposite, death (of mothers and/or babies).
The ‘bagazine’ was a hard act to follow but this issue Viscose has surpassed itself. I wonder what strange object will appear on my desk next.
