Do you want to go back in time?
Lately, I have had a craving for an old school fashion magazine. Ridiculous shoots, ridiculous budgets, and ridiculously good looking models. But with Covid-19 essentially killing off the fashion industry — the designer Batsheva Hay recently told the New York Times that “fashion week is over”, and the British Fashion Council predict that half of the entire industry could cease to exist by the end of 2020 — it seems the Fashion Magazine as we know it might be going extinct. British Vogue’s August issue was roughly the same width as a takeaway menu and its cover star was a bird.
This is why I am grateful for Odda. A biannual magazine founded in 2012, the latest issue is about three inches thick. Its cover star is Eva Herzigova, and she is wearing gold lamé. Shoots are often themed by designer (12 sumptuous pages devoted to Gucci), and at one point there is a denim-themed editorial featuring a male model wearing only a tiny blue pair of pants. Obviously, fashion magazines had their problems. Chief among them a life-ruining depiction of the female body. But Odda feels like it was made in a simpler time — 2019 at the very latest — and it makes me nostalgic for the enemy I know.
The magazine is dotted with interviews with artists and designers but they are Q&A only. Usually this would be frustrating but in Odda’s case, words are not the strong suit. The less of them the better. More room for pictures. Probably the absolute highlight is a photoshoot with Snoop Dog and his son, Cordell Broadus, modelling looks from their upcoming collection, Snoopy’s. Think, Snoop and son straddling various sports cars, wearing clothes to match the paintwork.
