Magazine Launch
LONDON — Green fashion is everywhere, but what about a green fashion magazine?
Former Elle U.K. editor in chief Anne-Marie Curtis is fusing decades of glossy magazine experience with a keen interest in sustainability and launching The Calendar Magazine: A Sustainable Glossy on Instagram.
The Calendar is a micromagazine that takes its editorial cues from glossy titles, with slick editorial images, interviews, features, fashion, beauty and lifestyle content aimed at “the considered consumer.”
The soft launch is this week, with a website to follow in June and a physical magazine planned for later this year. The Instagram platform will offer daily content that examines the intersection of fashion and sustainability, with stories on vintage, rental, resale and consuming “more mindfully.”
In an interview Curtis said her aim is to spark an upbeat and productive conversation around eco-fashion, and how to consume more mindfully.
“I wanted to create what felt like a joyful space, with high-quality content. There are lots of ways to live and shop more sustainably.
And I believe in driving change through desire, rather than through guilt,” said Curtis, who left Elle U.K. two years ago, having helped the magazine achieve strong digital numbers and circulation growth at a time when other print titles were falling flat.
The magazine is a consumer glossy, she stressed, not a technical journal, and Curtis is not planning to offer data-driven drill downs of brands’ sustainability credentials or progress.
She said all of the brands and companies featured in the magazine will have a sustainability angle and the end game is to “amplify the message that you can be more sustainable and make a positive impact without losing any of the joy and love in the process.”
Her idea to look closer at sustainable fashion had been germinating for a while. It formed when she edited
Elle U.K.’s September 2018 sustainability issue, which focused on how women could make changes to the way they work and shop.
After leaving Elle after 15 years (two of them spent at the helm) she began developing the idea. She secured a small investment and began assembling a core team, many of them her former collaborators at Hearst.
She’s also looking at brand partnerships, while the magazine will eventually be shoppable.
Curtis said The Calendar Magazine has been built for Instagram and, going forward, there will be video, swipethrough features and special functions to help viewers navigate their journey.
The name “calendar” is meant to evoke the idea of fleeting time, and Curtis said she wants her readers and community “to be focused on the now, rather than rushing onto the next trend.” — SAMANTHA CONTI