BJP #7840: The Fashion Issue

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While Continental Europe is only just returning home from holidays, here in London, after a particularly damp August, we’re ready to brighten things up, turning on the style with a month of issues dedicated to fashion, available to order now, as well as a download from the App Store.

We’re in good company. Later this month, the fashion cognoscenti will be heading to the British capital for London Fashion Week, where homegrown talents such as Gareth Pugh, JW Anderson and Vivienne Westwood share the runway with international designers, including Maison Margiela, Barbara Casasola and Versus. And London-based fashion magazines such as Pop, The Gentlewoman and Dazed & Confused have just put out their September editions, which are usually the most important of the year in terms of page numbers and ad spend.

We’ll be celebrating British talent with a profile of photographer du jour, Jamie Hawkesworth, interviewed by Jason Evans, alongside a visit to the London home of someone who influenced him, Nigel Shafran. We will also be covering the emergence of agencies devoted to mature models, and talking to the makers of two groundbreaking fashion magazines (Hanatsubaki in Japan, and Fantastic Man here in the UK), and the Norwegian collective behind Editions du lic.

But, as collaboration is the name of the game in fashion, we kick off with some unlikely partnerships between photographers better known for their support of sock-and-sandal combos or scary dad jumpers and cutting-edge designers. Martin Fucking Parr is the title of House of Holland’s initiative with the self-styled “promiscuous” photographer, and arch chronicler of kitsch, and we also talk to Roger Ballen, whose images have been appropriated by Comme de Garçons. Younger (dare we say more hip?) photographers such as Marten Lange and Jessica Eaton are also getting in on the act, collaborating on full-body apparel menswear collections by Études Studio.

And if that’s not enough to wet your diamond-encrusted Louis Vuitton whistle, we have news of a major retrospective of icon-maker extraordinaire, Irving Penn.

I’m happy to see magazines, including BJP, still thriving and innovating in print. At the extreme ends of the spectrum, whether it’s free papers or luxury glossies, print matters, and it’s to the latter we turn for this issue of our month-long focus on fashion photography.

We talk to the founders of Fantastic Man, the influential and exquisitely-designed magazine that redefined the men’s market a decade ago. And we profile Hanatsubaki, the in-store brand publication for one of the world’s oldest cosmetics companies. If you thought the recent buzz around content marketing was something new, think again – Hanatsubaki has been publishing for more than 90 years with a forward-thinking mix of art, fashion and culture, commissioning cutting edge photographers such as Viviane Sassen and Synchrodogs.

If that gets you in the mood,  try our own print edition now, in print or as a download.