The Magazine I Keep Waiting For

Every September, without fail, I indulge in the same practice I've done since I was a teenager: paging through fashion magazines to see what tricks and trends are on the horizon. I love it all, the dramatic evening gowns, the classic pieces I'd actually wear, the shoes that have no place in my wardrobe, and the truly crazy stuff that exists purely as an extension of a designer’s wild imagination. It's a tradition. I head to a bookstore, walk out with a canvas bag full of magazines, pick a Sunday afternoon with nothing on the calendar, and settle into hours of dreaming about a closet I surely will never have. 

It started with YM magazine, which I read cover to cover more times than I can count as a teenager, and which is more or less the reason the first years of my writing career were spent zooming around the world as a fashion editor. Back then, I didn't know that flipping through those pages was basically career research. I just knew I loved it.

So here I am, decades later, still doing the September flip-through, still looking for the art, creativity, and inspiration that make my heart skip a beat. Only year after year, the options get slimmer, which makes me sad. America's appetite for fashion magazines has shrunk to almost nothing. And I get it. Production costs are astronomical, and advertisers can get a bigger bang by supporting influencers and running ads that live online. The magazines that have survived are thin, and a lot of the creative energy has clearly moved over to the digital versions.

I don't love the experience I get from a digital magazine. I don't want a quick scroll. I want to flip actual pages. I want photography with the kind of drama and attitude you'd get from Helmut Newton, not a carousel I swipe past in two seconds. I want long-form articles about designers, the kind that actually tell you something about how a person thinks and works. And yes, I want the perfume cards. I tear them out and use them as bookmarks, which is why my books always smell good at my monthly book club meeting. 

What I miss most, though, isn't just print. It's the magazines that looked past youth-cult fashion and paid attention to women in midlife and beyond. Magazines like Mirabella and More assumed a woman over fifty had style, opinions, and money to spend, and treated her accordingly. 

So I'll ask the obvious question. Isn't there someone out there who wants to launch a print magazine for vibrant, later-life women who are far from done living and spending? Experts keep saying that in a world of AI and automated everything, people are craving something real, something they can hold in their hands, something that actually speaks to who they are right now. A print magazine for the Brilliant Age woman sounds like exactly that. A win for her, and a win for whoever's smart enough to build it.

Until then, I'll keep doing my September flip-through, perfume cards and all.