The New Season

To survive, fashion magazines have embraced digital media and diversity

Nicola Hamilton can still recall some of her first experiences with magazines. Her mother, an equestrian photographer, published her photographs in equestrian magazines—“her livelihood depended on it.” Her mother’s home office had walls plastered with mounted covers of her published photographs.

Then Hamilton discovered Nylon magazine in the early 2000s. She remembers it having a big influence on her. “They were doing fashion that felt truer to my own influences,” she says. “It was different than the fashion magazines my mom subscribed to: bolder, more layered, heavily influenced by music or fashion houses.” 

Through her work, Hamilton has noticed a decline in Canadian commercially run publications for nearly two decades. But to her, magazines in general are worth fighting for. In 2022, she founded a shop called Issues on Dundas Street West in Toronto, a haven for fellow magazine lovers.

For Hamilton, fashion magazines were an integral part of pre-internet culture. They served as the link between the fashion industry and society and are worth saving. Films such as How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003), 13 Going on 30 (2004), and The Devil Wears Prada (2006) all centred around magazines, and to this day they remain fan favourites. Carrie Bradshaw’s pilgrimage to Vogue was a seminal moment in the popular Sex and the City franchise that ran through the late nineties and early 2000s. The September Issue (2009) documentary film gave a behind-the-scenes view of the preparations Anna Wintour—possibly the most famous magazine editor in chief alive—faced while compiling the gargantuan 840-page fall issue. 

Fashion magazines for the longest time have been an important element in the fashion industry. They are used to communicate fashion-related news and events to society through an accessible medium, reporting on fashion trends and serving as a guide to readers seeking inspiration or help with changing their own style. Lately, they’ve had to adapt to an even faster-shifting industry by embracing social media and diversity—and cease printing, if they must.

That’s because things have changed. Hamilton’s beloved Nylon stopped producing print editions in 2017 and other Canadian magazines did not escape this fate. Many, such as Fashion magazine and Elle Canada, have reduced their annual publishing frequency to save money. Today, Fashion publishes seven times a year and Elle Canada is down to eight issues. Others have ceased printing physical copies altogether and shifted to exclusively online publication. Flare made this transition in 2017 after it suffered major losses in ad revenue. In September 2016 Flare was publishing 10 issues annually and had a total circulation of just under 170,000. Three months later it stopped printing, and the magazine shuttered entirely last year. Of the fashion magazines still on newsstand racks, none have the page counts they once enjoyed. Things can start to look bleak, but if the chain that once connected fashion media with their audiences has snapped, the solution has been to reconnect on social media. 

Social media presence has become an integral part of a fashion magazine’s identity, and in order to stay relevant, it has become more of a necessity than a suggestion. Randi Bergman is a Canadian freelance writer, editor, digital strategist, and consultant. Between 2011 and 2016 she was an executive digital editor for Fashion magazine, launching the publication’s social media presence on platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat. When Bergman began working at Fashion, print was the number-one priority and the online presence was “sort of something that you’re growing in the background,” she says. Her half-decade with the company corresponded to the period when social media became a bigger priority with each passing year. “This is what you need to do to engage with your audience,” said Bergman at the time. “If you’re not on socials, then you’re kind of nowhere.” By the time Bergman left Fashion, its online presence had become the number-one priority. The magazine’s 2023 media kit claims close to 310,000 unique visitors to the magazine’s site each month.

People don’t want to just see celebrities in their fashion coverage, nor influencers, for that matter. They want to see themselves

The integration of social media platforms has revolutionized how fashion magazines interact with their audience. “It changed the way that content was being engaged with,” says Bergman. “It was increasing your presence and meeting your audience where they are.” Social media has provided a way for fashion magazines to share real-time updates, behind-the-scenes content, and exclusive access to events. By integrating social media platforms, fashion magazines have become more interactive and engaging, allowing readers to actively participate in discussions, share their opinions, and contribute to the fashion community. Maintaining a strong online presence has made fashion magazines more accessible. “Digital has brought a lot of [information about fashion] into the purview of people that didn’t have access,” says Charmaine Gooden, longtime fashion journalism instructor at Toronto Metropolitan University.

But there’s still something to be said for courting the inaccessible. Even before opening up Issues magazine shop, Hamilton had noticed how a celebrity on a cover serves as a marketing tactic that draws in fans and boosts sales. Similarly, Bergman says articles tend to lead with “who” nowadays. Fashion-show content is rarely just about the show. “Designers used to be the king of the roost,” says Serah-Marie McMahon, founder, publisher, and editor in chief of the now-defunct Worn Fashion Journal, “but people stopped caring as much about what designers were making.” Since designers are no longer the only source of fashion inspiration, magazines now often integrate popular online personalities into their issues to maintain relevance.

People don’t want to just see celebrities in their fashion coverage, nor influencers, for that matter. They want to see themselves. “It’d be easy to say we were way more on that than everybody else,” says McMahon, “but it just wasn’t even close to enough.” While Worn was more diverse than other publications at the time, McMahon still recalls how performative the industry’s inclusivity was at the outset. “I just remember body diversity being on the cover of everything. It was a very weird trend in the 2010s,” she recalls. “That was the whole radical thing: have a fat girl, but don’t put any clothes on her.” When McMahon saw the disappointing styling, she thought, It’s a fashion magazine and you can’t even be bothered to put fashion on her!

Thankfully, things have continued to change. Fashion magazine rebranded in 2020, transforming itself into a wider-lens publication for all who have a deep interest in fashion and beauty. At the time, editor in chief Bernadette Morra wrote, “We are not just interested in what people are wearing. We want to delve deeper into how clothing, accessories, hair and makeup makes them feel. Almost all our cover stars have felt excluded or insecure at one point or another. And they have all found personal empowerment through a strongly developed sense of style.” 

This shift has been in response to the growing demand for more inclusive representation in the fashion industry. “There’s a lot more mindfulness about who magazines are sharing their platform with,” says freelance fashion and beauty writer and editor Caitlin Agnew, “meaning sharing a platform with voices that might not have been recognized five or 10 years ago, and being more conscious to include a broader range of perspectives and experiences, and even just visually with models showcasing diversity and beauty within all types of different people.” 

Charmaine Gooden founded the Black Fashion Canada Database, a platform that recognizes the oftentimes overlooked Black talent in the Canadian fashion industry. After working in the industry for nearly four decades, she believes the younger generation is poised to reinvent the idea of fashion. For example, Elle Canada’s February/March 2022 issue covered four Indigenous women and their commitment to reclaiming their culture, advocating for change, and honouring the Inuit legacy by shaping a better future. 

McMahon hopes Canadian fashion magazines continue to share stories of diversity and inclusion. Optimistically, she awaits the day when publications are conscious of these topics without making it the point of their stories. “Make sure your magazine is diverse,” she says, “but don’t have articles about how it’s so important to be diverse. Just be diverse.” 

As for relevance, Hamilton believes fashion magazines, print or online, still matter. “Magazine teams are curators of taste and style. They help us understand what’s happening in the world at that time, while also showing us exactly what we’re capable of achieving.” She cites the success of Bobby Bowen’s Bully magazine, a Black-led, Toronto-based publication focused on fashion, music, art, and sex, as proof that the future of Canadian fashion magazines is in featuring a wider arrays of voices. And there is hope for those who have adapted: in early 2024, for example, Elle Canada and Elle Quebec together were reaching four million readers a month with their print and digital editions.

Even the suggestion that print is dead in the fashion sector seems premature, says Hamilton. Nylon recently announced its relaunch on a twice-a-year schedule, with its first issue scheduled for April 2024. But to Agnew, as people now pick and choose how they engage with content through seemingly ever-changing mediums, the delivery does not matter as much as it used to. “If people who are contributing to the industry can have their stories shared with an audience that’s engaged and interested, that’s all that matters.”