3 March 2009 No Comment by juliachic

Mag Rack Vol. XII: Blonde

by Julia Chic. Image: blonde.de

ORIGIN: Germany. This brand new, Hamburg-based quarterly is actually the follow-up of a certain magazine called “Blond”. This monthly, which was one of my personal favourites, was published until August 2008. It was then announced, that “Blond” would be turned into a quarterly from November 2008. With a small, fashionable delay and after some slight changes in name, size (like INTERVIEW magazine, this one hits it supersize) and staff, the new BLONDE was finally released a couple of days ago. And to my own relief, the so called “Modemädchen” kicks ass more than ever.

LANGUAGE: German only. Sorry friends!

CONTENT: Whereas the old “Blond” used to cover a wider range of topics, the new BLONDE is much more focused on fashion. It now is a girls-only magazine, and I must say: I like what I see. It is the perfect combination of girly-meets-art: There’s quite some pink, a lot of hearts (okay, but maybe that’s just because the current issue is themed as the “Love Issue”…), girl-topics (about health and things like that),… And yet, unlike many other ladies-only magazines, the fashion and the cosmetics aren’t cut too short either. And the best part is: We can actually afford the clothes and accessoires we see in the editorials!! But then again, fashion isn’t everything that matters in life (unfortunatley) and BLONDE totally realised that as well. Whereas the style/beauty section obviously takes up the most important part of the magazine, the other sections (living/culture, ecology/wellness, travel/movement) are quite interesting to read as well. By the way, my particular kudos go to that report called “Von Kunst und Künstlichkeit”, which is about the fine line between fashion and art (think about Maison Martin Margiela or Viktor and Rolf, for example).

ERGO: It feels so good to go out and buy a new magazine (well, technically, it is only semi-new, but anyways) that actually is not just like all the other magazines on the market!! I really felt that way when I read the new BLONDE today. It is fresh, authentic (like on their hot-or-not list, Stockholm is a “not” because all the people there look the same anyways! Now that’s a statement you won’t find in many other magazines, huh?) and somewhat cute!! Whereas a lot of other magazines attempt to become just as cool as VOGUE or i-D, for instance, and therefore feature some pretentious stuff that nobody actually cares about in the first place; BLONDE is a lovely, down to earth magazine which brings topics that we can all relate to. Personally, I really, really do hope that BLONDE will be able to stick around. I have seen so many good magazines going down over the last years, and I guess it ain’t easy for fashion magazines in times of credit crunch, financial crises and all the other crap that has been going on recently. However, I would love to read and see more from the folks at BLONDE and therefore award them 9 out of 10 Julia Chic points!!