Any guy with a hankering for potato salad can get funded on Kickstarter. For these independent magazines, it's the daily grind of keeping a print publication afloat after the campaign is over that's the real challenge.
Last year, we noticed a trend of innovative fashion brands finding success with a little help from popular crowdfunding site Kickstarter. One menswear company raised a whopping $400,000 to get off the ground and since then, a sweatshirt line raised over $1 million from the site's pool of benefactors. Of course, Kickstarter is home to a wide variety of projects--and recently we've noticed another segment of the fashion industry using it as an outside-the-box funding method: magazines.
The Fourth of July is about more than just barbecues, fireworks and baseball games. It's about independence! Beating the system, forging your own path, etc., etc. So we thought, what better time to highlight some of our favorite independent fashion magazines who are doing just that.
The bond between fashion people and food people is pretty damn intense right now. Look at Karlie Kloss's collaboration with Momofuku. And the lifestyle-ization of Bon Appetit. Fashion people want to eat good food. And food people want to look good. Cherry Bombe, the new magazine from Harper's Bazaar alumni Kerry Diamond and Claudia Wu, is made specifically for those people. The focus is women in food, and women who love to cook, so there are interviews with Karlie Kloss, Sofia Coppola (!), Garance Dore and chefs including Prune's Gabrielle Hamilton, The Breslin's April Bloomfield, and Tennessee pit master Helen Turner. "There are so many people doing interesting, beautiful things in and around the food world," says Diamond. "Our cover girl Karlie Kloss is a great example with her Milk Bar Karlie's Kookies project. So is the artist Jennifer Rubell and food stylist Victoria Granof. It's not just about being a chef. And we promise only one cupcake photo and one cat photo per issue."