Relive the ’90s Fashion Heyday With “Re-Edition” Magazine

Despite frequent declarations that “print is dead,” new magazines are cropping up well into 2015, the majority of which propose a print product as an outlet for creative freedom free from the restraints of business or the page-view demands of the Internet.

The latest to tackle the theme is Re-Edition, a quarterly publication from Belgium and England that combines archive photography with new commissions. The first issue includes highlights like a reprint of a Vivienne Westwood editorial from The Face; a 28-page retrospective of images by Mark Borthwick; a selection of works from Dash Snow, Mike Brodie, and Jim Goldberg; and new editorials from fashion industry up-and-comers Harley Weir, Charlie Engman, and Rachel Chandler.

“I think we have some kind of instinctive connection to the past that we need to move forward,” Re-Edition cofounder Fay Waters told Style.com of the decision to publish a magazine with both new and old imagery. “You can look at the past and also look forward to something completely new and unknown, and it’s most exciting to mix the two.”

The decision to republish archive stories goes hand in hand with fashion’s current obsession with nostalgia, from the bohemian babes of the ’70s to the goths of the ’90s who ruled the Fall runways. “I think designers are definitely looking to the past, in the same way we find archival photography that is very relevant to what’s happening now,” Waters explained.

The magazine also harkens to the trend of #TBTing iconic imagery on social media, but to the editors of Re-Edition, the feeds are getting so crowded with heroic images that each is losing its meaning. “We wanted to take archive images out of this clutter and showcase them as they ran originally,” Waters said of the choice to create a print product versus a digital stream of imagery.

The magazine chooses to champion the photography of past and present by inclusion alone, without any written articles to accompany the works. Also missing from the pages of Re-Edition: ads. Although that’s something the editors are willing to change. “We want to find different ways of working with designers and brands, where they will give us a piece of their world, in a way,” explained Waters of the mag’s sponsor-based advertising strategy. On a quarterly publishing schedule with global distribution, that’s a bridge the magazine will have to cross sooner than later.