Alternative Fashion Magazines: Rebel Against Printed (Image)

Lurking through the world wide web I noticed that online magazines are popping out literally everywhere. Whatever style you identify yourself in, you will find your own online mag to satisfy your needs.

Everyone wants to be its own editor in chief, interview its own style icons and flipping through pages of their big ego. Or at least I think this is one of the reasons.

Glossy Fashion Magazines

Another bigger issue could be that we, young 20something almost 30 something, do not relate with what we find in the newsstand anymore. This is something that strucks me every time I have to fly somewhere: what’s the first thing you do when you have to wait in an airport? Yes exactly, you buy the bloody magazines. And you happen to read more magazines than you would ever buy in a month, just in a couple of hours. It’s then that all the issues came to my mind.

Fashion magazine are definitely crossing the lines, and not in a positive way. If you happen to belong to an alternative scene, then you really have a few choices, if we don’t want to say NONE. Try to browse in a magazines shelf in a shop: if you’re lucky the various magazines will all look the same, and you’ll have to choose between 10 copycats, and have no alternative at all. Same ads, same faces, same models, same actresses, same singers, same graphic, same fonts, same everything!

I’m not even starting on the body image issues, but you have a hint just looking at the snaps I took of some magazines. Ostrich-like necks, unnatural positions, boring fashion, family reunions in Sicily and the list goes on. On the screen, I was browsing to the last Rebelicious Magazine issue and feeding my eyes with lots of pink candies!

Alternative Online Magazines

If you really want an alternative to fashion magazines, this is the way you have to go! I’m not talking about the blogs, cause I’m sure you already know everything about them!

• Rebelicious Magazine a cute magazine funded in 2010. You can read it for free online, download it in pdf or buy it in the flesh through the website! Nice graphic, and the main colour is pink, how could I not love it?

• Alt Fashion Love lack lace? Corsets? Black lipstick? This is the magazine for you. It is quite famous in the alternative world, and I managed to have a copy at the last London Edge. I don’t quite like the choice of black/white and the graphic side of it in general, but the content is definitely worth it!  Since it’s about the same alternative style, have a look at Gothic Beauty as well, which is a print magazine, and not an online mag like most of the alternatives magazines you can find around!

• Coilhouse The history of online alternative magazines. Too bad it is on hiatus, and we don’t know if and when it is going to be back! Written by a team of wonderful ladies including one of my favourite bloggers Zoetica Ebb it was bursting with big art printed pages, enticing colours, alternative fashion and interesting articles. Coilhouse we miss you!

• Style Noir “The worlds largest dark style magazine”. I think the name and the description says it all! They always do accurate analysis of fashion, brands, shows, designers, trends. If it’s dark, black, minimal and obscure, you will find it on Style Noir!

• Bizarre Magazine This needs a chapter on its own, cause it’s not online, but it’s a magazine. Even though we share a passion for the adjective bizarre, their idea of bizarre goes a bit too far for me. If you ever flipped through their pages you know what I mean. I happen to have just one issue in my hands, and beside a number of latex-sheathed vixens, tattoos and performers of any kind you can find deformed bodies, pages of corpses portraits, a nice wall painted in real bursted brains and so on. Well, you get the point. Mainstream media usually pair up Women and Cars, Bizarre pairs up Women and Guts. Which you need to have to read that magazine!

• Bella Morte Magazine Pretty much like Bizarre Mag, but without the blood and the corpses! You will find plenty of alternative beauties, in fact they funded another magazine called Alt Girls. I don’t know if I like all this Suicide Girls kind of publications… You decide! I can’t seem to find a way to read it online, so I guess you’ll need to buy it!
  Errata Corrige: I misunderstood what the magazine was about; I wrote my first impression about it, and it was apparently wrong! The lovely Sonja explained me better what the magazine is about, and now I feel like buying it because it sounds like it’s worth the money!
  “Bella Morte is an alternative fashion magazine. We celebrate the entrepreneurs in the industry, and try to get the name of the little guy out there. We feature MUAs, Hairstylists, Makeup Artists, Models, Photographers, Designers, Artists, and Body Painters every issue.  We do not feature nudity, with the exception of 3 special editions we put out in Sept., which is the premise of suicide girls. Bella Morte uses highly stylized sets and would fit in as high fashion with an alt twist.“
  

• Auxiliary Magazine Organized, accurate, this alternative magazine provides what’s missing in the mainstream print (it is stated in the name itself). “That is why we’ve created Auxiliary Magazine; an online and print magazine dedicated to fashion, music, and lifestyle with a darker aesthetic.  There are no other boundaries than that.  That is the strong point of alternative culture; and we hope to include it all.” The amazing thing is that everyone can contribute: shall we give it  try? 
  

• Some more magazines I like or that don’t fit into any other category: Hunger Magazine, The Avant-Garde Diaries, Harlow Magazine, Fiend Magazine, Vice, AnOther Mag, Alt Citizen Magazine (this last one is actually really cool!)

Do you know more alternative fashion online and offline magazines? Please share them with us!

Last but not least, with this article I don’t want to say that I don’t like some printed *mainstream* magazines: I do, and I read some of them. I just sometimes grow tired of always looking at the same campaigns, fashion shows, names and journalists. And I’m really upset because I love the glossy paper feeling, and I just would like to have the chance to buy them easily, and not only online! (Someone did it tho: I love Hunger! It’s easy if you already own Dazed and your name is Rankin!)

What do you think about the printed word issue? Do you like reading fashion magazines or  do you prefer to get updated online?