Blonde Rises Again

Every month I hit the magazine stand to see what’s actually being printed, what’s fighting to survive, what magazines still have anything to say. This time I flipped through Cooler—Australian surf photography, Kjersti Buaas and snowboards, Juliet Elliott in a photo shoot with her arm in a sling and somehow still making it work. Nylon had Kristen Stewart on the cover, and at least they let her say the obvious: nobody should wear what fashion magazines recommend. That’s honest.

NEON does their earnest thing—big questions about ambition and feelings, the kind of content that used to feel like counterculture and now just feels like they’re trying really hard. VICE though. VICE is still doing actual work. Penis-shaped mushrooms. White Lung, these Vancouver punk guys. Some guy who’s been making a Polaroid every single day for eighteen years. And Richard Kern photographing Laura naked in completely mundane moments—brushing her teeth, sitting on the toilet. That’s what magazine content should be.

Then Blonde came back. The magazine itself, not the concept. It’s rebranded as BlondE now, all glossed up and trying to occupy some mainstream-friendly space. Someone wrote in about finding it in their mailbox: I can’t believe what showed up. BlondE is just another high-gloss fashion magazine, totally neutered. They’re writing about Copenhagen being the new Stockholm like we haven’t all read that ten times already. If I want to dress against the grain, I don’t need a magazine that takes what’s actually interesting and repackages it as tabloid generalization for people who think they’re rebels. It’s basically the Bild for fashion.

That’s what came back. A magazine zombie—mutated, sanitized, running on fumes. All the actual content gone, just the glossy shell of something that used to matter. Every magazine either dies or comes back worse. The ones that stay dead have the right idea.