Vanity, Free of Charge

The first issue of Vanity Teen landed as a free PDF, which immediately put it in a different conversation than every glossy that wanted you to feel the weight of the paper as a stand-in for quality. Removing the price tag is clarifying. The work has to carry itself.

And it does. The photography—featuring contributions from Marley Kate, Ryan Aylsworth, and Karl Rothenberger—has the kind of visual clarity that takes genuine editorial intention to produce. The styling is modern without being self-consciously so. Someone decided what this magazine was going to be before they started filling it with images, and you can feel that in every spread.

Digital fashion publishing in 2009 was still arguing with itself about whether it was a legitimate format or just a placeholder while everyone waited for print to figure things out. Vanity Teen didn’t seem interested in that argument. It just made the thing and put it out there. That’s usually the right call.