Palina, Before the Platform Eats Itself

Palina Rojinski—Russian-born, raised in Berlin, the reliably grinning face of VIVA Germany through the mid-2000s—was one of those personalities who made the German media landscape feel looser and more self-aware than it usually managed. Sharp behind the party persona, visibly in on the joke, the kind of presence that makes sponsored content look almost credible by association. Which is presumably why Adidas Originals drafted her in January 2012 to front their new fashion and lifestyle platform, News For Original Girls, with Rojinski installed as editor-in-chief.

The pitch—a digital home for women who refuse to choose between style and intelligence—was the kind of manifesto that sounds necessary until you remember that brands saying it and brands meaning it are two different things. The roster of photographers, bloggers, and writers brought in alongside Rojinski was apparently handpicked, which tends to produce at least one good issue before the content strategy takes over.

Celebrity-fronted brand magazines were everywhere in 2012 and most of them collapsed under the weight of their own sponsored content within eighteen months. I had no particular stake in this one surviving. But Palina was genuinely good at this—curious, funny, not performing intelligence so much as actually having it—and the brief optimism that a fashion website might mean something felt real for a moment. 2012 was still early enough in the internet that those moments happened.