As we continue to discuss the role of women in fashion imagery throughout the 20th and 21st century, in the 1980s the role of The Supermodel was an important aspect of popular culture that illuminated the role of supermodels in the fashion industry. Naming some of the most iconic supermodels in history among those photographed by many of the iconic fashion photographers at this time and published in top fashion publications around the world. These women— Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, and Tatjana Patitz—were among the models that helped to define an era in fashion (Google Arts & Culture, 2021). Photographers like Peter Lindbergh, Herb Ritts, and many more captured these women in all their beauty, placing them on the cover of magazines and on the runway for famous designers around the world. A shift happens in the world of fashion publication during this time, as a rise in niche fashion magazines—a new genre of magazines which emerge in the 1990s with small run prints and high-quality images and production. Ane Lynge-Jorlén writes, “Intrinsic to niche fashion magazines is their complex, and rather elitist, mediation of fashion as ironic, artists and intellectual. (Lynge-Jorlén, pg. 7). These niche magazines in the 1990s often linked art and fashion. They typically had a small print run, although still powered by advertising dollars, would showcase content that was experimental and innovative, not tradition to the mainstream magazine whose
main focus may be to sell clothing through editorials. Style magazines emerged while artists/designer relationships began to develop. Both niche and mainstream fashion magazines were publishing famous photographers, clouding distinction between fashion and art, which niche magazines were known to focus their content on (Lynge-Jorlén, pg. 7). There are defining elements within these niche magazines that make them subsequently important in the world of fashion imagery. They combine all aspects of art and innovation as “experimental aesthetic and innovative graphic design are integral to these titles, which often set new trends in photography, styling, and art direction.” (Lynge-Jorlén, pg. 9). AnOther Magazine is an example of a Niche Magazine. Launched in 2001, AnOther Magazine combines high fashion, art and photography—all of these ideals that are characteristic of a niche magazine. Niche magazines eventually became mainstream, when these magazine’s no longer solely produce fashion photography that display art and culture, they were now incorporating more traditional ideals of a magazine in producing content that is for advertising. Magazines like AnOther effectively bridge the gap between both forms of publication as they became mainstream as a consequence of their own growth while maintain their original goals in layout, design and content production. The development of these forms of contemporary fashion publications comes in the early 21st century, as online and digital media take form in the fashion industry.
“I see things like they’ve never been seen before. Art is an accurate statement of the time in which it is made.” —Robert Mapplethorpe
Top Left: Peter Lindbergh | Linda Evangelista 1990 Bottom Left: Peter Lindbergh | Estelle Léfebure, Karen Alexander, Rachel Williams, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz and Christy Turlington, 1988 Right: Peter Lindbergh | Kate Moss 1990
122