A Cut Above
Die-cut covers made Flair magazine famous in the Fifties. Is the pricey technique making a comeback? Georgia Jacobs gets the "hole" story.
IN A world glutted with magazines, few have made such a lasting impression as Flair, an eclectic monthly that captured the zeitgeist of the post-World War II era. Based in New York and first published in February 1950, it offered interviews with Salvador Dali; decorating tips from the Duchess of Windsor; articles by Tennessee Williams, Jean Cocteau and Eleanor Roosevelt; and travel stories on Casablanca and skiing in the West, long before Aspen s heyday. Flair was a peephole into the stylish world of what would later be called the jet set and of its iconoclastic editorial director
and creator, Fleur Cowles. Now, presumably,
in her eighties her age is a closely
guarded secret and living in London, Cowles spoke to NYRM about Flair s shapely
longevity. I
felt that people
were curious.
They
w a n t e d
more and
more, she
said. So she
cut a hole in
the cover of
every issue, a
process known in the
printing trade as die-cutting.
It s a lovely way of
looking into a secret.
The die-cuts provided a preview of some larger piece of artwork or photography on the following page and became Flair s trademark. For the All Male issue of July 1950, for example, artist Rene Gruau drew a man s hands coming up from each bottom corner of the cover to grasp both sides of a pair of big, brown binoculars. The lenses were die-cut through to a photo of a woman in a navy-blue bathing suit running along a Long Island beach, her long hair trailing behind her like a kite. The May 1950 cover featured a Sylvia Braverman painting of a dewy-faced blonde staring through a diecut rose Cowles favorite flower.
Flair was the most magnificently designed magazine ever produced in this country, said Dr. Samir Husni, professor of journalism at the University of Mississippi and an expert on American magazines. Cowles creations captivated readers across the country and rocked the publishing industry. Die-cutting was expensive and many advertisers and publishers considered it and other complex design techniques Cowles used, such as horizontal and vertical half-pages and pullout booklets made of expensive tissue paper extravagant and self-indulgent. [To them], I was just a rich lady with a toy, she said. Many predicted that Flair would last only two issues. It lasted twelve.
Although the doomsayers were off by ten issues, their business sense was on target. Flair had a 50-cent cover price, but each issue cost an exorbitant $1.26 to produce. By the time Flair folded in January 1951, the losses ran into the millions, said Cowles, who wouldn t have done it any other way. If you want to do something original, do it only if you re willing to spend the money, she advised, adding, Publishing is not full of people willing to spend money.
Despite the depressed economy in magazine publishing, there are still a few people willing to spend the money. Die-cutting, a slow and laborious process that requires a oneinch high metal cookie-cutter-like rule and a special clam-shaped press, has made a resurgence with such magazines as nest, Flaunt, McSweeney s and Visionaire.
Take nest, for example. The quarterly of interiors, published since 1997, is the brainchild of Joseph Holtzman. Like Cowles, he doesn t think about cost. I design the thing and other people tell me whether I m in budget, he said. With original articles and photo shoots, nest showcases innovative architecture and interior design. In 2001, it won a National Magazine Award for design. Each issue has a theme that not only runs through the editorial content but also is embodied in the overall look of the magazine through graphic details like die-cutting.
The New Decrepitude issue published in summer 2003, for example, explored the use of scalloping in interior and exterior design. The cover was a photograph of a house painted with bright, multi-colored waves and a shingled roof. Holtzman, who is the publisher and art director, took his concept one step further by cutting scallops down the right side of the magazine. He produces one to two die-cut issues a year.
Although the $12.50 cover price is considerably higher than most magazines, nest s chief operating officer, Patricia Stacom, said, Joe is producing a collector s item. It qualifies as a magazine, but it really is more like a coffee-table book.
Back issues on eBay sell for as much as $185, she says, adding that many loyal fans of the magazine refuse to subscribe because they are afraid their copy will get mangled in the mail.
Die-cutting requires creativity not only from art directors like Holtzman, but also from production managers and printers.
It s costly on the pocketbook and costly on the mind, said Dan Gimenez, production manager at nest. With die-cutting, there are no guarantees. Even if you use the same paper and same amount of pages and essentially the same dimensions, there will always be different problems with each shape.
Mistakes as small as a sixteenth of an inch on the design-end can translate into costly overtime at the presses. And paper can get caught in the die and break it.
When it comes to magazines, veering off the straight and narrow is a labor of love and a luxury for those who choose to do so. Husni says that high-end magazines like these are not profit-driven: Most of those people have a passion for design. They are not really in it for the money.
For Fleur Cowles, Flair was a memorial. In my time it cost a fortune, but I decided
that s the way I would achieve posterity, she says. Flair may have folded after a year, but its legacy lives on. Old issues are available at specialty shops and on the Internet for $65 and up. In 1999 Rizzoli Publishers issued Best of Flair, a glossy hardbound tribute to
the magazine and its creator, which sold out
and went into a second printing last year. At
$250 a copy, it is certainly earning back a portion
of Cowles devoted millions.
