The New York Review of Magazines

Visionaire

By Rupal Parekh

TAKE a moment to reflect on what you know about fashion magazines. Shimmering covers, lengthy mastheads, tons of pages (that are mostly ads) and newsstand prices between $3 and $5. Now, forget what you know about fashion magazines. Or magazines in general.

Meet Visionaire, the ultimate un-magazine. Visionaire is not glossy. It does not contain ads. Rarely does it have articles or use text at all. Sometimes, there are no pages; the magazine’s latest issue, entitled “Scent,” consisted solely of a white leather case packed with forty-two fragrance- filled vials bearing names such as Electricity, Drunk and Noise.

Those seeing the magazine for the first time will react with wonder and ask, “What is it?” More or less a quarterly publication (sometimes it comes out only three times a year), Visionaire has been deftly blurring the boundaries between art, books and periodicals since its inception in 1991. A different format and theme are conceived for each issue, and worldfamous artists, photographers and fashion designers are commissioned to create the magazine’s original works.

For Issue No. 24, “Light,” the Visionaire team brought aboard Tom Ford of Gucci fame to create the world’s first battery-operated publication: a fully functional light box with twenty-four transparencies of fine art. Issues of Visionaire No. 38, “Love,” contained vintage romance novels that were inserted with silver-pendant bookmarks by Italian jewelry designer Elsa Peretti, then packed into an iconic Tiffany blue box. So coveted was the No. 18 “Fashion Special,” which highlighted the world’s most influential designers through photography, that it sold out before the launch party.

With veteran fashion photographers like Mario Testino and David LaChappelle behind the camera, Visionaire’s images are captivating, managing to span the spectrum from bawdy to tender. But this magazine excels in providing an experience that is as sensory as it is visual and uses more than paper in its production. Materials incorporated in past issues include denim, velvet, mylar, wood, foil and Plexiglas. Tossing the magazine’s mailer in the trash isn’t an option, either. Far from the plastic shrink wrap that sheaths other magazines, copies of Visionaire have come encased in custom- made Hermès pouches and leather Louis Vuitton portfolios.

However visionary Visionaire’s founders Stephen Gan, James Kaliardos and Cecilia Dean—friends since adolescence—were, they couldn’t have predicted the success of their venture thirteen years ago. They invented the magazine with only $7,000. These days, however, the trio’s brainchild has become a phenomenon in a Sotheby’s salesroom, where just one issue purportedly fetches thousands.

For the mainstream consumer, this magazine is as ultra-elusive as it is exclusive. Each batch of Visionaire is a limited-edition run of 1,000 to 6,000 copies. It’s also the most expensive magazine in the business. A one-year subscription to Visionaire costs $675. At that rate, one could get a copy of The New Yorker delivered home every week for the next twelve years. For subscribers in Europe, Canada and South America, that price jumps to $800 per year, while those in Asia, Australia and New Zealand shell out $900 for three to four issues (plus an additional $25 to $50 in shippingand- handling charges).

No postage-paid subscription cards come with this magazine. Subscriptions can be obtained only via telephone or the Visionaire Web site. And like haute couture, which doesn’t adorn racks in just any department store, Visionaire doesn’t grace newsstands. In New York, selected issues can be purchased at the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as Rizzoli Bookstore on West 57th Street.

Even with its hefty price tag, Visionaire seems to generate just enough profit to break even. Contributors aren’t paid and sponsors regularly relieve expenses. The yen for money is perhaps what spurred the 1999 launch of spin-off glossies V and Vman. At $35 and $17 a subscription respectively, both are much easier on the budget, though they typify the traditional fashion magazines to which most of us are accustomed–as opposed to the imagination captured in every issue of Visionaire.

Some might view Visionaire as so revolutionary that calling it a magazine is troublesome. To the faint-hearted, I offer: Why not think of it as a magazine liberated from the limitations of publishing? Designer Karl Lagerfeld put it best when he referred to Visionaire as the one out there “influenced by nobody, influencing them all.”