Purple (magazine)


Purple is a French fashion, art and culture magazine founded in 1992.
WWW purple.fr

History

In 1992, Elein Fleiss and Olivier Zahm started the magazine Purple Prose as a reaction against the superficial glamour of the 1980s; much as a part of the global counterculture at the time, inspired by magazines like Interview, ''Ray Gun, Nova, and Helmut Newton's Illustrated, but with the aesthetics of what usually is referred to as anti-fashion. Based on their personal interests and views; Purple was, and in a sense still is, made much in the same spirit of the fanzine. The magazine became associated with the "realism" of the new fashion photography of the 1990s, with names like Juergen Teller, Terry Richardson, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Mario Sorrenti.
In the introduction of the Purple Anthology, Zahm writes:
In 2004, it was divided into Purple Fashion, published by Purple Institute based in Paris and New York, and Purple Journal, published by Les Editions Purple, based in Paris. On February 16 the first installation of Purple Fashion's new web site was launched.
The art director of Purple Prose and Purple Fashion'' was Christophe Brunnquell until 2006, when he was succeeded by M/M Paris.

Offspring publications

Fleiss and Zahm's collaboration has resulted in many side projects:
  • Purple Prose – published from October 1992 to winter 1998.
  • Purple Fiction – a literary magazine published between 1995 and 1998.
  • Purple Fashion – published between 1995–1998, and 2004–present.
  • Purple Sexe – a magazine devoted to sexuality, published between winter 1998 and 2001. The magazine was reborn as a one-off appendix for Purple Fashion Fall/Winter 2008/09, dedicated to Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi.
  • Purple – a fusion of Purple Prose, Purple Fiction, Purple Fashion, and Purple Sexe; published between summer 1998 and 2003.
  • Purple Books – a publishing house
  • Purple Gallery – a Parisian art gallery
  • Purple Journal – a cultural magazine published 2004–present in a French and an English version.
Since 2004, Purple is divided in two different publications; Purple Fashion magazine and Purple Journal.

''Purple Fashion'''s artist's books

Since its second issue, each number of Purple Fashion comes with an artist's book: