The future of fashion magazines: Fewer, more premium issues
After years of decline, magazines are getting a refresh with bigger, collectible editions no longer tethered to a monthly cadence. Is this the dawn of a new print era?
BY
HILARY MILNES
October 3, 2025
Photo: Acielle/ Style Du Monde
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Fewer fashion magazines are being released per year. Is it a reckoning or a renaissance?
Editors across glossies — from niche to legacy titles — say that even if their media diets are primarily digital, readers are embracing thick, nicely finished issues that can double as collectors’ items or coffee table tomes. It’s a shift away from monthly drops that reflects how we consume content today, a bid for relevancy in the digital era.
“We want our shoots and cover stories to live in a place that feels substantial and that people want to keep,” says
Vogue’s head of editorial content Chloe Malle. “I want it to have weight and import, and that should be reflected in the physical magazine and the content within.”
Starting in 2026,
Vogue will shift from a monthly print cadence to eight issues per year in the US, timed to tentpole moments and events like spring and autumn fashion, the Met Gala and
Vogue World. The issues will be bigger than
Vogue readers are currently used to, and printed on thicker paper. It’s a change in strategy that Malle teased when she took on the job in September, after Anna Wintour stepped away from a day-to-day editorial role with
Vogue (Wintour is still
Vogue’s global editorial director and chief content officer for Condé Nast.
Vogue Business is also owned by Condé Nast.)
“We’re investing in print to make it more special and impactful — I often call the print magazine our runway — and we’re making more space in our year to do ambitious stories on digital platforms,” Wintour says. “That’s where we can be versatile, agile and timely, and hopefully we try new things everywhere.”
Vogue's October issue featuring Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid.
Photo:
Vogue
More Condé Nast titles are rethinking their print strategies:
Vanity Fair will also shift to eight issues per year in the US, with four seasonal and four thematic editions. (These shifts apply to the American market; other regions have their own print schedules.) Paper quality and cover stock will increase, and global editorial director Mark Guiducci says that the actual number of pages per year won’t decrease, “meaning that each issue will look, feel and literally be more significant. Our eight issues will deliver more impact — not only for our subscribers, but also for our advertisers who are reaching a deeply dedicated audience and staying with them longer.”
Across the industry, publications are reconfirming their commitment to print, or launching the media for the first time. Digital-natives like
The Cut have introduced print versions, while
Nylon brought print back in 2024 after going digital-only in 2017. The majority of
Cultured Magazine’s revenue comes from print. For
WSJ Magazine editor-in-chief Sarah Ball, print revenues are up and the brand hasn’t cut back on issues. “Print is Mark Twain. Reports of its death are greatly exaggerated. As a digital native, I’ve been being promised a total digital revolution for my entire near-20-year career, and at this point I’m about to give up,” she says. “The current resilience you see in print is not consistent everywhere, but it’s true for us.”
For luxury advertisers, more hefty, but less frequent, magazine issues are an alluring offer. Luxury brands have a penchant for print media for its tactile flourish, even as formats like TikTok and programmatic advertising have begun to dominate budgets. “Luxury brands have always had a strong affinity with print as it offers exactly what this category values most: craft, permanence, and storytelling,” says Cherry Collins, strategy partner at Havas Media UK. “In an age of fragmented feeds and programmatic targeting, the carefully edited, tactile experience of a premium print issue gives brands cultural weight and a halo of credibility.”
Elizabeth Herbst-Brady, Condé Nast’s chief revenue officer who assumed the role last August, sees print as a piece of the media company’s ecosystem — one way of many that readers and advertisers engage with Condé Nast brands. “We know that the media landscape is changing very quickly, so we’re evolving with customer appetites and needs,” she says.
Legacy media companies have begun shrinking their print cadences or ceasing print runs altogether over the past decade. At Condé Nast, titles like
Teen Vogue,
Glamour and
Allure are now strictly digital. Seventy per cent of company revenue comes from digital and live experiences. Hearst Magazines started slashing print issues in 2020; today,
Esquire releases six issues a year while
Cosmopolitan does eight themed issues and
Elle US and
Harper’s Bazaar release 10. The company stopped printing titles like
O and
Seventeen.
Print advertising revenue and circulation has shrunk;
according to a May report on magazine publishing in the US by Ibis World, estimated print magazine and periodical revenue in the region totalled $40.2 billion in 2025, down 2.9 per cent year-on-year. The report wrote that more premium and more niche periodicals were the best path to growth.
S&P Global forecasted in January that digital advertising spend in the US would increase 9.1 per cent in 2025, while legacy media advertising spend, including print, would decline 7.6 per cent.
Bad Bunny on
Vanity Fair in 2023.
Photo: Vanity Fair
Diminished printing schedules have in the past served as proof of print’s long demise at the hands of digital media. But the commitment to making each available issue a more coveted collectible shows evidence that demand for print exists, perhaps as the antidote to our algorithmic content consumption. Havas Media’s recent New Codes of Luxury global research found that one-third of consumers cite magazine ads as a discovery trigger, while 40 per cent say filmic or slower content inspires them.
“Strategically, fashion and luxury brands see value in print. [Demand] is not just nostalgia from those of us who are a bit older, it is also from youth in terms of wanting something that’s tactile to hold onto,” says Herbst-Brady. “As opposed to a vehicle that’s distributing up-to-the-minute news, it’s more about a celebration and really meaningful engagement. I think it’s really important that the physical magazine represents what that end consumer wants at the moment, in the time that they want it, in a way that can be enduring.”
Attention as currency
Cultured Magazine, founded by editor-in-chief and CEO Sarah Harrelson in 2013, is one niche title that has hit its stride. The company reports revenues up 28 per cent year-on-year. The title releases five regular print issues annually with four supplementary versions tied to events like Art Basel, and one oversized “Cultured at Home” issue per year. They range in price, from $20 to $30.
“Most luxury brands believe strongly in the power of print, and the surge in power of niche magazines,” says Harrelson. “I think you still see a desire for that from most age groups. Media diets include everything now — legacy media, Substacks, niche magazines — and they’re more personalised.”
Two editions of
Cultured Magazine featuring author Fran Lebowitz and actress Juliane Moore.
Photo: Courtesy of
Cultured
Print as a brand halo has prompted
New York Magazine’s fashion and lifestyle vertical
The Cut — which launched in 2008 as a digital pureplay — to roll out a physical magazine released twice a year, with spring and autumn editions. Editor-in-chief Lindsay Peoples Wagner sees print as part of
The Cut’s holistic media strategy that includes a daily online feed, live reader events like
The Cut Café, which took over a Bluestone Lane in Tribeca during New York Fashion Week, and oversized magazines with multiple, collect-them-all cover versions featuring different celebrities. This year’s autumn issue centred around “current cultural fixations”, says Peoples Wagner, and featured four different covers with Andrew Garfield; Sarah Paulson; Vivian Wilson; and Miley Cyrus alongside her mom, Tish, and siblings Noah and Brandi. The company reports that print revenue for the 2025 autumn issue was up double digits year-on-year.
The Cut, launched in 2008, roll out a physical magazine twice a year.
Photo: Courtesy of
The Cut
“I’ve been a lifelong magazine lover. I grew up collecting and reading
Teen Vogue,” says Peoples Wagner, who served as
Teen Vogue’s editor-in-chief from 2018 to 2021. She wanted print to feel like a high-quality extension of
The Cut’s digital work, oversized on nice paper stock with a glossy sheen logo. “We’re in an attention currency state, and you want people to read the work and engage with the work.
The Cut essays make people sit down, stop and want to read. Digital is more fleeting, people keep scrolling. We can make really great work in print that you’re excited to have in your hands.”
While it may not ever again be a primary source of news, or as big of a business it once was, print is now a marketing vehicle as much as it is a revenue opportunity. “We don’t have explicit goals to double our number of print issues or anything like that. For us, it’s more about making sure all of our print issues are really fat, really full and feel really satisfying in their own right,” says Ball, who adds that weekend print reading seems to be a resilient habit. “We try to make sure we’re timing print when it makes sense for both readers and advertisers, rather than an old-fashioned ‘every month on the 15th’ type calendar.”
Two editions of the
WSJ Magazine featuring Jacob Elordi and Ayo Edebiri.
Photo: Courtesy of
The Wall Street Journal Magazine
“Print in this context isn’t about reach at scale – what digital does best – it’s about credibility, cultural weight and storytelling that lasts beyond the scroll,” says Collins. “That’s why for luxury, print is evolving from being just another media channel to becoming the stage where a brand proves its artistry and permanence.”
Editors across the board emphasise a new era for the print edition, which is released from the traditional idea of how we consume news and is more intentional. Publishers are betting that fluidity mixed with longer lasting longevity will seal print’s future. “Print issues no longer move into the collectible category, they start there,” says Guiducci. “Print is both our best foot forward, and a document for posterity.”
“This is not about loss,” says Malle. “This is about gain, reinvesting resources and restrategising how we position print so that it feels less like the old-school idea of a newsboy delivering your daily news and more like a premium parcel, a special treat you want to keep and dig into in a rarefied way.”
