A New Magazine Marries Art, Style, Culture — and Lunch
By AIMEE FARRELL MARCH 18, 2016
In an airy, light-filled space in the Rochelle School in London, what was once a charming Victorian classroom today serves as the office of Luncheon Magazine, a fresh-off-the-press independent title with a self-professed appetite for style and culture. Clues to the pedigree of its editors-in-chief Frances von Hofmannsthal and Thomas Persson are scattered throughout the Shoreditch studio. On a vast radiator lean a triptych of framed black-and-white prints: a shot of the photographer Paolo Roversi’s studio (where von Hofmannsthal served as a photographic assistant for some five years), a "Cigarettes" series by Irving Penn and an image of Leigh Bowery taken between portrait sittings with Lucien Freud. A copy of "The Private Life of Greta Garbo" sits on a desk with a handwritten note from the fashion designer Erdem Moralioglu (“He saw it and thought of me,” quips Persson).
With its oversize format (it measures 27 by 38 centimeters), uncoated Italian paper and unfussy layouts, Luncheon has the air of a 1950s issue of Vogue or Life: It is elegant, but in a deliberately non-glossy way. Persson speaks nostalgically of that era, when magazines seemed to be designed around “how the eye moves across the page.” Though Luncheon is not a food magazine per se, it’s peppered with clever nods to cooking and consuming it: There are recipes by the British chefs Margot Henderson and Melanie Arnold (who run the celebrated Rochelle Canteen just downstairs from their office), beguiling illustrations of personified pheasant pies and vegetable medleys by the stage designer Oliver Messel (von Hofmannsthal, the daughter of the photographer Lord Snowdon and Lucy Lindsay-Hogg, is Messel’s great niece) and an interview with Paolo Roversi — who, just after shooting a darkly romantic fashion story with Anna Cleveland in Comme des Garçons, which appears as one of the magazine’s “main dishes,” hosted the brand’s president for lunch (and vodka) in his Paris studio.
“We wanted to try to incorporate that spirit when you take the time to sit down and eat with friends,” says von Hofmannsthal, while absentmindedly plaiting her hair. “But it’s not necessarily high-end. It’s meant to be playful and inclusive. The perfect lunch could be eating a jam sandwich on a park bench.” In keeping with Luncheon’s irreverent spirit, the first edition will be sold exclusively from inside a domed booth modelled on Paris’s circular newspaper kiosks, inside the newly rehoused Dover Street Market in London’s Haymarket, which opens in the former Burberry building this weekend. The launch also coincides with von Hofmannsthal’s introduction of a 36-piece collection of coats and bags — which also make their debut at Dover Street Market, and whose mottled cloth has been fashioned after the hand-painted backdrops used by her father, painstakingly replicated by a specialist dyeing team at the Royal Opera House.
Luncheon is not the first project the pair has collaborated on. On the recommendation of friends, von Hofmannsthal and Persson endured an awkward first meeting in an East London pub (he had a pint, she had a cup of tea). Persson was then working as the editor and creative director of Acne Paper (which shuttered in 2013) and von Hofmannsthal had just taken over her father’s photographic archive. Soon, they produced two books — “Snowdon Blue” and “Snowdon: A Life in View” — with Persson as creative director and von Hofmannsthal as editor, and began plotting their own publication. “We always met over lunch because Francis has children,” explains Persson. “So that became a part of our friendship. We were thinking about a name, then her daughter Maude said: ‘Mummy I love the word “lunch.”’ But ‘lunch’ felt too foodie, so we dusted off ‘luncheon’ which sounds bigger and more celebratory.”
Though Luncheon won’t be running a website, the creative duo is tentatively embracing the digital world via Instagram. In fact, their first post — an image by their photographer friend Peter Schlesinger entitled “Pink Garden” — serves as a tidy tribute to their ethos. A detail shot of a table setting, decorated with pink linen and cut flowers, was taken in the 1970s when Schlesinger and his then partner David Hockney visited the Château Mouton, the wine estate of Baron Philippe de Rothschild. “That’s the lunch you want to be at,” concludes von Hofmannsthal, before heading down to the Rochelle Canteen for the obligatory team meal. “The flowers, all that pink — it perfectly denotes the imagination of the table.”
. The magazine is so great and excited to see something new from Persson since Acne Paper is no longer around and excited for future issues. It's not bad for a price either, $15 for their first issue.
Everything looks interesting so far, love the cover! Cannot actually believe Solve shot it. Looking forward to Paolo Roversi's interview more than anything.
