A $150,000 Magazine Collection
Visionaire Challenges Conventions;
Changes Format With Each Issue
By ELVA RAMIREZ
June 28, 2008
If you had a collection of old magazines, would you spend over $50,000 on a box to house it?
That's how much Visionaire magazine – a publication where design, marketing, style, trends and art intersect – is charging for a special Goyard trunk designed for its collectors.
This summer, Visionaire will also offer 10 complete sets of its first 50 issues in the Goyard trunks for $150,000.
The lofty price tag for a collection of "magazines" is the result of multiple factors, including Visionaire's increasing collectability, as well as trends in the luxury goods market, which continues to hit ever-higher price points.
From its premiere issue in April 1991, Visionaire challenged notions of what it meant to be an art and fashion publication. The first edition was funded with $7,000 from editor Stephen Gan's savings and printed on mix of remnant paper. From there, the editors set out to make objects that people would cherish and keep – along the way, they became something of a barometer of "cool."
"Visionaire is about experience, not just about sight," says Saatchi & Saatchi's CEO, Kevin Roberts. Mr. Roberts owns several editions and mentioned Visionaire as an example of a strong brand in his book, "Lovemarks: the Future beyond Brands."
"Talk about beauty on a stick," Mr. Roberts says of Visionaire's Bible issue.
"You wanted to lick the art in there."
Visionaire was originally conceived of as a venue for artists such as Mario Testino and Steven Meisel to publish personal work. It has since morphed something akin to a design challenge for its many contributors.
"We've evolved into more of a style exercise," Visionaire editor Cecilia Dean says. "Oh, you're a visual artist? What does that vision taste like?"
Visionaire's contributors over its past 54 issues include a Milky Way of names from the visual arts, fashion, and music worlds. For Heaven (issue 4), designer Martin Margiela submitted 1,000 bags of white confetti. Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld guest-curated The Emperor's New Clothes (issue 23). Taste (issue 47) included a flavor strip titled "Adrenaline" by artist Jenny Holzer that mimicked jet fuel and metal.
Photographer Mario Testino says that Visionaire grants him "freedom to express whatever comes into" his mind. "They are beyond being a normal publication, as the possibilities are endless, whereas most publications have a fixed identity," he says. Mr. Testino's collaborations with Visionaire date back to June 1993; in addition to submitting photography for issues, he has guest-edited three editions.
Each issue is typically a mixed-media riff on a theme, posing an ongoing set of challenges to a skeleton crew of designers. For example, White (issue 11) began with the question: How do you publish without using ink? Answer: use a combination of Braille, embossing, varnish and paper-cut illustrations.
Recent issues took on senses: Scent came with perfume capsules, Taste had specially-designed flavor-strips and Sound featured a Mini Cooper toy car that played record albums.
Visionaire does have advertisers, but not in the traditional sense.
"Companies started looking at us as an alternative way to advertise their brand without just buying advertising pages," Ms. Dean says. Sponsors subsidize the development costs of their specific edition, which can take between nine months to three years to complete. (Visionaire would not disclose costs.)
The publication's earliest champions were New York magazine editors, photographers and artists, but it didn't take long for Visionaire to cultivate a collector culture. While the Goyard trunk collection will lie out of reach to most collectors, Visionaire's individual issues are typically priced between $150 and $350.
In 1996, a copy of issue three, Erotica, was reported to have been sold in Japan for $1,000. That same year, Visionaire released the first of their sponsored issues, a fashion issue with 2,500 specially-made Louis Vuitton satchels, which sold out within two months. Two years later, the Wall Street Journal reported that issues 1–22 had been sold privately for $8,620.
According to Ms. Dean, two private sales have since suggested the going price for the entire Visionaire collection. In May 2006, issues 1–48 were sold privately through Sotheby's for $32,000. Last December, the entire run, from 1–53, was purchased anonymously for $65,000.
Visionaire's collectability, especially of its earliest issues, complicated the editors' task of gathering ten complete collections to fill the trunks made by Goyard, a French luxury malletier. The customized steamer trunks, assembled by hand, will have shelves and insets specially designed for all 50 issues.
Collectors will also be offered the option of buying empty trunks for €34,500 ($54,000) that they can customize.
Visionaire's next edition, Sport, due out in August, features custom-printed Lacoste polo shirts in honor of the French tennis-clothing company's 75th anniversary. It is Visionaire's first project to take on high-resolution printing on clothing.
