On a snowy night just before Valentine’s Day, Cultured magazine gave a party for its February-March 2025 edition. It was held at Quarters, a Tribeca space that is both a furniture store and a wine bar. The place was packed. The cover star, actress Cristin Milioti, was there, and partygoers took turns posing in doorways or perched on sofas for their social media feeds.

“There has been an unexpected groundswell of support,” said Sarah Harrelson, the founder of Cultured, who has worked on publications her entire career, including InStyle and Women’s Wear Daily.

The first issue of Cultured, which combines the fashion and art worlds, appeared in 2012, when Harrelson was living in Miami, where she had worked for Ocean Drive magazine and started a magazine supplement for The Miami Herald.

“I think back now, and I was 38 and creatively bored,” she said. “I wanted to do something for myself and not have to heed the rules. Publishing had gotten formulaic.”

Independently produced print magazines with an emphasis on fashion are experiencing a boomlet of sorts, making waves for their striking design and high-quality production. There is Cultured but also L’Etiquette, Konfekt and Polyester, to name a few that line the racks of Casa Magazines, the West Village periodical store, and magCulture in London.

No longer seen as disposable or a relic of a dying industry, these magazines are regarded as high-end products. “It’s a luxury experience of sitting back and getting a single viewpoint coming to you that you didn’t know you wanted,” said Penny Martin, the editor-in-chief of The Gentlewoman, which could be said to have pioneered an indie print resurgence when it began in 2010.

Búzio Saraiva is the associate publisher of nine independent magazines, including Holiday and Luncheon, and the founder of Nutshell & Co., a company in Paris that works with other similar magazines.

“People behind independent magazines create material meant to last,” he said. “Someone will collect them, and then someone else will buy one at a flea market and make a moodboard out of it.”

Saraiva thinks of these magazines as vehicles for stylists, photographers, celebrities and writers to show off creativity in a way they might not be able to do in mainstream magazines. “It’s a lab,” he said. “It’s R&D for the creative industry. I see people taking pictures now that we shot 10 years ago. Not everyone is triple-checking to see if they’ve offended or please everyone.”

At first glance, independent magazines use a lot of the same celebrities that magazines owned by Hearst or Condé Nast work with. “A lot of time it’s the same cover and talents, but the interviewer or the photographer can be completely different,” said Joshua Glass, who started the food and fashion magazine Family Style in 2023. The spring 2025 issue has Gwyneth Paltrow on the cover interviewed by curator Klaus Biesenbach and photographed by Brianna Capozzi.

A major difference, Glass said, was creative independence. Like many other indies, Family Style is majority self-financed. “I’m beholden to my own moral integrity, my peers and the people I employ,” he said.

“We are in the black,” Glass added. “We’re not flying private jets or taking town cars. We are extremely lean, and we do things in ways that are modest.”

Magazines like Cultured and Family Style generally rely on ways to stay afloat that are quite similar to those of mainstream print publications. They have advertisers who are happy to pay a cheaper rate for a smaller magazine with a younger audience.

Here, a field guide to 10 of the new crop of fashion-leaning print magazines.

Notes on Beauty

For the first issue, spring 2025, Inez and Vinoodh photographed Julianne Moore for the cover with red rose petals stuffed in her mouth. There are stories on ancient wellness rituals and an essay about a writer deciding to forgo cosmetic treatments.

AFM

The A is for “A,” the “M” is for “Magazine,” and the “F” stands for something unprintable. Issue 001, with the theme “pursuits of happiness,” came out last fall, produced by the dating app Feeld, which proudly declared that more than half of its contributors were on the app. Feeld is one of a number of companies, including Mubi, the movie platform, and Metrograph, the movie theater, producing print spinoffs for their companies.

Heroine

What if a fashion magazine was almost entirely photos of fashion? The fall 2024 issue of Heroine has short interviews with actors Finn Bennett and Noah Jupe, but the highlight is model Alice McGrath, photographed by Fabien Kruszelnicki and wearing a great deal of Celine.

Cultured

The most recent issue has several covers, including one with Cristin Milioti holding a lit cigarette, photographed by Chris Colls. The theme is art and film, and it has interviews with director Luca Guadagnino, Brazilian actress Fernanda Torres and painter Torkwase Dyson.

Konfekt

Konfekt bills itself as “the magazine for sharp dressing, drinking, dining, travel and design.” It’s based in Zurich and often has a middle-European bent. Issue 17 includes profiles of a chef in Georgia (the country) and a calligrapher in Paris, and an interview with Serbian-born fashion designer Dusan Paunovic.

L’Etiquette

Based in Paris, L’Etiquette puts an emphasis on personal style and the art of getting dressed. There are separate editions for men and women, and they’re perennially sold out on newsstands. Online, panels of fashion world denizens choose their favorite It bags, which turn out to be delightfully quirky and under the radar: an L.L. Bean suede tote, say, or a tiny Balenciaga shaped like a croissant.

Polyester

Polyester has a playful energy and a pop visual aesthetic reminiscent of 1990s magazines. Heroes to a certain kind of fashionable feminist are covered, like the winter 2024/2025 cover star Sofia Coppola or Chelsea Fairless and Lauren Garroni, the hosts of the “Every Outfit” podcast.

Patta

The namesake magazine of an Amsterdam shop, Patta has gained a cult following for its coverage of music and streetwear. The magazine takes a global view of culture with an emphasis on African-European connections. Its spring-summer issue has an interview with Congolese-born director Baloji and an article on the rising EDM scene in Lagos.

Holiday

Every edition of the midcentury magazine Holiday was dedicated to a different city. Writers included Truman Capote and Joan Didion. Fast-forward to spring 2014, when Holiday was brought back by the design studio Atelier Franck Durand. It still picks a city for each issue, the fall-winter one being New York. There is a vintage flavor in a reprint of the Joan Didion essay “Goodbye to All That,” but it also has Tommy Dorfman and Marc Jacobs in conversation.

Unconditional

“Made by Women, for Women,” Unconditional says, and the female gaze is apparent. Articles include a piece on lymphatic drainage practitioners in Paris and a profile of designer Rachel Scott of the fashion line Diotima.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Marisa Meltzer/Sara Naomi Lewkowicz
c. 2025 The New York Times Company