Friday, March 14, 2008

Double Dutch
Cathy Horyn, Times Style Magazine, on the creators of Fantastic Man and Butt magazines

What makes a magazine modern, I asked him.
"That’s a question we ask ourselves all the time,” van Bennekom said. "I think it’s reading — the whole idea of concentrating and being alone in a room. I think that’s what a magazine has to offer: a reading experience.”

Yves Saint Laurent’s Stefano Pilati, a 2006 cover, said, "It’s one of the first male magazines that I really considered male.” He added: "It has an appreciation for people and what they’re doing with their lives. You feel quite relieved in a sense to let yourself go and say what you want. You feel a dialogue with the magazine that you don’t have with many others.”

When Butt started, van Bennekom said, the emancipation of gays in Europe was more or less over. "Gay marriage had come through, not only in the Netherlands but also in countries like Spain,” he said. "The whole political movement was bankrupt intellectually.” He added: "Nothing felt underground or funny. I mean, where did the humor go? Did the humor really end with [the artists] Pierre and Gilles and that kind of camp? Do we all have to aim at one type of body?” (They started a publication for lesbians — its title unprintable here — but it soon died. Apparently lesbians don’t have the same sense of humor.)

They also have a feature on The Sartorialist in their new issue of Fantastic Man.

1 comment:

Ella Gregory said...

The Sartorialist is one of the most amazing blogs in the world!!!!
There is always something to inspire on there.

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