History
In 1992, Elein Fleiss and Olivier Zahm started the magazine Purple Prose as a reaction against the superficial glamour of the 1980's; much as a part of the global counterculture at the time, inspired by magazines like Interview, Ray Gun, Nova, and Helmut Newton's Illustrated, but with the aesthetics of what usually is referred to as anti-fashion. Based on their personal interests and views; Purple was, and in a sense still is, made much in the same spirit of the fanzine. The magazine quickly became associated with the "realism" of the new fashion photography of the 1990s, with names like Juergen Teller, Terry Richardson, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Mario Sorrenti.
In the introduction of the Purple Anthology, Zahm writes:
| “ | We launched Purple Prose in the early 1990s without any means, and without any experience, because we wanted to make a magazine that was radically different. We wanted to support the artists around us that noone else supported, much less talked about. It would be a form of opposition of our own, different from the critical jargon of the generation of '68. From a visual standpoint, we represented the break from '80s imagery (like Richard Avedon's photography for Versace, for example). From an artistic standpoint, the artists of the early '90s were rising up against art as capital fetish . In saying that Purple is the portrait of a generation, I mean it's a portrait of those who embody their times. At the same time, it's a portrait of myself and Elein Fleiss, our ideas, our lives, and our aesthetics. | ” |
In 2004 it divided into Purple Fashion published by Purple Institute based in Paris and New York, and Purple Journal, published by Les Editions Purple, based in Paris. On February 16 the first installation of Purple Fashion's new online presence was launched. http://purple-diary.com can be considered as the extension of the magazine but as a digital voice that offers immediate access to the world of Purple — including Olivier Zahm's personal pictures as well as a look into the next issue of the magazine.
The art director of Purple Prose and Purple Fashion was Christophe Brunnquell until 2006, when he was succeeded by M/M Paris.
Read more about this topic: Purple (magazine)
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