Lunch with The Montebury
I realise that I haven’t blogged for ages, having been too busy enjoying the London high life (and the low life I must admit), moving flats and working on the relaunch of our new website – it will look fantastic. Still I managed to spend last Saturday drinking white wine in the company of the fabulous Aaron Hales, editor-in-chief of The Montebury, slagging off big fashion names, comparing freebie moisturisers (Aaron survived the scars of chickenpox with Creme de la Mer) and switching nonchalantly between English and French as we compared our publishing experiences. I picked a few tips from Aaron and I am now the proud thrower of little French putdowns in the middle of all conversations: “Il m’enerve Lagerfeld”, “quelle connasse”, etc. Thanks.
Our discussion is definitely worthy of a blog. On many accounts. The first one is that I love The Montebury (formerly known as GCulture), an online men’s luxury fashion magazine. In fact it is the only online fashion magazine that I read and I love how each edition is produced and laid out individually, like a luxury print publication should be. In contrast Wordpress seems like battery publishing. The Montebury being so fashion focused, we decided that it was time to join forces, starting with a Turnleft contribution to be featured in their new Ephemere section.
Aaron’s contention is that now is the right time to shift to a premium model and to charge readers for access. I couldn’t agree more for The Montebury, which is a periodical, and it is tempting to apply the same reasoning to Turnleft – after all most readers are prepared to fork out £4.95 for a Wallpaper* city guide (and £13.99, ouch, for a Time Out guide written 2 years ago) – yet I’m still very keen to keep things free, a legacy of my long-time addiction to Vice (now fully rehabed). And it would be odd to charge online on our new website while continuing to distribute for free when we print guides on this ridiculously expensive Swedish paper… So I’m not sure what to write and I guess that Turnleft will evolve as a freemium publication, with a commitment to free distribution where/when allowed by willing sponsors and various fee paying services such as iphone apps or limited edition posters. Send me your thoughts. And subscribe to The Montebury…
