Dutch Magazine Issue 14

Project by Isabella Volpe:

"This project contemplates the process of researching archival fashion magazines by expanding the admirers for these publications. Magazines have been important tools in capturing the cultural spirit and mirroring the continually changing values, attitudes, and beliefs of society.

The starting object is Dutch Magazine Issue 14 from 1998, collected in the International Library of Fashion Research. Dutch, an iconic magazine from The Netherlands established in 1994, remains influential despite its closure in 2002. The magazine aesthetic aimed to incorporate street style into glossy magazines still provides inspiration.

The format for reinterpreting the Dutch issue is the ‘digital advertisement’, shedding light on the fashionability of vintage printed material. By decoding the communication language of IDEA Books, an English store selling archival ephemera online, a series of short videos is conceived as content in the IG Stories format. These videos, created using the ‘scan document’ option on the iPhone, present a meta-video showcasing the user's operation to collect and digitalize material content. The project plays around the mediatization contrasts in time and materiality."