June 10, 2024

Katie Grand on Magazine-Making: “I like Observing Change”

35 minutes

Editor-in-chief, stylist, and creative consultant Katie Grand is renowned for her relentless creativity and influential contributions to the fashion and print industries. Born in the UK, Grand’s visionary approach propelled her to the forefront of fashion journalism, where she served as the editor-in-chief of renowned publications, such as POP, Conde Nast’s biannual Love magazine,and most recently Perfect. Her collaborations and innate ability to spot emerging talent landed her roles as a creative consultant for major fashion houses and solidified her status as a tastemaker. Long at the forefront of what’s contemporary and experimental, today, she continues to shape the landscape of contemporary fashion with a perspective that often upends the industry’s cyclical norms.

Episode Highlights:

Grand is a marathon runner; she sees fitness and endurance as ways to expand her interests outside of fashion.

She came into “nerdy” or “outsider” friendships in Birmingham, growing up ice skating and attending cultural events together; through this scene, she found out about publications like The Face and i-D.

Her father brought her to London as a child to shop.

What’s kept her on the pulse of the fashion world—from social media revenue to the evolution of print magazines—has been following her instincts and respecting when she finds herself feeling bored with something.

Grand talks about balancing the support of working under a big corporation with a need to collaborate with people who share her lack of rigidity and need for freedom.

She discusses the difference between magazines like Dazed, The Face, and i-D, biannuals, and monthlies, and working on different production timelines.

Grand cites putting Beth Ditto on the cover of Love as something akin to putting Kendall Jenner on a Marc Jacobs runway, in that both changed the industry dramatically and immediately.

Highly invested in social media engagement and quantitative measures of viewership, Grand notes that the evolution of print has been toward more and more careful renderings of the medium, down to the investment in paper quality.

Speaking about future generations in fashion, Grand remarks that she’s optimistic about their opportunities given social media’s reach but cautious and concerned about the use of AI cutting artists out of their work.

When asked what’s contemporary now, Grand says, “AI.”

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By What's Contemporary

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