Purple Fashion, Issue 44 – The Analog

PLEASE NOTE:
• This item is not available for purchase outside the EU due to the weight
• Magazine cover varies and particular cover cannot not be specified for order, but you can state your cover preference in the order notes at checkout and, if available, we will send that one.

Purple Fashion is a magazine that knows that having personality is about more than just being extroverted. Published in Paris under the eye of its charismatic Editor-In-Chief, Olivier Zahm, each issue is as decadent as his lifestyle is reported to be. Its articles and photo shoots ooze intimacy and somehow get inside places that many would dream to be. Indulgent? Perhaps. Typical? Definitely not. Purple Fashion manages to capture a ‘fashionable’ world in a way that subverts notions of superficiality and replaces it with a focus on personal expression and quality.

In this issue: 

“In an era where algorithms dictate taste and desire, where screens mediate experience, and where digitalization consumes the essence of art, magazines seem more relevant than ever — certainly more important than when I started Purple in 1992. I’m not the only one witnessing the rapid dissolution of reality: a world where artificial intelligence supplants creativity, where an endless stream of data replaces cultural depth, and where the tangibility of art vanishes into an immaterial void of simulation.

This Analog Issue of Purple is not about nostalgia. It’s about dissidence and optimism.
It’s a magazine manifesto against the digital homogenization of culture, against the illusion that art can be reduced to data, and against the slow erosion of physical experience in every aspect of life — from fashion to sexuality to politics.

The younger creatives — entirely immersed in the digital world since they were born —instinctively feel the need to return to analog. They’re creating new magazines, shooting on film, collecting vinyl, and multiplying live performances, intimate concerts, and community gatherings. They sense that a magazine like Purple, among many independent titles, offers a better interface for translating artistic experiences and shifts in fashion. They echo the tactile nature of creative expression — whether music, painting, architecture, dance, or food — through paper and ink, offering a tangible connection to the mind. Magazines also serve as lasting archives of the moment. Unlike digital media, which creates collective amnesia, print preserves the spirit of each era.

As Marshall McLuhan told us a long time ago, the medium is the message. By resisting digital fragmentation, we affirm that the printed magazine is not only a container of ideas and creativity, but a radical idea in itself”

— OLIVIER ZAHM