Fashion magazines, art magazines, and the space between them

The line between fashion magazines and art magazines has always been thin, and the best independent publishing works precisely on that line. A fashion editorial borrows its light from a painter; a gallery catalogue borrows its confidence from the runway. Four titles on the shelf at Boutique Galleria this autumn show how productive the overlap can be: two magazines, an exhibition book, and a design magazine asking a related question from a different direction.

Why fashion and art magazines belong on the same shelf

Photographers move between commissions and gallery walls, and designers cite painters and sculptors in their show notes. Print remains the place where those exchanges are recorded properly, with room for an essay, a sequence of images, and a paper stock chosen to suit them. A website can show a picture, but only a printed page lets you judge how an editor has sequenced fifty of them. That is the case for reading across the boundary, and it is the logic behind the four titles below.

Gruppe Issue 8: Berlin, and the logic of blending

Gruppe is an independent Berlin publication that treats fashion, contemporary art, photography, and culture as one conversation rather than four departments. Its eighth issue takes the theme Blending and runs to 304 pages in a generous 23 by 30 cm softcover. The contributor list makes the argument before a word is read: Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Käthe Kollwitz appear alongside Cindy Sherman, Ryan Trecartin, and Dirk Bikkembergs, so that old masters, living artists, and fashion sit on the same contents page without apology. UK cover price: £35.

theBallroom Issue 40: a bilingual look at fashion print

Among independent fashion magazines, theBallroom is distinctive for working in both Chinese and English, and for organising each issue around a single theme explored through fashion, portraiture, and cultural features. The Autumn/Winter 2026 issue arrives with multiple covers, featuring Luiza Perote, He Cong, Sogha, and Yue-Sai Kan, so the first decision is which face to take home. Its editorial stance looks back to the golden age of fashion print while pairing it with experimental imagery, and every shoot is left open to more than one reading. Biannual. UK cover price: £18.

The 90s: Art and Fashion, a decade between two worlds

Where the two magazines above work issue by issue, The 90s: Art and Fashion looks back across a whole decade. It is an exhibition book edited by Edward Enninful, 240 pages in paperback, and this edition carries Eileen Perrier's Untitled, Afro Hair and Beauty Show, 1998 on the front and a 1997 work by Sarah Lucas on the back. Inside, photography, painting, installation, and couture sit together: Alexander McQueen, Corinne Day, Damien Hirst, Vivienne Westwood, Chris Ofili, David Sims, Tracey Emin, and Juergen Teller among them. First-hand reflections from Steve McQueen, Yinka Shonibare, Gillian Wearing, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Jarvis Cocker give the book the texture of recollection as well as record. UK cover price: £35.

DAMN° 93: the design side of the argument

Not every title in this territory is about clothes. DAMN° 93, the Autumn/Winter 2026/27 issue of a quarterly magazine on contemporary culture, takes friction and smoothness as its theme: what is gained, it asks, when we stop trying to smooth everything out. At its centre is a 48-page Artist Pages section made around the reopening of Design Museum Gent after more than four years of renovation. Andrés Jaque, Miet Warlop, Cao Fei, and Jerszy Seymour are among the voices. It sits comfortably beside the fashion titles, because the underlying concern is the same: how things are made, and who is allowed to see the making. UK cover price: £21.

How to buy art and fashion magazines online

If you buy magazines online, a pairing like this rewards a little planning. Read the magazine for the present tense, then the book for the long view, and notice where the two disagree. Together they make a small library of luxury magazines and books that says more about the current moment than any single title could.

It also helps to match format to appetite. Gruppe is a long, slow read at 304 pages, theBallroom suits an evening, and the 90s book works as a reference to return to when a name in another magazine sends you looking. DAMN° is the title to pick up when you want the argument rather than the imagery. Because theBallroom is published with several covers, it is worth choosing deliberately, as stock on a particular cover can thin out before the issue does.

The full range is gathered in our art and design magazines collection, and our fashion collection brings together the UK magazines and international titles that sit closest to this conversation. Start with the cover that holds your attention, and let the rest of the issue make its own case.