Title: Vogue Living
Edition: May/June 2017, 50th anniversary issue
Price: $9.99 for the on-stand issue and $12.99 for the boxed edition
Pages: 242 pages
Coverlines that work: There’s only one on the cover – “50 Fabulous Years!”
Editor-in-chief: Neale Whitaker
Publisher: NewsLifeMedia
Mediaweek was able to get its hands on the boxed edition of the 50th anniversary issue of Vogue Living, which comes with a print of the art featured on the cover from Dinosaur Design. Ripping through the plastic and opening the box to reveal the magazine definitely gives the feeling of the issue as a keepsake edition – it’s almost like unwrapping a gift.
“50 Fabulous Years” reads the sole coverline. The biggest selling point about the warm-coloured cover art is that it’s tactile. Feelings about the overall cover were split in the Mediaweek office.
One has to flip through 23 pages of ads before reaching the content pages. Even the ad spreads remind the readers that it’s the 50th anniversary of the magazine. The 242-page magazine has about 84 pages of advertising in it.
There are four features in the magazine that allude to the title’s 50th birthday: Window Dressing, Australia Now, 50 Greatest Rooms and 50 Things That Rocked Our World. The first of the four features looks at the designs that have dominated each decade since Vogue Living’s launch in 1967.
The 50 Greatest Rooms features the best rooms covered by the title in its lifetime.
In Australia Now, Vogue Living brings together creative minds that it predicts will play an instrumental role in the design and interior landscape in the future.
However, the feature that caught Mediaweek’s attention is the 50 Things That Rocked Our World. Whitaker, said the word “thing” has been used very consciously. This is because the story literally lists 50 things that have had an influence on the world of design. These include things like David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust persona, the Sydney Opera House, Apple’s iMac G3 released in 1998 and the Jaguar E-Type Series 3. It’s a fun dive into the trends that have come and gone, and at times resurged like Ziggy Stardust’s influence on the world. This pictorial listical gives a fascinating look inside how the most bizarre of things influence interior spaces. Also, who doesn’t love a good list?
The issue on the whole is a pleasant flip through with a lot of ad pages about things that an everyday worker can only dream of owning. But Vogue Living has never sold itself as a “accessible” magazine like Homes+ and some other titles in market. For the 50 years of its existence it has always been a premium title.
Digital: Vogue Living is on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram under the username @vogueliving. The magazine can also be found on Tumblr on voguelivingmagazine.tumblr.com, and Pinterest on pinterest.com/vogueliving. The magazine has the biggest following on Facebook, where it has more than 1.9 million likes. The magazine’s website is vogueliving.com.au.