I’ve always wanted to ask you this, but how do you divide your time between the different titles? Obviously you’re a publisher, and you’re doing different things, but are you able to compartmentalize them or does it all feel the same to you?
It all feels quite the same. I’m not very good at focusing, so I do three things at the same time. I answer an email while I’m writing a newsletter and thinking about the next issue. It’s not very relaxing, but it can happen simultaneously. But most of my time, it is Fantastic Man just because we have a very good team making The Gentlewoman. You know some of them, and they’re entirely independent, basically. We occasionally talk about logistics, but otherwise, I don’t have to spend much time on that. But we also have a very good team, and I’m only really involved when we make the magazine, like in the layout, in the discussion about the headlines, the captions, the order, the length of things, “Should this picture be on the left or the right?” We’re all very involved in those two weeks, but otherwise, that is not my day-to-day. But basically, Fantastic Man is what I do.
Butt is the ultimate version of a longstanding niche magazine that has stood the test of time. Is there magic there that people don’t understand, or do you think you just found the right formula?
We found the right formula, so we even have to force ourselves to think outside that formula. But I also believe there is a magic to it that people don’t understand, which all good things have. Why are you attracted to a certain thing and not to a similar thing? It’s the kind of people we’d like to feature, how we feature them, or how we photograph people. There were all these unwritten rules, like we don’t like to photograph people with sunglasses on.
As a person who likes to wear sunglasses, what’s the reasoning behind that?
Why would you photograph somebody who’s hiding? We were always joking in Butt that we hated the photos that are sort of a money shot, where somebody sort of looks into the camera realizing there’s importance, or money, or expectations involved. It’s nice if people like what they see but don’t realize which set of rules it’s based on.
Not to be trite, but what do you think the future of magazines looks like? We have this i-D relaunch that has been relatively well received from what I’ve seen, we have this Graydon Carter memoir—I think the world of publishing is being looked at in a more significant way than it was five years ago. What do you think is going to change, if anything?
It continues to be important as a platform for people to do things. I do believe that distribution, or reader numbers, are not going to go up. They’re not going to double or triple. We all know from personal experience that it’s hard even to read a little piece in the newspaper because halfway through, we’re already checking on our phones, so it is inevitable. I haven’t seen the new i-D yet. Still, I’m excited about it because these magazines are a platform of creativity, and they are launchpads for many creatives who end up being Miu Miu’s stylist or something else in the bigger industry. People just need platforms where they can try things out, and that, to me, always validates magazines.