Porter magazine – Issue #1

I bought the very first issue of Porter about six weeks ago and have been meaning to blog about it ever since. You all know what a magazine addict I am. I buy everything from the obscure to the mundane. I’d heard about Porter a few days before its release down here in Australia and was really interested to see where the new glossy would fit within the market.

I pretty much devoured the whole issue in an hour. You can see how well read this mag is by that deep fold in the cover (see below).

Porter is a fashion mag. Being the child of Net-a-Porter, it couldn’t be anything else really. The features have been beautifully styled (especially the cover, shot by Dutch masters Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin of Gisele). There is a smattering of cultural commentary which is good to see. The only gripe I have, and it is a small one, is the font chosen for some of the single and double page fashion features. It looks like a grungy Courier and personally, I give it a big thumbs down because it is overpowering and ugly. When a font sticks out like that it ruins the flow of the piece. It tripped me up and stopped me from reading past the headline a couple of times. That’s not a good thing. Of course the mag is new and there might be some changes in terms of design in the second issue which is due out in a few weeks. If it were me I’d try and stick pretty close to the style elements used in The Edit. They work beautifully.

My opinion: if you like fashion mags you will love Porter. It’s a beautiful magazine and definitely worth forking out $12.95 for it.