Social media is like oxygen now, like electricity.
Their bifurcation translates to their digital presence, too. “Social media platforms allow us to be heard much louder, more than what newsstands have given us in the past,” Issa says. “I get messages from everywhere.” She has become an ambassador for the magazine and has gone beyond the masthead as an influential style icon. (Her unimpeachably sophisticated breed of glamour? Bright lipstick, polished ponytail, feminine blouses, tailored blazers, below-the-knee skirts, contrasting accessories.) “Social media is like oxygen now, like electricity,” she reasons. “It just is.”
Although, as Golsorkhi is quick to mention, “I don’t think we are uncritical of its flaws.” (He doesn’t have Instagram—“mostly out of laziness”—and uses Twitter only to absorb information.) “There’s no such thing as a free lunch. While we embrace the connectivity it offers, we’re also highly cautious. We’ve even been writing about it,” he adds, citing the piece he penned about the opportunism and monopolistic cronyism of FAANG (an acronym for Facebook Apple Amazon Netflix Google).
We’re constantly reminding the team that you can love a couture Chanel jacket as much as Fatima Bhutto’s newest novel.
TANK’s 20th-anniversary issue—its cover a one-off photograph done in a single long exposure, using a laser to spell out the name in light—features a series of stickers to make each issue bespoke. Expressing optimism about independent print publishing, Issa notes: “To still be able to play with a print format, while being able to produce fantastically interesting and essential content on the inside, is a great reflection of where publishing is—and could be in the future.” She adds, “We’re glad to have stuck it out.”>
Still, as the print publishing world ebbed in the face of digital, adapting has been a requisite to ensure longevity. The magazine has garnered a shifting readership: long-standing fans have been supplemented by “a politically motivated young audience” in the wake of Brexit, Golsorkhi notes, with a more engagé response from those seeking internships and those commenting on content.
Of TANK’s four issues per year, a literary issue and a travel issue are preset; the remaining two are dedicated to a concept, with illustrative content commissioned around it. To remain distinct, “You have to count on the readership wanting to keep the magazine. Now there is so much choice, you can’t rely on a weird cover,” Golsorkhi says.
The magazine’s draw is its “democratic but discerning” philosophy. “Fashion and brains go hand in hand,” Issa emphasizes. “We’re constantly reminding the team that you can love a couture Chanel jacket as much as Fatima Bhutto’s newest novel.” Golsorkhi clarifies: “It’s not about ‘liking’ both, but understanding that a critical sense of interest and investigation can be applied to both. Sometimes things that appear superficial are also significant, if you take the time to analyze them.” He cites the work of Alessandro Michele at Gucci as an example. “I think it is a seriously significant moment in aesthetics in Europe, in a way that we will remember a century from now.”
Cultural porousness is embraced—but not unilaterally. “I’m quite resistant to a ‘goulash’ approach, that everything is about everything,” he says. “You have to look at it case by case.” He references, for example, the V&A’s Kylie Minogue show as a misfire. “I think it’s totally legitimate for fashion people to have an interest in art, and for a general interest audience to be interested in both.” But he cautions, “I think you have to be quite incisive in the way you apply yardsticks to different disciplines.”
London, as the locus of the magazine, also flavors the vision profoundly. Golsorkhi describes it as “a very distinct type of petri dish, almost a form of a grand human experiment” powered by diversity, toughness, and creativity. The duo are proponents of going beyond an Anglo-Saxon or North American take. “We’ve consistently championed a very diverse range of viewpoints—and we think that’s important. Some of the best writing is coming from India, Pakistan, Africa,” Issa notes. Contributors have included Kai Friese, an Indian-German writer who brought philosopher Peter Sloterdijk to TANK’s attention, and Panjak Mishra, a longtime collaborator and critical thinker about post-colonialism.
The magazine has readily republished its prior work, including an article by Peter Lyle about the perils of Facebook and an article by Malu Halasa (“Men Are Over”) about the decline of white male influence—prescient topics that have resurfaced with full force in contemporary conversation. “I hope it demonstrates a kind of steadfastness and a kind of clarity—intellectually, and also morally,” Golsorkhi says of the publication’s “clear direction and unwavering commitment to a certain unflinching look at reality.”
When the first issue of TANK was published, “It was described as a book, because of its unusual format,” he remembers. “I think that has proved prophetic, because TANK’s content has run against the grain of many ideas about magazines to do with ‘zeitgeist’ and ‘here and now.’ We step back and look at a macro current—being, in that sense, more like a book than a magazine.” *
Pankaj Mishra
In 2017, Indian essayist, novelist and frequent TANK contributor Pankaj Mishra released a critically acclaimed work of nonfiction called Age of Anger: A History of the Present. He argues that nationalist movements, from terror groups like ISIS to Brexit, have emerged as a response to the globalization and normalization of Western ideals. The magazine continues to republish works by writers like Peter Lyle and philosopher Peter Sloterdijk. “We’re talent-spotters,” says Issa, who is exceedingly proud of the magazine’s unique contributors. “We’re huge cheerleaders of the people who come through.”
Issa says staying calm and maintaining perspective in this industry is key. “You have to remember there’s a bigger picture. If you can read a newspaper every day and have a bigger perspective than the fashion bubble that exists,” she told Atelier Doré, “you become much more aware that fashion isn’t your whole life.”
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Baron moved to New York at age 21. Within five years, he’d turned down jobs at American Vogue and Vogue Paris, before finally accepting a job at the magazine’s Italian edition.
FABIEN BARON
Baron & Baron
Interview
Harper’s Bazaar
Vogue Italia
vogue paris
arena homme plus
I can’t bear something that is not well done.
In 1992, photographer Patrick Demarchelier introduced Baron to Liz Tilberis, then the newly appointed editor at Harper’s Bazaar. In her editor’s note for her first issue in September of that year, Tilberis stated that “elegance—of mind as much as of appearance—implies intelligence, certainty of taste, a balanced and centered identity,” setting a new precedent for the fashion magazine.
Fabien Baron’s Manhattan office looks exactly as it should, with industrial features and marble countertops, a sharp palette of black and white and lighting so moody it could be dark. Like the French creative director’s work, the office is sexy but also a little intimidating. The only objects in reception are a perfect white orchid in the corner and a huge black book dedicated to Calvin Klein, a longtime client, on the coffee table. Baron designed the space himself, and its expensive sleekness and expansive rooms (in a city where space is limited) are evidence of what everyone in the fashion industry already knows: Baron is quite possibly the most successful creative director working today.
He has been a little of everything, from videographer (commercials for Fendi, L’Oréal, Gucci) to product designer (the flask-like bottle for CK One cologne) and magazine and book chief (Interview, of which he is currently editorial director, as well as Madonna’s controversial 1992 work of erotica, Sex, said to be the bestselling coffee-table book of all time). “I’ll try anything. I always want to challenge myself. I’ll learn by risking failure. It’s nerve-wracking, but to put yourself in a position where everything i
s easy is very boring,” he says over tea at a long white table in a stark white conference room. “I’m still eager. I can’t bear something that is not well done. Today’s not the best: Tomorrow, I think, I’m going to nail it.”
Baron is known for clean minimalism, a revelation when he first broke through as creative director of Franca Sozzani’s Italian Vogue in the late 1980s. His influence moved fashion in a less fussy direction, and he credits his knack for cutting straight to the point to his father, who was an art director for newspapers in France. The most important thing in media is simple storytelling, he remembers being taught. “He was classic, and very respected because he was a good journalist,” Baron says. “I think he gave me that: how to pass information on in a journalistic way.” Baron also says he was crafty from the start, making his own DIY music magazine called Rock ’n’ Roll as a 19-year-old in Paris. “A small little thing, 28 pages, something like that,” he says. “I did everything in it.”
Baron’s original leap of faith was ditching France for New York in the early 1980s. “I knew it was in America where things were happening, and so I came,” he remembers. He worked on a few magazine projects before making his way to Sozzani at Italian Vogue and, eventually, Harper’s Bazaar under editor Liz Tilberis.† For their very first issue, he composed an elegant Linda Evangelista on the cover pushing the “A” of the magazine’s title out of orbit across the top. “I wanted to break the mold and rebuild it in a way that actually would make sense for today,” Baron says. He was inspired by the ’90s grunge movement, which the industry had been mostly ignoring. “It was a cultural change driven by music—the youth culture was not accepting everything. They wanted to go to another place; they wanted to be very real.”
Baron brought the same fresh energy to what is possibly his most influential work: his ads for Calvin Klein, including the Obsession fragrance campaign in the 1990s with Kate Moss, who was a revolution in her own right, replacing supermodel glamour with a grimier beauty. Authenticity was in. “The creative direction on that was to send [photographer and Moss’ boyfriend] Mario Sorrenti with her on a paid vacation with no hair and no makeup,” he remembers. “They’re obsessed with each other, I thought, so let them figure it out—and they came back with these genius photos.” Although, he adds, “Apparently they were fighting the entire time.”
The advertisements, as well as his CK One campaign with a cast of punky shirtless kids, represented a shift that continues to shape the industry today: Bottling the messy, angsty underground is often the most effective way to create desire and sell things. “Sometimes the problem with marketing people is that they aren’t early enough in the culture,” he says. “Instead of a single woman selling something sexy, a gold bottle with pompous over-the-top-names, we did everything that you would’ve learned not to do at a big fragrance company. They would’ve told you that this would fail,” he says, “but I knew it wouldn’t.” In other words, anytime you see a tattooed greaser pitching a luxury product, Baron is partly responsible.
The director has the aura and eye of an artist but insists that many of his choices are actually utilitarian. “Art direction is puzzle-solving,” he explains. “Black-and-white is much easier. There’s more mood, there’s more feeling. Working with color is more complicated,” he says. Baron also has the ability to collaborate with some of the biggest (and sometimes bossiest) personalities in the industry. “You learn to be a little bit more humble and to put your ego away,” he says. “You count the least, you put everyone else first.” Even his near-spiritual attachment to minimalism (his West Village town house, like his office, is a spartan masterpiece) comes from effect as much as affection. “Minimalism has existed since the world has existed, from a single man putting his hand on the single stone. The Egyptian pyramids. What’s more minimal than that? What about the cross?” he asks of the religious icon. “It’s a minimal symbol and the best logo on the planet. The most famous logo ever.”
Baron still finds time to make personal work, waking up early and photographing the ocean, for instance, as a kind of meditation. “That’s for me, not for other people. It chills me down,” he explains. “It’s peaceful, it’s very simple, it’s very pure,” he says of his fascination with water. “It’s there all the time, it doesn’t move, and yet it’s always different.” When asked, after a career in which he’s done almost everything, if there’s anything left to try, he says he’d like to direct a feature film and design a building. “I’m mad about architecture,” he says. He doesn’t mind that Instagram has made almost everyone an amateur creative director either. “That’s great,” he says. “Why not? Everyone is an amateur photographer with the iPhone, and everyone is a model too, with so many selfies. But constantly repeating the good, the good, the good, the good? It takes years of practice and knowledge.” Which is what Baron will do today and the day after: get to work. “I like tomorrow. Always.” *
Minimalism has existed since the world has existed, from a single man putting his hand on a single stone.
Calvin Klein’s CK One
In the 1990s, Calvin Klein was responsible for some of the most controversial ad campaigns of the decade. Featuring a teenage Kate Moss among other new faces, the clean but edgy approach with CK One ushered in a bold new lifestyle brand. “Heroin chic” and its casual sexuality have become a classic piece of marketing history. The brand relaunched the CK One video series in 2011, and celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2015 with the hashtag #meforme, a very millennial slogan harking back to the original concept.
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For the past 30 years, Baron has been responsible for revamping over five publications, including Italian Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Interview, and rebranding companies like Coach.
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Swara draws inspiration from Bauhaus principles and the work of Swiss designer Max Bill.
KUCHAR SWARA
Port
It takes a certain type of creative to find inspiration in both a shopping list and a shipwreck. Kuchar Swara, the award-winning creative director and co-founder of PORT magazine, explains how creativity is nothing if not listening to your gut. “You just never know where it’s going to turn up,” the 36-year-old admits.
Today, Swara looks to modernism. Tomorrow, anything. “You suddenly get an idea that we’re all trying to figure things out,” he says of potentially seeing a celebrity side by side with a niche writer. “What does it mean to take certain subject matter and play with it in this day and age?” he asks. “And not try to do something that’s been repeated but try to do something human and tactile?” It’s a vision that favors philosophy over technology, first impressions over rules.
But this wasn’t always the case for the Iranian-born Londoner. Influenced by early mentor and renowned designer Simon Esterson, Swara initially approached his craft with a formalist’s eye, committed to rules and tradition. It wasn’t until 2011 that PORT co-founder Matt Willey showed Swara what it meant to experiment in the service of experience. Swara proudly admits the magazine’s consistency has been its inconsistency ever since.
The designer had a similar moment with an unusual brief from publisher Tyler Brûlé when redesigning the Italian art and architecture magazine Case da Abitare in 2008. The London College of Printing graduate found himself working with casual references instead of firm objectives like those found in traditional briefs.
“It was honestly like looking at a recipe book,” he remembers. “Not even a recipe book, but it was almost like a shopping list of what to go and buy in the supermarket and then you come back and you cook the dish—but there was no method for to how to cook the dish!”
Swara says the experience, however clichéd, shook something loose at the time. “It was more about the approach,” he says, “to even think of something in that fashion. And I thought that was such a refreshing way to do it, because we all have our cultural reference points.” Those experiences, he says, can translate t
o millions of outcomes that ultimately bend toward originality.
As for the shipwreck? It came courtesy of Damien Hirst during the Venice Biennale last year. “Genius, genius exhibition,” he says with a laugh. Hirst submerged a fictional vessel only to “excavate” its treasures in the form of gold and recognizable cartoon characters. “If art can be funny, that was hilarious,” he recalls, while watching a confused couple discuss the work. Whether through print or his recent watch brand Sekford, he continues to ask: “How do you make people feel a certain way?” Swara is hoping that a little creative ricochet, with all its cultural clues and playful contexts, will help him get there.*
What does it mean to take certain subject matter and play with it in this day and age?
Christopher Dresser
“It was kind of like a holy cow moment when I saw this guy’s stuff,” Swara remembers. “I just thought, how amazing is it that someone can really step out of the time that they’re in and think so independently.” Christopher Dresser is the designer and theorist most commonly associated with the Aesthetic Movement and widely known as the first independent designer. His square teapot from 1879 pulled from a number of influences, including his studies in botany. “It was just unlike anything anyone had ever done before,” Swara says. “It was this amazing fusion of rationality mixed with over-the-top decadence mixed with ancient history mixed with Roman Classicism. Unbelievable reference points.”
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