I’m looking for the best literary and/or fashion magazines. As much as I love Substack and Pinterest I’m trying to use my phone less.

Question

Samantha Culp · Answer

Periodicals: Here’s an ongoing list of my favorite periodicals across art, film, design, literature

even*cleveland · Answer

Harper’s Magazine: One of the best deals in journalism; front of book is always an inimitable assortment of excerpts, and the core articles are ambitious + thought-provoking.

even*cleveland · Answer

The Panacea Review: V. intrigued by this new title; I have Issue 1 and will buy Issue 02. Ambitious and unexpected:

"The Panacea Review is inspired by literary ephemera: letters, postcards, diaries, emails, field notes, and the like. Such wondrous trifles emerge daily from the churn of words, but rarely make it to print. We do publish traditional stories, poems, and essays, but are especially a home for the flotsam and jetsam of writing that otherwise might never leave the drawer. The Panacea Review is not defined by a search for the best work by the day’s best writers, but rather for the odd, forgotten, and curious. A fitting role for a print journal with its flag planted in an out-of-the-way hamlet on a continent’s edge."

even*cleveland · Answer

Cleveland Review of Books: Very much admire the ambition of the Cleveland Review of Books; each issue takes a slightly different format and the writing swings for the fences (though sometimes it's veers into academia-infected grad-schoolese). I think each issue gets better than the last.

"Cleveland Review of Books, Vol. 3.1: Think cosmic poetry criticism, childhood detective agencies, class-conscious literary proposals, “aesthetic” drugs and aggro drift, Swedish literary stardom, genre-bending experiments. Think translation politics and perpetual obscurity, writing that blisters, poetry’s desires and desired outcomes, thermal surges, aesthetic disruption, digital tokens and debt, chump change, and the feeling that you’ve been here before. Think gulls from the shores of Lake Erie at Edgewater Park making comfort of the star sculpture, a fictional monument of literary criticism."

even*cleveland · Answer

Mildew: Ellen Freeman has one of the most curious and inspiring minds I’ve ever encountered, which is probably why MILDEW, her magazine about second-hand fashion, is such a good read. This bit from her editor’s letter for vol. 2 captures some of what makes it so special:

"What does interaction without transaction feel like? What does it mean to share freely? Secondhand fashion exists in the zone between what’s mine and yours. In Mildew, we talk about conventional secondhand shops, but we’re also interested in exploring alternative economies and fluid ideas of ownership. … [Y]ou’ll find articles about secondhand clothing, but also secondhand culture: crowd-sourced nostalgia, one country borrowing a soap opera from another, migrants connecting their histories through textiles, hybrid garments and identities, and a shop selling nothing but memories."

even*cleveland · Answer

Vestoj: I came across this intriguingly brainy fashion journal a few years ago at C’H’C’M. I misread the subheading and sub-subheading as one statement: “THE JOURNAL OF SARTORIAL MATTERS ON DOUBT.” The prospect thrilled me, and I was a little disappointed to realize that doubt was not a recurring theme (doubt is definitely a recurring theme for me). I keep coming back to Mary Wang’s essay on impending motherhood, Candace Opper’s essay on 1990s-era suburban mall fashion, and Renate Strauss’s archive of fashion doubt. There’s more I have yet to read, including a short story by Kate Chopin. (Reprints and excerpts are the funkier cheeses on the magazine charcuterie board; I love them, which is why I found Lapham’s Quarterly so irresistible—I hope the print edition comes back.)