Paper (magazine)


Paper is a New York City-based independent magazine focusing on fashion, popular culture, nightlife, music, art and film.

History

Paper was founded in 1984 by Kim Hastreiter and David Hershkovits, former editors at the SoHo Weekly News, with help from Lucy Sisman and Richard Weigand. Beginning as a monthly print magazine in the form of a black and white 16-page fold-out, it has since transformed into a quarterly print and digital magazine.
Past cover models include Kim Kardashian, Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus, Prince, CL, Kacey Musgraves, Jennifer Lopez, and BTS.
In 2017, Hastreiter and Hershkovits sold the company to Tom Florio, former chief executive of Advanstar Fashion Group, and Drew Elliott, the chief creative officer of Paper.

"Break the Internet"

In November 2014, Kim Kardashian was the cover star of the "Break the Internet" issue. Kardashian was interviewed by Paper contributor Amanda Fortini for the spread "No Filter: An Afternoon with Kim Kardashian". The photos for the issue were taken by Jean–Paul Goude. The shoot was a re-creation of Goude's "Champagne Incident", a series of photographs from his 1982 book Jungle Fever. The cover photo, as well as the rest of the spread, featured a fully nude Kardashian.
Since the story was published, it has gotten over 34 million unique page-views, which is more than double the number of page-views Paper normally receives annually.

Books

Hastreiter and Hershkovits co-authored two books under the company's label. The first of the pair, published by Paper Publishing Company in association with Distributed Art Publishers in 1999, was titled From AbFab to Zen: Paper's Guide to Pop Culture, and had photography from John Waters. The second, titled 20 Years of Style: The World According to Paper, was published by Harper Collins in 2004 and featured writing from Michael Musto, John Waters, Isaac Mizrahi, Pedro Almodovar, Todd Oldham, Patrick McMullan, and Anna Sui.