W is an American fashionmagazine published by Future Media Group in print and online. W features stories about style through the lens of culture, fashion, art, celebrity, and film. Future Media Group purchased W from Conde Nast in June 2019. Conde Naste purchased the magazine from the original owner, Fairchild Publications in 2000. It was created in 1972 by the publisher of sister magazine Women's Wear Daily, James Brady. The magazine is an oversize format - ten inches wide and thirteen inches tall. Sara Moonves is the editor; Marc Lotenberg is the CEO of Future Media Group. Lotenberg said he bought W because he wants to transform legacy titles into “something that is just more than media.” W has a reader base of nearly half a million, 469,000 of which are annual subscribers. Eighty percent of the magazine's readers are female and have an average household income of $135,840.
Publication history
Originally a biweekly newspaper that was spun off from Women's Wear Daily, W became an oversized monthly magazine in 1993. Often the subject of controversy, W has featured stories and covers which have provoked mixed responses from its intended audience. In July 2005, W produced a 60-page Steven Klein portfolio of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt entitled "Domestic Bliss". The shoot was based upon Pitt's idea of the irony of the perfect American family; set in 1963, the photographs mirror the era when 1960s disillusionment was boiling under the facade of pristine 1950s suburbia. Other controversial issues include Steven Meisel's shoot entitled "Asexual Revolution", in which male and female models are depicted in gender-bending styles and provocative poses. In addition, Tom Ford's racy shoot with Steven Klein and the accompanying article on sexuality in fashion came as a shock to some loyal readers. During the interview, Ford is quoted as saying "I've always been about pansexuality. Whether I'm sleeping with girls or not at this point in my life, the clothes have often been androgynous, which is very much my standard of beauty." Steven Klein also was the photographer for the racy photo shoot featured in the August 2007 issue, showcasing David and Victoria Beckham. Bruce Weber produced a 60-page tribute to New Orleans in the April 2008 issue, and shot a 36-page story on the newest fashion designers in Miami for the July 2008 issue. Most of Ws most memorable covers are featured on the W Classics page on the magazine's website. W is also known for its coverage of American and European society. Many of these society luminaries, as well as the elite of the entertainment and fashion industries, have allowed W into their homes for the magazine's W House Tours feature, including Marc Jacobs, Sir Evelyn Rothschild and Imelda Marcos. In 2011, Steven Meisel created controversy again by promoting fake advertisements throughout the November issue of the magazine. In 2013, Meisel shot RuPaul's Drag Race Season 3 contestant Carmen Carrera in an editorial called "Show girl", promoting the beauty of the transgender model. In 2013, the magazine started combining the January/December and June/July issues so as to free up money to invest in the magazine's digital brand. In May 2019, the New York Post reported that Future Media Group was purchasing the magazine for $7 million and that under CEO Marc Lotenberg, Sara Moonves was replacing Stefano Tonchi, the first ever female editor-in-chief in the magazine's history. In June 2019, Condé Nast fired Tonchi as it sold W, which he’d headed for nine years, to Surface Media. He sued them claiming wrongful termination, and Condé Nast sued him charging that he was a “faithless servant” who interfered with the sale to achieve benefits for himself; Condé Nast is seeking the return of “all monies paid to him during his period of disloyalty". Under Lotenberg’s tenure, the new W team finished the biggest Best Performances issue ever. In the first week of January 2020, W launched 9 covers, a 76-page celebrity portfolio covering 29 celebrities and 20 videos. Additionally, W Magazine launched a series of new initiatives and dramatically expanded its digital footprint. They launched W’s first podcast, “5 Things with Lynn Hirschberg,” which has attracted a broad listener base and included guests like Quentin Tarantino, Charlize Theron, Saoirse Ronan, Greta Gerwig, Noah Baumbach, Nicole Kidman, Awkwafina, and Margot Robbie as a part of the new vision for the brand. An announcement was made in late March 2020 that the print version of the magazine would go on hiatus.
The issue of drastic photo retouching became national news when in the December 2009 issue, actress Demi Moore was presented with a remarkably slim figure and what appeared to many critics to be a poorly Photoshopped hip. Both the magazine and Moore denied this claim; the actress posted on her Twitter account what she claimed was the original photo from the shoot, and further disputed that the editors of W had slimmed her figure to make her appear thinner. Citrano later challenged this claim by Moore by offering $5,000 to charity if Moore could prove that the photo she provided was the original photo from the shoot. On November 24, 2009, the consumer watchdog website The Consumerist claimed that Moore's head, legs, and arms had been superimposed on runway model Anja Rubik's hips and torso.
International editions
An international edition was previously published in Japan. The South Korean edition was launched in 2005 and is published under license by Doosan Magazine.
