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Five years after it ceased publication, Love magazine, known for its subversive fashion spreads, is relaunching independently in September.
An investor pool, of which creative conglomerate The Independents is a minority shareholder, bought the publication’s IP from Condé Nast, which until this year housed Love in its stable of publications. Juan Costa Paz and Nordine Benotmane, co-founders of Paris-based creative and brand strategy agency Convoy, are leading the relaunch.
Costa Paz said he and Benotmane identified the opportunity to bring back the publication — which had been dormant since founder Katie Grand’s departure in 2020 — while he was working at Condé Nast as global creative director for Vogue. The market, they felt, lacked a “cultural fashion magazine” that more directly reflected a Parisian point of view, said Costa Paz — the two are based in the city.
“It’s usually the English that always championed that kind of crossroad between culture and fashion,” he added, citing publications like i-D and Dazed.
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The two plan to retain the sharp visual and editorial point of view Love was known for in its heyday, but in this new iteration they want to provide a broader global view of the intersections between fashion and culture. They also hope to look beyond traditional fashion capitals and highlight regions such as South America and Africa. In addition to broadening its international outlook, the publication will lean into “documentary fashion stories,” said Costa Paz, where fashion plays a supporting role in telling broader stories about technology — for example, the topic of digital twins — politics and more.
The first edition of the biannual magazine’s new era will be released in September. 90,000 copies of each edition will be distributed worldwide, and the print magazine itself will be designed to be seen as a “collectible object,” said Benotmane, with a theme for each issue.
As magazines face unprecedented challenges in a digital-driven world, the new Love will also extend beyond its core print issues and operate as more of a “media platform” and space for “creative exchange,” said Benotmane. In addition to the biannual editions, it will release digital content, special print editions, events and merchandise created alongside brand partners.
“If you’re going to start a magazine in 2025 pretending it’s still the ‘90s, it’s not going to happen. It’s a very different world,” said Costa Paz. “Magazines today need to feel alive. Magazines need to be like a living, breathing organism.”
Still, they’ll take a considered approach to digital, not wanting “to overwhelm people with content,” said Benotmane. The pair also hopes to share content that speaks to audiences beyond fashion insiders.
Its special editions will be focused, too, highlighting specific cities and events like the 2026 Fifa World Cup and providing opportunities to double down on events — another key element of the new Love ecosystem, supported by the Convoy team’s experience designing events like Vogue World.
“Today the role of a magazine should be more about creating the moment, as opposed to being on the outside, reporting on these moments,” said Costa Paz. The team plans to collaborate with brand partners and artists to create products alongside the events, like exhibitions, concerts and sports matches, to further extend the magazine’s cultural impact and presence.
While the team still hasn’t decided if they’ll revive Love’s best-known asset — its advent calendar, a video series released each December featuring celebrities in lingerie — Costa Paz and Benotmane hope to recreate the calendar’s franchise model with recurring events across other cultural spheres.
“You’re taking the principle of a print product and you’re applying it to events,” said Costa Paz. “You’re becoming something that becomes expected in one way or another.”
