The Gentlewoman Puts On Its Birthday Suit for 30th Anniversary Issue
LONDON — The Gentlewoman is putting on its birthday suit for its 30th issue with American performance artist Kembra Pfahler gracing the cover in the nude with blue body paint.
The artist, who also leads the band The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, has been photographed by Jamie Hawkesworth in a 14-page spread wearing mostly nothing — in one image she’s wearing a dress made out of printed paper with a pair of black socks and white shoes.
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“I’m not naked, I’m wearing body paint,” she says in an interview with art journalist Cristina Ruiz.
The indie magazine has come a long way since it started out 14 years ago and it’s recovering successfully since a slight dip in readership during the pandemic
The magazine’s sales are now up by 45 percent since 2020 as a result of Martin and her team working rigorously on expanding The Gentlewoman’s distribution. During the pandemic, they started sending out the newsletter more frequently too — every two weeks instead of monthly.
The Gentlewoman has long embraced the experiential, and has been creating events from its editorial content for readers since 2011. If there’s a story with a fashion designer about using arts and crafts furniture, for example, they’d stage a walkthrough of a showroom about collecting furniture.
“I’m from a museum background, that’s what we did when we made exhibitions — we thought about the various real world outcomes and turned it into social exchanges,” said Penny Martin, the editor of the magazine, in an interview.
It was through Facebook that they noticed people were coming to them and using the social media channel as an FAQ page to find out more about the magazine and where to purchase it. The magazine’s website launch in 2013 was timed with an issue of Beyoncé on the cover.
“We were kind of skeptical about whether we wanted a virtual form of a magazine that was so assiduously print. The idea of putting it all online seemed not in the spirit of the editorial direction of the magazine. When we went online, we created a club, which really was initially indulging the desire to meet our readers,” said Martin.
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