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Out of print
Gone but not forgotten.
The Dirt team on their favorite discontinued magazines.
I am guilty of romanticizing my love for old magazines. Like many romantic relationships, a magazine might come into your life for a reason and stay for a few seasons (many seasons if you’re lucky), but its presence is rarely guaranteed to last a lifetime. Whenever a new one pops up, I try not to get too emotionally attached. Who knows how long this one will be around for!
Some might argue that publications don’t necessarily need to last. They’re created to capture a moment in the zeitgeist. They can serve as intellectual micro-societies, an “attempt to formally recreate the spontaneity of social relations on the page.” And these social relations, to quote the poet Jack Spicer, are “absolutely temporary.”
What do we stand to lose when a publication becomes institutionalized, its future secured by way of becoming a mass-market product? These are questions we still don’t have good answers to. A few weeks ago, Daisy published a phenomenal essay on how magazines are the original purveyors of taste. And even though the golden age of the glossies are over, there’s still much we can learn by perusing their archives. Below are some of Dirt’s favorite discontinued magazines: Gone, but not forgotten. —Terry Nguyen
Eros Magazine (1962)
Eros only published four quarterly issues in 1962, but its legacy is close to legendary. As its name implies, the magazine examined love and sex in America during the Sexual Revolution, a decade when existing sexual mores were put into question. Eros published articles on the clitoris, the American contraceptive industry, and Shakespeare’s speculative homosexuality; artistic images that were deemed pornographic under 1960s obscenity laws; and reviews of banned books, like Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Fanny Hill.
Editor Ralph Ginzberg was indicted with a federal obscenity charge after its fourth issue publication, which also contained photographs of Marilyn Monroe taken shortly before her death. (Ginzberg spent eight months in prison, instead of the five years he was sentenced to.) Still, the magazine sold 150,000 copies of its final issue, and some original copies are available on eBay at a shockingly reasonable price. The art direction under Herb Lubalin is gorgeous, and the magazine’s archives are digitally preserved, thanks to the work of Mindy Seu. —TN
Packet Biweekly (2012-2017)
Packet Biweekly was a Girls-era Brooklyn institution, an essential buy for my millennial cohort. Founded by Chris Nosenzo (now the creative director of Bloomberg Businessweek), Nicole Reber, and Christine Zhu and made on a Risograph printer in Nosenzo’s living room, the zine—which was both DIY and crisp, just so cleanly designed—featured art, writing, and “miscellanea” from both emerging and established artists (Sheila Heti was a contributor), with a rotating series of cover designers. Packet was both friendly and informative, something I could feel good about pulling out at a Know-Wave Radio party (RIP) when I was too nervous to talk to anyone.
In retrospect, it’s a thorough document of a scene, time, and place that quickly faded away. Reber, a wonderful artist herself, is now a realtor who also co-owns the bright and beautiful HAIR Los Angeles salon with her fiancé, celebrity hairstylist Daniel Moon. She recently told me that a high percentage of the hundreds of artists featured in Packet’s pages can no longer afford to continue their studio practices, moving on to other careers. But I used to pin their pictures on my refrigerator, cruelly torn out of the zine. I found a few issues in a box when I moved from New York to LA a few months ago, and I keep them alongside various napkins and matchbooks from when I was young, dumb, and full of… you know. —Jocelyn Silver
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Display Copy (2020—???)
Display Copy, a magazine featuring exclusively vintage and pre-owned clothing, put out two issues and I am holding my breath to see if there will be a third. It seems only natural that in an era that has Coach and Rolex gunning for a piece of their own secondary markets and Gen Z fighting over Goodwill finds on TikTok the next NYLON or i-D will feature nothing new at all.
Furthermore, we’ll see more all-archival runway shows. “Many luxury houses, including Balenciaga and Dior, only began to archive their collections seriously in the 1980s,” reports Vogue Business, but now brands at all price points want to highlight their histories. “More moderately priced brands and hot streetwear labels like Supreme, which now collect their own materials, may cleave to more digitally prominent pieces as well as what they consider their hallmark.” Display Copy was (is?) ahead of its time. —Daisy Alioto
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