Magazine of the Week

Welcome back, everyone!

worn cvr

Worn is a nifty magazine that was published by a group of ambitious women in Toronto. The editor who began it all, Serah-Marie McMahon, described it as “a Fashion Journal about the Art, Ideas, and History of What We Wear.” In interviews, she described her frustration with the mainstream fashion press and her goal of depicting both alternative fashion and some of the ways that everybody is into fashion and clothes.

WORN Fashion Journal Closing

article worn

For ten years McMahon managed to produce a magazine that addressed fashion history, pop- and anti-fashion styles, carried forward looking fashion layouts with real people and a funky DIY aesthetic without advertising.

 

 

Articles included haikus about shoes, Sonia Delaunay’s use of color, explanation of the dry cleaning process, how Vietnamese refugees used nail salons to establish themselves in Canada, use of clothing to define gender, a brief history of nail polish, and on and on.

wrn layout

 

Photographic layouts of everything from steampunkish male dandies, women wearing bunny masks, and women in greenhouses or left by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere with a full complement of luggage. It’s all thought provoking and a bit whimsical while being equally well thought through.

 

 

 

Our holdings in PERS go back to Fall 2006.

StyleCat record for Worn

In 2014, McMahon chose the best content of the journal’s first fourteen issues for the book, which we also have:

Worn Archive, edited by Serah-Marie McMahon

5th floor, Main Stacks, TT500 .W674 2014

Worn Archive” in StyleCat

We’re sad that McMahon decided to stop publishing this gem, but excited to have what we can of her work.

Come see!