Review: STYLEBY magazine #1

On Monday the new magazine STYLEBY (created by Jonna Bergh and fashion blogger Elin Kling) hit stores and I picked up a copy, tempted to see if it’s anything worth reading. Here’s my verdict:

A constant reoccurrence is Elin Kling, the fashion editor at large and creative director of the magazine. She’s on the cover (in six versions of herself) and she’s also in several of the photos in the magazine. It’s obvious that they’re using Elin Kling’s face and name as a means of PR, but it comes off as gloating.

Naming the magazine STYLEBY is about as close as you can get to titling it “Elin Kling” (StylebyKling is Kling’s blog title since several years). There’s a four page article following the process of Kling’s work with her collection for H&M and a photo shoot with her in New York City, throughout the magazine are comments from Kling regarding various collections, products and garments. It’s an Elin Kling-fan magazine.

Some of the articles are really boring and rather pointless, like an entire article describing one piece of clothing. I can understand the idea of portraying a garment like a piece of art and documenting the process of making it, but is that really fun to read about? No.

It’s not all bad, there are some good articles (like at-home interviews and photos of people in the fashion industry), but there’s nothing that feels “new”, it’s all been done before. So it all boils down to if Kling is a strong enough face and name to keep the magazine in business. Do people love her enough to want to keep buying the magazine? Only time will tell.  This is just the first issue and maybe it’ll improve with time, but I’m not going to sign up for a subscription.