Les Cahiers Purple

{The internet has a lot to answer for, good and bad. One of the greatest parts of the internet, aside from all those videos on Youtube of cats jumping into and out of boxes I mean, is the amount of new information, product, and inspiration you can fill your life with daily. Things you may never have heard of before, can be found, can be purchased, can be owned and loved, within a few clicks. Maybe a few hours of link-tag. If it wasn't for the internet there would be several amazing "real life" things I would be without. I am thankful for that. However, on the flipside of this the internet has greatly reduced the chances of walking into a shop, a store, a gallery, and seeing something you have never seen before. Perhaps have never even heard of before.

This used to be, and sometimes still is, my very favourite day-to-day expearience. I spent my youth walking into magazine shops, bookstores, skate shops amazed by all this new information starring at me; these new products to buy. These things I had never ever seen. And wanted. Badly.

Normally now I'll more often than not see something on the internet, and spend months trying to track it down. Checking both online and brick-and-mortar stores, hunting it down; patiently waiting for the day that I find it. Now I suppose the excitement is in the hunt, not the surprise. However, often, by the time I track whatever it might be down, more often than not it's not even as good as I had imagined. Or it is, and the waiting and the hype has dumbed it down somehow.

Yesterday I walked into McNally Jackson books in Nolita; I went to browse through the literary journals, and noticed something that looked familiar and yet completely brand new. I checked the issue: Number One. I looked at the name. I instantly knew.

Somehow in the weeks and months since Les Cahiers Purple has been talked about online, has been released in stores, I failed to hear about it, to see it for myself. Despite it's showing up on several of the websites I check regularly (I know this now, from finding images for this post), it had slipped through my net. And picking it up for the first time, I couldn't have been happier about this.

I'm of the inbetween age. I was aware of the original Purple Magazine, and later the Purple Journal, but I do not own a single copy of either (the later I have no real excuse for). Much to my constant despair. I search ebay constantly. It was the perfect magazine (I know this from friends who bought it, from back issues I have found and flipped through, from that pile of old editions in Maryam Nassir Zadeh that were not, tragically, for sale). And then, before I had caught on, it stopped being published. And only Purple Fashion remained. Which, while as thick as a dictionary, is not really all that good.

And now, finally, there is Les Cahiers Purple. The missing link. Fashion, Art, Literature, Interviews, beautiful paper stocks and layouts. Everything I'd hoped a copy of Purple Journal in my hands would be. And yesterday I walked into a bookstore, and picked up a copy without knowing the first thing about it, without spending weeks searching for it, without any kind of expectation; which I'm sure I would have had in bucket loads.

One issue per year. Get one}