Lisa Mosko: 
It came about because we were unsatisfied with the magazine offerings in the US. We felt there were few venues with equal emphasis placed upon both the imagery and the fashion. We wanted a platform where we could create complex, inspired imagery, which uses sophisticated, relevant fashion and shows it in a cerebral way. In Europe, a lot of the independent magazines are founded by fashion insiders who have a very fresh and informed perspective and we felt that that was missing in the culture here. Gravure was also started because we believe that there’s a lot of great talent Stateside, but it’s often expressed in a very commercial way. We wanted Gravure to provide a creative venue and foster a community here, while allowing us also to have some fun with our work.

LM: 
I’ve always tended toward fashion that is conceptually and inspirationally driven. I’ve never been a “10 Great Looks for Fall” sort of stylist. I wanted to make sure that the fashion in Gravure was all about top-notch, high-end fashion, whether it be by well-respected international luxury houses or independent NYC-based talent. In Gravure, the content always has to be about great, idea-led images combined with great fashion. Also, for the past few years, many of the US-based publications I’ve styled for have favored very polished, glossy, artificial-looking fashion photography. With Gravure, I’d like to move towards a looser, more evocative aesthetic.

Alex Freund: 
With regard to photography, far too often the approach magazines take to layout and content is to treat the photograph just like any other graphic element on the page, without respecting it as something which has been constructed deliberately. We try to treat it differently than, say, typography, which is meant to be moved around and reconfigured. My attitude is that you wouldn’t generally find a magazine truncating an article by a great writer, so why is it acceptable to crop a photograph in half?

LM: 
We’re not making any hard decisions regarding the future of the magazine, but for the first issue we opted to do it free of advertising. For future issues, we plan on taking a curatorial approach to the advertising — we’re open to advertising, but the companies need to fit the spirit and level of sophistication we aim for in Gravure. A lot of magazines are constantly chasing their tail going after advertisers that are incongruous with their content, which inevitably leads to a dilution of the editorial direction. We wanted to keep things directional.

AF: 
The fashion in Gravure is not limited to Americans or independent designers, but we wanted to support local talent that doesn’t usually have access to as much press as is their due — much in the same way British and French publications tend to support their own.

LM: 
Gravure is targeting taste-makers, opinion leaders, and fashion insiders. It is not about selling clothes so much as selling images and ideas.

LM: 
Film is not a new medium for fashion: William Klein, Guy Bourdin, Jean-Paul Goude, and Erwin Blumenfeld were doing fashion and film a decade ago; Showstudio was showing it before FLY; and I’m sure there will be more to come. Fashion film is definitely becoming a fixture in the fashion industry, and Gravuremag.com is about providing a venue for experimentation. The challenge is in finding directors who can successfully meld fashion and film. When I was at FLY DVD, I found that many very capable directors didn’t understand fashion well enough. And fashion photographers wanting to get into directing didn’t understand film and the element and dimension that time adds to the mix well enough for the project to be a success. I’m excited to find directors who understand both fashion and film well enough to create a piece that grabs my attention (and holds it) and that is also on point for fashion.

AF: 
We’re fans of media in general — we think each medium should do what it does best. Print conveys images beautifully in a precious, permanent, tactile way, whereas the web is fluid, dynamic, fast — and so is its content — so it’s a natural fit for motion pictures. We like the duality of pursuing both media with the same underlying message and direction. Fashion film as a genre is a bit like the Wild West right now: it’s exploding and nobody really has a formula yet, so there’s a lot of experimentation and it’s still in a raw state.

LM: 
The world doesn’t really need another magazine, but the US sure does. In many other countries, there’s a lot more support of independent media through nonprofits and grants, or even just through the culture of the place. The US media is so heavily weighted toward only showing things that have been proven profitable on a mass scale, which usually means appealing to the lowest common denominator in some way. We wanted to create a cerebral, sophisticated venue for fashion and the world surrounding it.