Men's magazines: an A to Z

Fable [closed] Back to top

Queercompany, London, November 2001-?
Editor Jonathan Keane.
'Queer life, story and style'. Targets gay men and women

The Face: style bible of the 1980s. This 1986 cover is of Isabella Rossellini, who had appeared in David Lynch's Blue Velvet

The Face [closed] Back to top

Wagadon/Emap, May 1980-March 2004
The Face was launched Nick Logan in May 1980, using £12,000 he raised by mortgaging his house (Emap had turned the idea down). The Face called itself 'a visual-orientated youth culture magazine' and was the sort of magazine he wanted to read.

Logan had edited music weekly New Musical Express for IPC and invented pop weekly Smash Hits for Emap. This background showed in the music focus of the early issues. However, the content expanded to cover design, fashion and media and The Face became the acclaimed leader of a trio of style magazines - Blitz and i-D being the others).

It was in the right place - and had the right designer in Neville Brody - to become the 'house magazine' of the New Romantics, Boy George and the clubbing scene. By the late 1980s, The Face had become a style bible for the under-25s and was selling 88,000 copies a month.

Logan went on the launch Arena for readers who had outgrown The Face. However, the failed launches of Deluxe and Frank forced Logan to sell out to Emap in 1999. In March 2004, Emap announced the closure of The Face, citing the changing marketplace and falling sales. Only i-D survives of the original style trio.
Emap profile
Wagadon profile

Fanfare [closed] Back to top

Town & Country Pubs (Toco), Croydon, Surrey. 1957-?
1/3. 44pp. Ed and manager: R.T. Staples

Fashion Inc: an attempt to take Loaded Fashion more upmarket

Fashion Inc Back to top

IPC Media, Spring/Summer 2006
Editor Adrian Clark took Loaded Fashion and relaunched it in a bigger, glossier package. Tag line is: 'The thinking man's style bible.' Editorial focus is on high fashion, luxury accessories and grooming. Interiors and personal technology also covered. The target audience is 'affluent AB males, aged between 25 and 45: urban professionals with separate wardrobes for work and play'.
IPC profile

FHM: March 2003 cover pushing the High Street Honeys competition

FHM: launched in France in July 1999 with Sandra Bullock on the cover

FHM/For Him Back to top

Emap, 1995-2008; Bauer, Jan 2008-
While James Brown at IPC was preparing to launch lads magazine Loaded, Emap bought the 76,000-circulation fashion title FHM from small publisher Tayvale (see For Him). Mike Soutar set about the relaunch with publisher David Hepworth. Soutar developed ways of differentiating his title from the then market-defining Loaded through taking a very practical approach. In his view, Loaded offered lads the chance to live life through the writers as they 'drink and snort their way through endless freebies'. Arena and GQ seemed 'impossibly cool for the average bloke'.

He took Brown's philosophy, but added a dimension - everything in FHM had to be accessible to readers. In a Guardian interview (17 February 1997, page 7), he espoused a 'mantra' that everything in the magazine had to be: 'funny, sexy, useful'. Writers could never cover any activities that readers couldn't also take part in. So phone numbers and addresses were to be found at the end of most articles. In retrospect, this sounds simple, but Soutar's relaunch was in a highly competitive sector, in which IPC, Conde Nast and National Magazines were already active.

The men's lifestyle market grew by almost half from Jul-Dec 1995 to Jul-Dec 1996. In that time, Loaded's sales grew by over 85%. Yet even this was not enough to outshine FHM: its sales more than doubled to 365,341. It was now rivalling the best-selling women's monthlies. By the end of 1999, FHM was selling 775,000 copies in the UK, and had been launched in five countries. The lads magazines were taking over the world.

However, sales tailed off, particularly with the advent of weekly lads magazines in Nuts and Zoo. From then on, all the monthlies lost their younger readers and have tried various strategies, with little effect, to keep sales up. In the first half of 2007, FHM sold 311,590 copies a month, down 25.9% year-on-year. In June 2007, Ed Needham - after seven years in New York editing FHM, Rolling Stone and Maxim returned to the UK and wrote in the Guardian:

'... the internet, other electronic distractions and the UK weeklies have made the month a terribly unfashionable unit of time, and the path ahead for men's magazines increasingly difficult to chart. Of greater concern, it had stopped being fun. This genre, into which I had gleefully poured my heart and soul for so many years, had lost its appeal.'

However, the success of the British titles had inspired publishers around Europe and the rest of the world. Maxim and FHM were widely licensed. By September 1999, FHM was the top men's title in the UK, Singapore, Australia, Malaysia and Turkey, and was about to appear in France. In February 2000, Ed Needham launched the US edition (Mar/Apr cover date). However, Emap's excursion in buying publisher Petersen was a disaster and Emap pulled out of the US, leaving only FHM to soldier on - and that was closed in early 2007 (March cover date).

The big men's publishers in the UK saw a more upmarket fashion niche as well, Emap launching FHM Collections.
Emap profile

FHM Collections [closed] Back to top

see FHM

Fiesta: launched in 1957

The spring 1957 Fiesta: still a pocket title

1966 issue of Fiesta just after its relaunch in a larger format by top-shelf publisher Galaxy

A 1979 Fiesta cover from Galaxy

Fiesta Back to top

Gannet Press (Sales) Ltd, Birkenhead / Galaxy. Monthly. 1956-
Fiesta was launched as a monthly pocket title in the glamour magazines mould. Was also distributed to the Continent through the Netherlands and Denmark. Issues included a reply-paid tip-on mini post card to vote for photo of the month taken by readers (£25, £5 and £2/10/0 prizes).

Colour pages were a feature, especially in the quarterly specials (which were priced at 3/6 as opposed to the monthly 2/6). The spring 1957 special (left) had 12 colour pages out of 80, including the cover and the centre spread. Photographers included Harrison Marks, Russell Gay, Eva Grant, 'Taff' and Royston Campbell. None of the models was topless.

In 1966, Fiesta was relaunched by soft-porn publisher Galaxy in an A4-ish format. Almost all the images showed nipples, apart from the covers. It soon claimed to be 'the fastest selling magazine for men'. By 1988, Fiesta was the UK's biggest-selling men's title at 328,000, a figure that put it in the top 25 of magazine sales. However, by 2001, sales had slumped to 73,685 copies a month. Galaxy also published Best of Fiesta specials.

For Him: 'style, grooming and fitness'
Andie MacDowell on the cover of FHM in April 1994 (the year Mike Newell's Four Weddings and a Funeral came out)

For Him/FHM Back to top

Tayvale, 1987-1995- (then FHM)
Chris Astridge started distributing For Him through men's fashion outlets. Distribution was expanded to newsagents as a quarterly in the spring of 1987. It was fashion-based and tended to be seen as a gay magazine, which was then a turn-off for other men. Emap bought the title and used it to thrash pioneer Loaded in the lads magazines sector.

Front: launch issue of the men's magazine with 3D specs

Pamela Anderson on Front magazine in 2002

Front To top

Cabal/Highbury/Remnant/Flip, November 1998-
Front always carried plenty of cleavage, boasting a '3D babefest poster' on its first issue. It was labelled as 'Loaded for teenagers'. This led to criticism, given the semi-pornographic nature of lads magazines. The building society Nationwide refused to advertise; and supermarkets Sainsbury's and Asda returned 24,000 copies of the launch issue. However, Cabal said the whole 400,000 print run was sold.

Cabal was taken over by Highbury, which in turn was split up in 2005, with Front going to SMD Publishing, a company set up by adult magazine publisher Remnant to buy Front, Hotdog and DVD World from Highbury. However, SMD went into administration at the end of 2006 and the title closed for 3 months before reappearing under Flip Media.
Cabal profile
SMD/Remnant profile