Publication: Un-retouched and imperfect, Bare magazine brings rawness to magazine shelves

Holding Bare magazine in your hands or flicking idly through it on the Tube, you’d be forgiven realising that there was something different about it without being able to put your finger on exactly what that is. Printed on heavy uncoated stock and without a single retouched photograph between its front and back pages, the difference is subtle, but it’s there.

“The fashion magazines I see don’t have the raw, personal individuality that has lasting power,” creative director Claudia Bruno explains when asked what prompted her to found Bare, a publication which embraces the imperfections inherent in even the most immaculate of lives. “We are interested in the woman who wears the clothes, not the other way around, so what is interesting to us is the editorial content that surrounds the fashion stories.”

True to her word, the blend of fashion editorials (mussed up and grubby, except for Barbara Iweins’ The Bath series which is squeaky clean) and written content is faultless. An excerpt from John Cheever’s The Swimmer falls alongside a shoot about swimwear, and short fiction crops up elsewhere in the form of Bad Hair Daze and others. It’s roomily laid out, too, testament to designer Alex Araez design moodboards, and the vintage typefaces, textured stock and pastel colours which dominate them. “The goal was to create content for a smarter fashion consumer, and the typography echoes this statement of the imperfect, the raw, the personal, the beauty under the skin.”

“We are a global team, from Spain, the USA, Berlin and with photographers from NYC, London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Stockholm. The goal is to inspire readers who want a view of fashion without the gloss, and to create a following of those looking for an alternative to the glossy temporary nature of most fashion magazines.” I’d say they’ve succeeded, wouldn’t you?