Métier Book

First, thank you for being here. Welcome to this space, an experiment in publishing. I want to ask some questions. What if artists were given the freedom and trust they desire with the space to explore the expansive nature of their practice? What if there were a magazine that followed artists in support throughout their careers while also making space for new visions and names to emerge? What if a fashion magazine cared more about the art than the commerce? In the current system, the artists are used for an end result; profits for a brand or personality or the magazine itself. I want to interrupt the process. I want the vision of each contributing artist to be the priority. I want the end result to be work that endures and is not reduced to simply fleeting content. It is very important to me my intention for this space is clear: I want a publication that supports art and artists in an age where our individual creativity is mined for content and our livelihood is often not found not in our craft, but some thankless nine-to-five.

The impetus for this attempt at a new kind of magazine does come from rejection, frustration, and dissatisfaction. I was not naive in thinking fashion would be easy, but being transparent, I did expect more opportunity and more community, both of which I struggle to find frequently. I choose to push to create more of these things, no matter the perception or final scale. In this endeavor, there are currently no backers, no connections that promise guaranteed success, and there is no clear path ahead except for my vision for it, and that is the direction it will take. I promise transparency so that we do not follow the line of exploitative practices so widely utilized in the industry. Artists deserve fair pay for their work. At this juncture, this magazine is volunteer-based. It is a free platform to share work that the artist chooses to invest in for their own vision, and then generously shares with MB for publication. If or when this space becomes profitable it will be profitable for it’s contributors. In transparency, this will be worked out and communicated at various points in its growth. Unlike many magazines, it is not birthed with the intention of profit, only that it sustains itself to continue its publishing. My aim for this magazine is to do the work I feel is lacking in other publications, which is to seek out talent instead of just relying on the talents of the moment or the widely published and publicized to fill our rosters. As your editor, I will use the privilege to push you to create your best and most compelling work.  

This is a fashion magazine but also it does not consider fashion a boundary. Poems, essays, prose, interviews, art features, and performances are encouraged as much as fashion editorials. The only requirement for submissions or pitches is that the final product submitted is completed to the best of each contributor’s ability. The site is the space we have to co-create at a regular pace. Each year a limited pressing of the synthesized website will be printed in Europe and sold as a collector item and important ephemera for contributors and fans alike.

Ads will come. Ads are why I got into this sphere because they sparked something in me from a young age. I was excited by the glimpses of the worlds these teams were building and how they related to the logo sealed on top. Now my capacity for ads is much smaller. I grew up while ads became even more normalized, bombarding us at every turn, now in the form of an influencer, a billboard, a commercial, or a painfully obvious cameo. Assuming brands choose to buy ads here they will be highly directed and produced from within. I want to support brands that make a mark and have something to say. I want brands to support us and lend us clothes and buy ad space so that we can have a symbiotic relationship in growth, but I want to do it in an original way that respects each artist in the process. Hopefully this results in an ad that is timeless and a true collaboration between the publisher, artists, and brand. This space is dedicated to the fashion photography artists I continue to idolize, the artists whose work continually graces our mood boards. However, maybe more importantly, this space is endowed to the next generation of artists waiting to break through, who are taking risks and creating work regardless of where and how it lands, artists who are going within themselves to seek expansiveness within a society that highly confines and limits them. 

It is clear something else has replaced the former epicenters of creative culture that New York held until the early aughts. We have no Factory nor CBGB, no vibrating Chelsea Hotel. We have only shared studios, studio apartments, street gatherings, tiny bookstore readings, and internet social circles. I hope you’ll see Métier as a resource for both publication and inspiration. While based in New York this magazine seeks to also de-center typical fashion cities. My aim is to have contributors from all corners of the world. New York is central to our identity but it is not a boundary. “Artists” are welcome from everywhere and encouraged to submit no matter one’s relation to the word or numbered years of experience.

I thank each and every reader, contributor, colleague, and mentor from the bottom of my heart. My intention is simply to share art, talk about art, create art, engage with art, and give back to art and artists in a meaningful way, creating a kind of modern salon. Art is simply a way to bear witness to ourselves, and I believe we’re all artists. This is the impulse that drives us, this is our métier. Please share yours with us.

Thank you.

-M

PRESS RELEASE

Métier Book is a new globally sourced and distributed independent print and web magazine based in New York, New York. Our title is derived from the French word for trade, occupation, or profession, and has become our moniker in hopes of highlighting work that artists want to create, not the work they use to survive in today’s landscape. 

Métier Book includes fashion stories, ads, and themes but does not run on the premise that new or now in fashion is the priority. Fashion can come from your father’s closet, the dollar store, a vintage dealer, or the high-end department store. Our ads are created in-house and in collaboration with dynamic and innovative brands that are open to new conversations while honoring the most iconic fashion and photography that we all recognize and repeatedly reference on mood boards. MB is dedicated to cultivating new ideas around sustainability, trends, and challenging everything about the fashion industry status quo. 

Métier Book is a living entity. While embracing a slow and considered methodology, it will vacillate between its intentional online presence and annual printed issues to share opportunities for artists and to stretch exploring themes in collaboration with the editor who recruited them. Every feature is both an in-depth conversation and a singular platform for the artists. MB is open to pitches from anyone but prioritizes the up-and-coming, the intermediate, and the artists working for the sake of making the work, regardless of publication and notoriety. 

We believe that writers, photographers, and artists are not granted enough creative freedom to make the work they truly care about when editors with ulterior commercial motives intervene. Métier Book is highly curated but with limited intervention in the artistic process. We are a well-rounded magazine that promotes the curious spirit within all fields of art. In the face of a shallow, late-stage capitalistic society we seek only to center the artist.