Flash designs on fashion trade

By DITA DE BONI

A new publication is aiming for success in the crowded magazine market by promising a fresh take on our small but furiously design-driven fashion industry.

Fifteen thousand copies of Flash - "it's Kiwi for dressed up" - will hit news stands today, competing for a share of the fashionable's designer wallets with print stalwarts Fashion Quarterly and Style, as well as Pacific Magazines' New Zealand version of Elle, which is expected to arrive soon.

Publisher and long-time apparel industry proponent Paul Blomfield is not having any truck with self-doubt.

"There is stiff competition out there, no doubt. But those publications are big, tough, nasty competitors and I believe the independent niche publications shining through now - like Pavement, Pulp and Cuisine - are really succeeding."

Mr Blomfield thinks established fashion magazines in New Zealand have never given readers a lot in terms of content, and eschews the common assumption that the consumers of those products "just want to look at pictures."

As if to drive home the point, the first issue of Flash is produced with a keen hint of pride. An eclectic mix of articles lies within: an interview with the ubiquitous "naked chef" Jamie Oliver, pieces on Bollywood and the dominatrix trade (de rigueur for any half modern publication worth its salt), and an article posing the theory that Nandor Tanczos, Giorgio Armani and Jesus Christ have hemp clothing in common.

Aimed at 26 to 39-year-olds or "those with money, trying to look good and make relationships," Flash will take a different tack to established fashion magazines, says Mr Blomfield.

"I still don't believe people are telling the whole story about the scene. They're going to parties and taking photos, essentially. What we are doing is going into the real stories that are out there, and [we] have a real journalist on board."

Editor Kareen Floyd - former NZPA journalist and PR consultant - will lead a team of freelancers to produce the magazine, to be published five times a year. The magazine has cost publishers Flashcorp Holdings - Mr Blomfield and Tony Richards of Wiata Publishing - "tens of thousands of dollars" to set up from scratch, a process which took "around six weeks," he boasts.

The magazine will be heralded with a blaze of publicity, which has taken a sizeable chunk of Flashcorp's capital. Reaction from advertisers has been largely positive. Many are familiar with Mr Blomfield from long years in the industry, although others are reserving judgment until they peruse the first issue.

"It is a scrap for advertising at the moment," he says, "but the era of the syndicated title is on the way out. If I want to read GQ, for example, why would I read the Australian version when the British one is much better? This is where localised niche publications can more than hold their own."

While Mr Blomfield admits the first issue of the $7.95 magazine holds the "flashest" fashions sporting the flashiest price tags, he says the magazine will also cover the second tier of pricing going forward.

He says there are enough sophisticated, fashion-savvy consumers with disposable income to put Flash's circulation up around that of Style, which was over 11,000 at last audit.

"I'm not naive enough to think Flash will take on large overseas titles, and [it] won't just be reporting the local scene, but there definitely is still the culture for a local publication."

Certainly, Mr Blomfield's standing in fashion circles will be enough to give the magazine a fair swag of credibility.

He has been the editor of the rag trade industry magazine Apparel for 10 years (a role he inherited from his mother, Val), and is chief executive of the Apparel and Textile Federation.

He also established youth fashion magazine Pulp in 1996, although he is no longer involved with that publication.

A non-stop advocate on the importance of freezing imported textile tariffs, changing parallel import laws, and promoting New Zealand's textile design capability, he says he has ensconced himself in the middle of the business and is one of the few in the trade "willing to go to the political level."

And he is riled about reports heralding the end of New Zealand's textile trade.

"I've come into this industry at an interesting time. There was a time in New Zealand when there were hysterical amounts of money being made in the fashion industry, in the late 70s and early 80s. Then things got very hard and so young people did not enter the trade, and there was a lack of qualified tradespeople coming through.

"But I've made a name for myself by advocating the new crop of young designers - and they have had few advocates.

"For much of the time the trade has been labelled terminal, over-protected and inefficient. But design is the way forward and the success of our young designers is creating a groundswell."

In many ways Flash will be working at developing a niche market in the way that young Kiwi designers have carved out a place for themselves on the global fashion scene.

And it follows that the magazine will focus more on the New Zealand fashion scene than on the large clothing companies that commonly use overseas designers and production lines to drive down costs.

"The emerging designers [Karen Walker, Nom-D, Zambesi] have awakened international knowledge of New Zealand as a design culture. And although it is hard to calculate how much the design end of the business brings into New Zealand, we do know that at the moment it is doubling every year.

"It is bound soon to surpass the half billion in exports the combined apparel, textile, footwear and carpet industry brings in every year, and it has to, because everything else will be gone."

As well as working to grow a suitable infrastructure to support the renaissance of New Zealand fashion, part of Mr Blomfield's newest development for young designers is a an incubator project, which will see a handful of as-yet undiscovered designers share free production and retail space in the central city.

Although pure industry developments will still be left to the pages of Apparel magazine, clearly Flash is part of an overall effort to remind New Zealanders that a vibrant, growing and international competitive textile design business quietly thrives.

"People love fashion, they love New Zealand fashion, and I believe they want to know more about it ... We'll give them a great read."