everything i love goes away...

Domino Magazine To Fold - noooooooooooooo!

here comes another childhood anecdote:
when i was a kid, my mom would bring magazines home for me from her office, mostly Teen, Seventeen and Good Housekeeping. i was in heaven. i'd paw through them, reading about love vs. limerance (what 6th grader even knew the word 'limerance'?), parker stevenson's ideal woman (dammit, me!), and how to tell if a marriage was going to survive (most were doomed.)

i'd cut out pictures of all the cute guys and tape them to my wall until my half of the bedroom resembled the shrine of someone truly psychotic.

my faves:
Sassy - god this magazine was great. this one mag probably made me the commitment-phobic bitch i am today. it was feminist, smart, sassy (heh), knowing and sarcastic as hell. it was like having an older sister, who's been there and done that, tell you everything you needed to know about the strength of being you - and telling everyone else to frak off.

Real Simple - why i'm obsessed with this magazine i'll never know. maybe it's the heir to Good Housekeeping. it assumes the reader is really involved with her home and there is some part of me that really wants to be that person. the kind of person who knows all the uses of white vinegar. (you can cook AND clean with it!) i once made a Real Simple recipe for Roomie and almost killed her with it.

do i know the feminist implications of a magazine like Real Simple? of course. but i still love it and you can't stop me.

Fast Company - i've loved this magazine since its inception back in the early 00s. it's smart, hip and the way it talks about business is rather progressive - it's like the guy in the meeting who always has great ideas, but his ideas would probably bankrupt the office or mean the CEO would have to quit. i read it all the time.

and it's cheaper than the HBR.

GQ - for a while i was a dedicated reader of this men's mag. the photos were lovely and their contributors wrote like stately, bachelored uncles. it fascinated me. private rooms, bespoke clothes, manners, style. but now it reads like an older Details and the old whiff of gentlemanly rogueishness is gone.

W - this is a magazine i love to hate. i hate it. can't stand it. it disgusts me and every time i read it i want to burn it. clearly, it triggers my class resentment.

wallpaper* - before dwell, there was wallpaper and it was good. forward-thinking, gorgeous layout, great paper, fascinating profiles (everything i know of modern architecture and design i remember from wallpaper*.)

Domino - RIP. martha stewart tried something similar (remember the blah of Blueprint?) but this was a fantastic magazine. yes, like Lucky (another fave), it encouraged shopping (or sourcing.) but it had great ideas, was easily translatable into different income brackets and was really great at featuring accessible design. not just economically accessible, but aesthetically accessible. out of all the design mags it came closest to helping me define my taste - clean, modern, california with a huge pop of EXOTIC FLUFFY. (ahem, EXOTIC FLUFFY is *my* term.)

i even bought a subscription for myself and one for my sister (who is way too in love with the color beige.)

it had its annoying bits: the Green issue; god i hated that issue. apparently, green is only for the rich. (and Green clothing? you know what? Green clothing designers can kiss my big soft girl arse.) it was also one of the whitest magazines ever. only in the last year or so were designers, contributors and staffers of color even featured.

and now it's gone! everything i like goes away. (sniff)