Grange Park is filled with life. A couple cuddles up to keep each other warm under a tree while reading their books. Four friends throw their heads back with laughter as they sip on Jutsu pale ales (a Toronto staple beer). A young girl drags her art supplies from one end of the park to another, with a large blank white canvas hanging under one arm.
With a powerful stride, a young woman makes her way through crowds of friends seated in the park. Dressed in a black and white striped long-sleeve turtleneck, black mini skirt, and large black boots and her long blonde hair pushed back with a black headband, she takes a seat on the bench. Letting out a small laugh, she wipes a tear from underneath her eye, “The wind, it always makes me cry when it gets this strong. Is my makeup running?” A makeup look that could have only been inspired by model and actress Twiggy compliments her face, the tear having done no damage.
A man, obviously trying to withstand the cold weather, approaches her in a large red Snuggy. “I just have to say your outfit is so cute. Everything about your look screams fashion. You’re saying, ‘Bitch I'm here.’”
Daisy Woelfling is a third-year Creative Industries student at Toronto Metropolitan University, making an active effort to provide impactful journalism in the fashion and arts industries as she launches her new student magazine YOUTHQUAKER, an exclusively print publication.
Growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y., fashion and magazines were synonymously everywhere. Walking down any street, Daisy can remember newsstands packed with the latest issues of Vogue, Cosmopolitan, GQ, and many more. Now, they couldn’t be more bare as the dreaded phrase ‘Print is dead’ takes over, a sentiment she aims to combat.
As the sentence is spoken out loud, she takes a deep breath. For Daisy, no digital blog post can replace the impact of the tangible traditional print medium. A foundational principle of her manifesto is the haptic quality of paper, allowing readers not only to absorb information better, but to let it physically stimulate them.
When it comes to keeping print magazines alive, she has her generation to thank. As we enter a period of nostalgia, younger generations pay homage to the past by collecting vintage clothing, anachronistic tech, and old magazines.
“I think that Gen Z is really enamoured with the past because most of us either grew up with a short period in our early lives or, for some younger members of Gen Z, none at all, so we didn't feel the pervasive impact of smartphones and social media. It's something that we longed for and maybe have an idealized view of.”
Across town, Charmaine Gooden, a fashion journalist and teacher at Toronto Metropolitan University, indulges in a trip down memory lane as she flips through stacks of old magazines she has amassed over the years. Old copies of Vogue, i-D, and Elle occupy space in her living room, and iconic pages decorate her walls.
As she stands at the front of her classroom, she bubbles with excitement while explaining the importance of putting yourself in the brunt of it all as a journalist. In all her years of reporting, being in the mosh pit of fashion is the only way we learn and understand its inner workings.
Her voice softens as she recalls her first time sitting in the front row of a runway show. Sometime in the 70s, during her final year of high school, she had taken a trip to Paris with her school, and to her surprise, an instructor snuck her away from the group for a few hours. There she sat at a Paris fashion show in a regal hall, watching models strut up and down the runway. Whether it had been fate or destiny, it didn’t matter. She knew then and there that she was going to be a fashion journalist.
‘Print is dead’ isn’t a sentence that scares Charmaine, yet one she welcomes with open arms because, for her, it doesn’t have to be one way or the other. It always comes down to both in their own measure. Print provides the essence. Digital media provides speed; this works in the favour of the designers themselves.
Maxime Chercover, a Toronto-based designer striving for sustainability in the industry, could not be more excited about what Daisy has to offer for her alma mater but fears the lack of accessibility and resources it was limited to.
In the few shows she’s been a part of, nothing is more exciting to her than seeing a journalist sitting with a notepad and camera taking record of every one of her looks. When scrolling through Instagram and seeing an article about her clothing, she is able to easily share it with family and friends, especially her biggest supporter, her grandmother, who resides in Colombia. This is where we find print’s flaws. The cost to create and share almost surpasses her need for the articles to capture the essence of her work.
Miming quotation marks, she calls herself her own ‘journalist.’ “Recording myself, keeping track of my process, and showing the end result is something a lot of journalists wouldn’t be able to capture, and why would I, as a brand owner who bases everything on sustainability, preach for a medium that is so wasteful?”
The wastefulness is a worry Woelfling has considered. How to combat this speed bump is something she’s thought about consistently. Nicola Hamilton, the founder of Issues Magazine Shop, has the solution. “Once a magazine is out of date and doesn’t sell, a lot of distributors ask you to rip off the cover and send back the guts of the magazines you have left to be tossed.” The pang Hamilton felt every time she had to tear away at a perfectly salvageable magazine pained her. She knew she had to find another way to make use of the magazines left behind to be recycled.
Hamilton expresses her enthusiasm as she recounts the idea that initiated the project, saying, "I had a friend who was a collage artist. She lost the venue where she held her collage workshops, and I just thought, 'I have magazines, and I have a space, why not do them here?'" Hosting the workshops at her store, as Hamilton details, has provided a venue for artistic expression and a community for stepping away from the computer, all the while promoting a resourceful and ethical approach to reusing materials that might otherwise end up in a landfill.
Back in the park, as Woelfling starts to pack up her belongings, she gasps in excitement while remembering a detail of her childhood that inspired her decision to make YOUTHQUAKER strictly print,“I used to rip my magazines apart, have collage parties, and plaster pictures all over my walls - that’s what I hope to generate with YOUTHQUAKER, an interactive and creative outlet for anyone.”
We rely on print, and we rely on tangible objects to remind us of the world around us. Humans need and long for something shiny and attractive, like the cover of a well-produced magazine, to catch our attention and draw our eyes away from the screen, and there are people out there making sure that print does exactly that.
From a new generation who longs for the nostalgic, young entrepreneurs are finding ways to grasp the concepts of the past and reimagine them into something that thrives in today’s economy, alongside business owners finding fun ways to generate safe and environmentally friendly resources for the negatives of print, we won’t see print dying anytime soon.
Banner Image by Brithi Sehra