WORN Fashion Journal’s Big Makeover

“I have heard so many times women complain that fashion magazines make them feel bad about themselves,” Serah-Marie McMahon, creator and editor of Worn, says. “I really wanted to create a magazine that didn’t do that.”

If the response to their recent fundraising campaign is any indication, Worn’s readers of have nothing but love for the little fashion magazine unlike any other. Within days of launching their month-long Indiegogo campaign, Worn Fashion Journal has already exceeded their $5,000 goal. Issue #15 of the indie fashion journal would graduate to a new, thicker format, more fitting to its status as a fashion resource.

A lot of the donations are coming from Toronto or from Montreal, where Worn was first founded. McMahon, then a student at Concordia University, found other fashion lovers who shared her dream of a new kind of magazine. Instead of focusing on popular trends or fashion news, Worn explored the ideas and concepts about clothing. Seven years in, Worn has been embraced by an enthusiastic and diverse fan base called Wornettes.

“I really hope a Wornette is anyone,” McMahon says. “Anyone who loves clothing but who doesn’t think it needs to be intrinsically linked with the fashion industry.”

According to Worn, these fashion lovers have been treasuring the journal as a resource. Most of their readers declared that they intended to keep their copies of Worn forever. The staff decided that this called for a redesign of their format. Promotions manager Haley Mlotek says that it started with the perfect bound spine.

“We work so hard to make it relevant forever that it seemed natural to take it away from something that was stapled and move it more towards a spine, more like the magazines that we admired so much and had inspired us so much.”

The new redesign will replace the stapled spine with a bound, thicker version, more in keeping with the publication’s identity as a fashion resource. The enthusiasm from Worn’s fan base means that not only can the new design of Issue #15 go ahead, but that Worn will be able to compensate some of the key figures involved in the redesign, and put funds toward what will be Issue #16.

“When you see all these people who are willing to support us and just believe in us so much, it’s very humbling, ” says Mlotek from the magazine’s Toronto office. “I really very strongly believe that every issue of Worn is better than the last one. We all just want to focus on making the greatest content that we possibly can.” ■

Check out Worn online.