Porter Magazine

Have you heard the buzz about Net-A-Porter’s new magazine PORTER? A retailer creating its own fashion magazine? It certainly piqued my interest. I’ve been buying the occasional magazine when I’m bored or if a particular cover story looks interesting. However, I’m always done with the magazine in about forty minutes… an hour tops.

I bit the bullet, mostly to see what all the fuss was about, and bought PORTER (which has a hefty $10 price tag) on a whim in Barnes & Noble one night. Thinking I’d flip through it quickly and be done and ready to move on to something else.

Instead, I found myself deep within stories… only about a third of the way in.

I was talking about it during a meeting the next day and a girl asked me if it was worth it and what made it so different than other magazines. The worth factor? In short, yes. I hate paying for magazines when all the content is available online or its so overdone or too full of advertisements or I’ve seen all the tips already 14 times before. Whereas a normal magazine is like buying a big bag of chips only to find out it’s 2/3 full of air and only 1/3 chips, PORTER is a big (Matilda-sized) piece of decadent chocolate cake.

Really though, it takes time to wade your way through it. In a good way. I have really enjoyed being able to pick up the magazine as a break and start the next unread story and then close it and get back to work. I brought it to the beach and I’ve been still working my way through.

I haven’t done so, but you can download an app that let’s you shop the products on the pages. Although, you should be warned, pretty much everything is insanely expensive. But nonetheless gorgeous to look at. Even the ads seem to be different and specifically curated (or created) for the magazine. Oh, and it appears that just about every famous person is interviewed, highlighted, or simply mentioned within the pages.