Maxim Finally Gets It Right With New Makeover

When it was announced last September that Kate Lanphear would be the new editor-in-chief of Maxim there was much abuzz in the fashion world. Having started her career at Vogue and Harper's Bazaar in Australia and style director at Elle before joining T as style director, her hiring was seen as somewhat peculiar for the men’s magazine as she had no experience covering men. However, it was a strategic move with the hope that she could help the struggling magazine veer off in a different direction.

“We're architecting a new Maxim," Lanphear told Racked. "It's been two decades since the brand was first published. We wanted to reshape it to reflect the times we are living in now—really, it was about evolving. We plan to build it into a lifestyle brand for men.”

Lanphear's first issue as editor in chief which hit newsstands on Wednesday and her first cover star is the Victoria’s Secret model Candice Swanepoel, voted by readers to the top spot on Maxim’s Hot 100 list, and was shot by the renowned photographer Gilles Bensimon. The cover features a close crop of Swanepoel's face and not her body which is the most noticeable difference and part of Lanphear's new direction of tweaking Maxim's view of women. The newly rebranded result also sees the magazine foray into fashion.

"I want to challenge the idea of what is sexy, and show that there are so many different ways to celebrate women," she added . "I don't want to shy away from 'sexy'—that's an essential part of the Maxim brand—but I think we've evolved since the magazine was first started, and our ideas about sexiness are not so simple or cliché."

Referring to the photos of women in lingerie and bikinis that fronted Maxim for years Lanphear told Capital New York "That was kind of an interesting decision, because it seemed like one of the most provocative images of the whole shoot, but yeah, of course, you don’t see the whole body, It kind of speaks to how this idea of sexiness has evolved for all and can be more challenging."

Founded in 1995 by Felix Dennis in Britain, Maxim was at one time a top men's magazine reaching 2.5 million readers a month and expanded to 16 editions sold in 75 countries but was eventually sold off by Dennis in 2007, along with a spinoff, Stuff, and Blender, to Alpha Media Group for a reported $250 million. In 2012, the magazine’s annual ad revenue slid precipitously 18 percent which resulted in a decrease of print issues, going from 12 a year to just 10. It was acquired in 2014 by Texas based billionaire Sardar Biglari of Biglari Holdings Inc. for about $12 million. In an effort to revitalize the brand, Biglari poached Kevin Martinez (formerly the publisher of Details and Elle) to run the magazine's advertising side while several months later, made the surprising announcement that Kate Lanphear, would become Maxim's new editor in chief.

To support her vision Lanphear hired editorial director Aaron Gell, who joined from Business Insider, and longtime friend and former fashion director of GQ Australia, and has three fashion shoots in her first issue with the magazine aiming to implement more style and grooming pieces as well as long-form reporting. Each issue will also focus on a specific theme; this month’s will be “Raw.”

"We're going to increase style and grooming coverage in the magazine, Men are increasingly interested in looking great, and I want to showcase that. I want to inform our readers and offer them vocabulary so they can have great style too. I would like to architect a brand that is sophisticated and covering style as it enters into all areas of life." Lanphear told Racked.

In addition she has added also an emphasis on the quality of its writing by including style coverage, arts and culture stories, features on rock bands, The Game pickup artist Neil Strauss, as well as a black and white photo essay on Eastern European fighters with an intro by Mike Tyson.

Speaking with WWD on the new direction of the magazine Lanphear said, “This was not the most revolutionary idea, but I wanted to build issues around themes, visceral themes, and maybe one single word, I chose ‘raw’ for the first one because it felt like a powerful word. It’s also a vulnerable word — something not yet fully formed, kind of at its simplest. Kind of like how I’m feeling now, how we’re feeling.”

The magazine's expansion into style has had a positive effect on the magazine's advertising and has attracted new advertisers which now includes high-end brands like Prada, Armani, Marc Jacobs, Calvin Klein and Bloomingdale's. The March issue is up 30 pages—a 289 percent increase—from a year ago.

Maxim currently boasts over 2 million subscribers and with the March issue out now Lanphear is already working on the April issue and is also focused on increasing traffic to Maxim.com. According to a spokesperson, the site had 3 million unique visitors in January 2015. Lanphear may be new to Maxim, but she's not new to fashion and with her new Fashion-focused editorial pages there's no doubt that under her leadership Maxim can become woman-friendly by implementing what she knows best: Fashion.

By
Clinton