STYLE and the Family Tunes influenced the world of pop music of the 1990s and 2000s with a mix of fashion, art, and subculture. On GoSee, we regularly present spreads from the magazine, in which music is blended with fashion and art. The imagery has received several awards, and numerous photographers, who later became famous, have contributed to the magazine including Daniel Josefsohn, Ralph Mecke or Joachim Baldauf. Since 2011, the project has been kept alive in the Net by publisher Cathy Boom as stylemag.net. Hatje Cantz now presents a book with the very best of the iconic magazine (Style and the Family Tunes, published by Cathy Boom, approx. 240 pages, ISBN 978-3-7757-4008-1).
Today Cathy Boom is active as a Creative Director, who is specialized in fashion. We are very pleased to have her support as a juror at our GoSeeAWARDS, who is looking forward to innovative fashion & beauty spreads, still lifes, reportages, and creative portfolios just as much as we are.
For 17 years, you were the publisher of STYLE AND THE FAMILY TUNE, followed by two years as CD at Zalando. Today you also work as a freelance Creative Director in Berlin with a focus on fashion and branding. Can we take short look back? Style & the Family Tunes was a great platform for me to stage and publish my vision of fashion, how it is presented along with other pop-cultural, editorial content, such as art and music. Over the years, a wide network of like-minded individuals developed, who were all looking for new approaches and media to express their creativity. That was just great luck! After 17 years as the Editor-in-Chief and publisher of Style & the Family Tunes, for me, it was a natural progression to use my editorial background and expertise in the fashion industry (from streetwear to high fashion) and to work closer together with brands. The object at Zalando was to develop a coherent visual language and consistent CI and to relaunch all media from online to offline while thinking up and realizing new 360° campaigns. That was exciting. Two years have past, and now it was also just great to go back to my roots and create the Style & the Family Tunes book. Having different things to do and movement are mainly what drive my creativity.
You published STYLE & the family tunes from 1994 to 2011. Where did you get the idea, and how did it all start? At the time, there was simply no magazine in Germany that we wanted to read or that represented our aesthetics and way of life. So we made one of our own – with the 90s DIY spirit. And Berlin was very fertile ground for it, everything seemed possible, the borders had been opened; the city and minds were free.
What was your journalistic approach, and how has it changed over the years? It was all about publishing non-conformist and free, pop-cultural content in a high-quality medium. The 90s was the time of grunge, techno and hip-hop as underground subculture, club culture, minimalism in fashion, and DIY – today aesthetics have completely changed. Street casting instead of supermodels, T-shirts instead of shoulder pads – the glam of the 80s was replaced by consistent anti-glam aesthetics – whether in fashion, music or photography. We showed the transition. Of course, imagery undergoes changes in 17 years – a magazine has its own dynamic life, and each issue is a very individual project. But we have always remained true to our style.
There were even fewer modeling agencies, PR agencies, and fashion designers in Berlin back then. Anything that had to do with online was literally still in its infancy, and only very few portals existed such as GoSee; ) How were you able to realize your fashion ideas? And where did the items for the collection come from? The phone already existed and Fax was also widely used – we just called press offices in Paris and Milan. It wasn't always easy, but we were usually successful after a few times – we were very organized when when we sent back collection items and mailed the magazine. Over time, our client's confidence in our services grew, and it became easier.
At STYLE, you always had a knack for photographers. Even if there wasn't such a large selection of independent print media for fashion photography, internationally successful photographers of today including Ralph Mecke or Henrique Gendre were able to explore their creativity with your magazine. Did you knock at their doors back then or did they run in yours? Both. Of course, editors and magazine publishers are on the look out for people with a similar understanding of fashion and imagery. Since payment for the editorials was never the artists' motivation, it was always important for them to produce something extraordinary for STYLE and their own portfolios – high-quality paper, excellent print, and respectful photographic layout were their currency.
You have personally witnessed the development of Berlin from a cold and coal-stained city to the colorful international metropolis it has become today – season after season. Were there particular events that catapulted Berlin to what it is today or was the process stop-and-go? At the millennium, of course, everything changed. All of a sudden, Berlin was interesting for agencies worldwide, who all wanted offices in Berlin. It was more or less a fight for survival in the 90s – but a good one.
You invited Klaus Stockhausen to write about the development of fashion over the past fifteen years. Have you ever worked together before? Klaus and I have worked together since the very beginning. He did his first shoot for STYLE with Ralph Mecke and Christina Kruse. That was back in 1995.
Compiling a book and selecting 500 out of 1000 photos was certainly not easy, but expressing 17 years with 200 photos was ultimately an art...? Of course, it is not easy to reduce the selection, but editing is exactly where the art of publication begins. The book "Style & the Family Tunes - The Book" was not meant to be a retrospective of the past, but more about evaluating the photos from today's perspective, showing them in a new context and creating something completely different. Photos, which were relevant in the 90s, for example, because of their new interpretation of photography, do not necessarily have the same effect today – but some are still modern and timeless, and we had to find them!
And do you still remember which spread you selected for the book cover? The book cover was a fashion shoot with Albino children, which was photographed in large-format by Anna Tiedink and produced by Yilmaz. The title photo of the book was a previous STYLE cover photograph – my all time favorite! The girl is just so special. This photo means so much to me: freedom, the courage to be exceptional, a white canvas, and the sky is the limit...
After the decline a few years back, there is now suddenly a flood of magazines on the market. Which ones would you say are worth reading? I'd say, magazines with their own point of view, distinctive visual design, and style. Reproductions of the same concepts again and again totally bore me.
We are very glad that you will support us as a juror at the GoSeeAWARDS. What still fascinates you most about photography? Our world increasingly communicates by means of imagery – the sky is the only limit to how we can stage ourselves, fashion, people, or brands. Visual communication is and always will be an exciting genre with a very subtle sub context conveyed by imagery – and defining imagery and what it truly means perfectly for each medium or client is a great challenge!
We present a selection of motifs – find Cathy! Here is a clue – the photo with the mask is not her... The book release of Style & the Family Tunes – The Book featuring the very best photography of 130 issues of the magazine takes place on 9 September in Berlin. On the turntables are Terrible, Alexandra Dröner (Kepler, Sick Girls), Klaus Stockhausen, and Peggy Laubinger. Further information is available via stylemag.net. And if you want to impress Cathy Boom with photography, submit your works and projects by 5 September to GoSeeAWARDS and meet top creatives with fashion expertise at www.up-date.ws in Berlin on 25 September.
