WORN Fashion Journal closing after 10 years and 20 issues

The final issue

WORN Fashion Journal, the non-mainstream twice-a-year fashion title (once in cold weather, once in hot), is closing after 10 years and 20 issues with the release of a November double issue (right). 

Launched in Toronto in a Kensington market vintage clothing store, WORN moved to Montreal for a couple of years and then was moved back to Toronto in the summer of 2008.  It has since been published out of the Toronto apartment of editor-publisher Serah-Marie McMahon. 

The "editor in pants", as she was listed on the masthead, McMahon started WORN because of a growing frustration with conventional fashion and decided that the best way to deal with it was to start her own magazine. She eventually surrounded herself with a group of more than a dozen volunteers dubbed the Wornettes. 

The magazine became well known for its strategy of holding "slow dance" launch parties to help finance issues and for writing not about runway fashion or fashion trends, but the cultural importance of clothes and personal stories of fashion from across Canada and around the world, somehow covering the intersection of pop culture and scholarship, without advertising support. 

The founder and editor said in a recent interview with the Montreal Gazette.

Serah-Marie McMahon

“So many people think they’re not into fashion and clothes, but everybody is. Being even vaguely interested in the esthetic of getting dressed is being into fashion. Some people might use it to shout really loud and some people might use it more as a whisper, but it’s still communicating.”

The announcement of the closure came in a Facebook post which didn't go into the reasons behind the closure and said that the magazine would only be printing as many copies for which it has pre-orders. (The special double issue costs $22 and will ship the week of November 24.) Outstanding subscriptions will be fulfilled with subs from several Canadian independent publications, including Broken Pencil, Maisonneuve, Shameless, or The Walrus. Back issues will be sold online as long as they remain available and the WORN Archive, an anthology of the first 14 issues will continue to be offered by Drawn & Quarterly. 

"We want to thank our team of staff Wornettes for their tireless labours of love," said the post, "the many wonderful Canadian magazines and arts organizations who have supported us over the last ten years, and most of all, our readers and subscribers, Wornettes from all over the world, without whom none of this would have been possible."