STYLE / T: STYLE MAGAZINE | August 29, 2004     
Fashion Rx 
By KATE JACOBS   (NYT)   News 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/29/style/tmagazine/WFASH979.html
Fashion Rx


      Illustration by Vault-49
     


By KATE JACOBS

Published: August 29, 2004



REVENGE OF THE WORDS: Zembla, the new Brit-lit magazine, has the fashion world reading something other than Women's Wear Daily. A stylishly designed amalgam of The Paris Review and Paris Vogue, Zembla -- named after a fictional land in the Nabokov novel ''Pale Fire'' -- has not only attracted fashion advertising from the likes of Marc Jacobs, Gucci and Issey Miyake, but has also received contributions from frockland luminaries like Hedi Slimane, Manolo Blahnik and Nicole Farhi. ''The magazine is a bit like a club,'' says Zembla's editor, Dan Crowe, ''and the fashion world is keen to buy membership into it because t here aren't that many smart, attractive magazines around.'' 

The magazine -- published by the antiquarian book dealer Simon Finch -- offers a mix of fiction and nonfiction, and while the overall tone is more celebratory than critical, Zembla is not afraid to poke fun at the literary giants, especially if they're dead (each issue features an irreverent posthumous interview). Zembla probably won't appeal to the grumpy Granta set, but what other magazine's masthead can boast contributors like Brian Eno and Vladimir Nabokov?
HORACIO SILVA