First Issue Review – Fresh
Fresh is the new magazine from the publishers of Hairflair magazine.
£1.95 will get you this 98 page publication with a photo of a sorry looking soul on the front. Beyond the hallowed features of the cover-girl is an amateurly-produced magazine with a strong fashion and beauty section, but otherwise poor features.
It is obvious that the publishers have drawn on the expertise of its sister publication, Hairflair. The fashion shots are beautifully styled and show the clothes at their best. Unfortunately these pages are let down by the lack of references to clothing stockists.
The majority of the clothes featured were designer with prices to match. This makes one wonder who the magazine’s target audience is. The pre-launch hype inferred that the monthly was aimed at single, 18 to 26 year old girls who live life to the full *The Future Is Fresh. Very few girls in this age range can afford to cover themselves head to toe in DKNY, Katherine Hamnet and John Rocha. The hair and beauty pages are more down to earth. They are full of the top tips that most girls can’t get enough of.
Its name suggests that Fresh is about being innovative and approaching the fashion and beauty market from a new angle. However, most of the beauty pages, although interesting, could have come straight, or permed, out of Hairflair and many of the short style bulletins were advertorials as opposed to editorials. You come away from reading this section feeling like you must buy every beauty product on the market, according to Fresh, they nearly all perform miracles.
Tacky, smutty features that could easily fit in to the schedule of Woman’s Own, seem to be the order of the day for the rest of the magazine. The first article discusses the characteristics of laddettes, girls behaving badly. It could have been a good read, but lacked substance and came across as the page filling ramblings of a desperate journalist. The one juicy interview with Tom Cruise is tucked away in the middle of the mag. Why there was no mention of this hunk interview on the front cover is anybody’s guess.
This first edition comes across as a rushed job. Gaps have been filled with last-minute hashed together features and nonsensical editorial. One can only hope that the title will learn from its mistakes and that the next edition of Fresh is not so out of date. At the moment this title is as fresh as a dead daisy.
It has an ad:ed ratio of 26:74.
* Subscribers only
Fresh: 0171 738 0007