Fashion Magazine Research

Dazed and Confused

Dazed (formerly Dazed & Confused) is a monthly British style magazine founded in 1991. Its founding editors were Jefferson Hack and fashion photographer Raknin. The magazine covers music, fashion, film, art and literature. Beginning as a black-and-white folded poster published sporadically, the magazine soon became full colour, promoted with London club nights. One of the first recognizable issue was published in June 2001, featuring Alicia Keys. In November 2006, Dazed launched a new web-based strand of the magazine titled Dazed Digital, which delivers fashion, film, music and art news and online events.

Beth Ditto- Dazed Cover

Dazed & Confused experiments with androgyny. Women are shown figureless, using extremely thin models to show a more masculine frame. Female models do not wear makeup to flatter feminine features, but makeup that makes features much stronger and more masculine. Many women featured have short hair. These models defy what the classic standards of beauty are, with unusual hair and makeup. The makes the models seem more of an artifact than a realistic representation of women. Men and women on the cover of Dazed are shown posing in similar positions, standing tall, head on to make them appear stronger. Often men featured on the front cover are in black and white, perhaps conforming to stereotypes as it makes them appear darker, more mysterious or rebellious. Some men are featured wearing makeup, this is not used to make features more feminine, but more to show defiance. Dazed & Confused has broken a lot of gender stereotypes. The magazine shows women able to be masculine and men able to be feminine. This may be meant as a reflection on the audience. The audience for Dazed may be a lot more open minded to new ideas of beauty and experimental with their looks.

Content
Dazed Magazine covers topic such as fashion, music, art, culture and photography. The magazine takes a more artistic approach to fashion. It features articles on high end designers, not clothes from the high street. It talks a lot about the designers themselves rather than just the clothes. This reflects the audience's interest in fashion, they may take it more seriously. The fact they feature more about the designers than the clothes, and they don't feature much about affordable clothing shows they are less about consumerism than other fashion magazines. Dazed talks about a variety of music genres such as hip-hop, rap, house, techno, electronic, jungle, k-pop, etc. It talks about new and interesting art, film visionaries and technology innovations. 

Style
Dazed & Confused style is quite minimalist. The front cover is never too crowded, and the website is neat and tidy, with white page and black writing and boxes to enclose curtain articles. The font they use is quite square and straight forward, and the font used very rarely changes. The title is usually in white. Using minimalism means that the images used are the boldest thing on the page and turn into the focal point and it looks modern. On many covers the men are wearing dark clothing, leather or chokers. These things all represent the punk subculture, usually stereotyped as rebellious, or different. The colour of the title is sometimes used as symbolism.

Audience
The people featured on the front are more there to appeal to British youth. People such as Grimes, Chance the rapper, M.I.A and Saoirse Ronan have been featured on the cover and as modern day starts would appeal to the younger audience.

Reference:

(2009) Surrealist Magazine Covers [Online] Available at: http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/beth-ditto-dazed-confused (Accessed: 13 February 2016)

Unknown author- Wikipedia (No Date) Dazed [Online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazed (Accessed: 13 February 2016)

Stead, C. (2014) Analysis of Dazed & Confused Magazine + i-D Magazine. [Online] Available at: http://www.slideshare.net/cloestead/dazed-confused-id-magazine-analysis (Accessed: 13 February 2016)
Dazed & Confused Korea (2011) July [Online] Available at: http://yg-bigbang.livejournal.com/1882272.html (Accessed: 13 February 2016)
Unknown author (2011) Arizona Muse by Mark Segal for Dazed & Confused March 2011 [Online] Available at: http://www.designscene.net/2011/02/arizona-muse-mark-segal-dazed-confused-march-2011.html
(Accessed: 13 February 2016)
Wasp, P. (2013) Chloe Moretz covers Dazed & Confused November 2013 [Online] Available at: http://www.myportiswaspsays.com/2013/10/chloe-moretz-covers-dazed-confused.html
(Accessed: 13 February 2016)