Prisma Media is a press group that already includes many magazines, including Gala, Capital, Geo, Behold, but also Current wife. Its president, Claire Léost, has just announced the launch of three additional magazines in an interview with Figaro. A magazine will be dedicated to youth, another to personal development and a third which is not quite a creation but rather an adaptation, the French version of Harper’s Bazaar.
Several attempts to launch the Harper’s Bazaar
This American magazine is an institution in the fashion world. It was founded in 1867, 155 years ago. It is already published in more than thirty countries. But then, why does it only arrive in March 2023 in France? There have actually been several launch attempts already. In 2001, the group Marie-Claire was on the project. But the American publisher Hearst demanded that there be 700 pages of advertising over ten issues. Absolutely “impossible” for the French market, the management had estimated. Curtain.
Twelve years later, in 2013, the Marie-Claire group is trying again. The launch is announced with great fanfare in a press release. An editorial team is formed and works actively on the magazine. But here too, the project fell through. The press reveals that the editor-in-chief and her team have been fired. Release explains that a number zero was nevertheless presented to the American publisher, but that it did not rain because “too niche”. The general manager of Marie-Claire at the time, Arnaud de Contades, justifies himself: “The Americans considered that what was presented to them was too far from the brand Harper’s Bazaar“.
An “open, cultured” fashion magazine
“False,” replies the editor-in-chief, Alexandra Senes. According to her, it was “a fashion magazine, open, with culture, which offered other points of view. We weren’t doing a niche magazine, but we weren’t doing a shopping magazine either”. The adventure therefore stops there for the Marie-Claire group. And it is therefore Prisma media which buys the license, plans a print run of 100,000 copies. Its president, Claire Léost, indicates in Le Figaro see “the opportunity to become a reference in the world of ultra-luxury in France, and to attract new advertisers”.