Style with substance: Martina Bonnier on why the new Vogue Scandinavia is unlike any other fashion magazine
Growing up, Martina Bonnier was not like other children. “I didn’t buy candy, I bought fashion magazines,” recalls the Swedish-born editor-in-chief of Vogue Scandinavia. “My mother had a subscription to Damernas Värld, the largest fashion magazine in Sweden and I just loved reading it. If anybody back then told me I would one day be editor of that magazine I would have fainted. And if they said I would then be editor of Vogue Scandinavia – well, you can’t dream of something that is so impossible.”
Not only has Bonnier gone from paging through magazines to running them, she’s also transformed the way fashion publications are produced and distributed. With the 54-year-old at the helm, Vogue’s 28th global edition, which launched in August and covers Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland, is a thoroughly progressive offering that’s setting new benchmarks for sustainability, equality and inclusion.
“For those in the Nordics, it’s in our heart to always be stylish but functional – we don’t take things apart,” Bonnier points out, speaking via Zoom from Paris where she’s attending Fashion Week. “That aesthetic is something that is very relevant right now in the world. You can see it in our values, in the way we live. We are very much for equality, diversity, openness and a love for nature.
“For some of my colleagues around the world, sustainability in fashion is a new thing, but I started to work with it in the nineties. It’s important for me to not only write about sustainability, but to really do what you can in terms of being better for the environment.”
Finding the right shade of green
Bonnier’s commitment to sustainability goes far beyond putting Greta Thunberg on the cover of Vogue Scandinavia’s launch issue. In what is a bold move, the magazine is only sold online through the brand’s digital flagship store to avoid printing surplus copies that become waste.
“By selling the magazine online we know that every copy sold goes out to the right hands,” Bonnier says. “We can control the whole process and can measure the impact on the environment.
“On the other hand my challenge is that people are still walking around asking me where they can find the magazine. We need to get the word out to the consumer. It’s a learning curve, but I’m patient and I believe in it.”
Bonnier is still in the old business model of publishing and I knew that I wanted to do something that is totally different.
Further boosting Vogue Scandinavia’s green credentials is the fact that the magazine is 100 per cent plastic free. Working with Finnish forest products manufacturer Stora Enso, the brand has developed a renewable eco-packaging concept, replacing harmful magazine wrapping with a fiber-based, renewable material called Ensocoat. It’s an initiative that saw the two companies scoop the prestigious Red Dot design award in the “brands & communication” category this year.
“It was a long journey because you have to build new packaging machines,” explains Bonnier. “So that was a big investment, but it was something I really wanted to do. There are a lot initiatives to be carbon neutral. My approach is – let’s do that from the start and try to go carbon negative.”
The best of both worlds
Also on Bonnier’s list of priorities is making Vogue Scandinavia appealing across a wide age range. For those, like the editor, who’ve had a long love affair with print, the bi-monthly magazine is a wonderfully lush product featuring high-quality Finnish paper, long-read articles and full-page photos. The pages even have their own unique scent.
To make receiving the magazine extra special, readers can opt for a version in a collectable box which, when placed next to the other issues, forms a colourful artwork for your book shelf.
The print edition is complemented by a digital strategy that includes audio (each feature has it’s own soundtrack), video (Vogue Scandinavia produces its own short films) and social media channels that encourage feedback through the #MyScandinaviaVogue hashtag.
“Reading the print magazine is only half the experience – you have to go online as well,” says Bonnier. “What we’ve done is make more of a coffee table book for a very elevated print experience and then have different tiers digitally where you tell the story more in depth and also in different media forms.
“For me it was very important to take magazine journalism into the future. The business model as it stands now is not geared towards the younger generation. My daughter has been growing up in a media family but has no relationship with paper at all. She doesn’t even understand why we have it. You have to think about the younger generation and that their attention span is very short. That’s why I really believe in the short film format to tell stories.”
To really reach younger generations it’s crucial, says Bonnier, for magazines to strike up a two-way conversation through initiatives like #MyScandinaviaVogue.
“I do check on that hashtag all the time,” she says. “You have to be transparent today because of social media and the way we live. Transparency for me is to invite people and listen to people and understand how cultures are changing.
“In the Nordics we’ve had the most immigrants per number of inhabitants. They are now second and third generation and are contributing a lot to society. There are so many exciting things to discover and I want to invite these people and give them a chance to have a voice.”
I’m a workaholic – it’s in my upbringing.
Born into the role
As her surname suggests, Bonnier was born into the publishing industry. The 200-year-old Bonnier Group is the leading media company in the Nordics with operations in 12 countries. Being part of a media family did not make her ascent to the top any easier, however. Just the opposite.
“My parents and all my relatives said I would get a chance in the company through an internship but if I didn’t do well I would be out the door with no security faster than anybody else,” Bonnier recalls. “With that in mind you always have to work a little harder than anybody else.
“People sometimes think you are very privileged, but it would have been easier if I had chosen another occupation. I need to work twice as much all the time to just prove myself and I think I’m very hard on myself. I’m a workaholic – it’s in my upbringing.”
The fact that she’s now the editor of Condé Nast’s Vogue Scandinavia means Bonnier is in essence competing with her family, something she describes as “fun”.
“I am competing with myself in a way,” she says with a smile. “It’s a challenge. Bonnier is still in the old business model of publishing and I knew that I wanted to do something that is totally different. I have created this opportunity and have a lot of investors that are willing to take the risk.”
Bonnier’s career started at the family-owned Swedish newspaper Göteborgs-Posten where she worked as a news reporter. At 24, she moved to another Bonnier title, VeckoRevyn, and despite her talent for writing, asked to work as a fashion assistant instead.
After taking over as the editor-in-chief at Damernas Värld in 2011, Bonnier moved to New York with her husband and two children five years later, before returning to Sweden to find fashion nirvana at Vogue Scandinavia. “I’m a curious person, a fashion historian,” she says, talking about her career path. “I’ve written five books about fashion history. I am very self-taught.”
Throughout her career Bonnier has fought for fashion – and women who work in the industry – to be given the proper respect.
“I still think there is a lot of prejudice around fashion and women in fashion and it’s because people don’t know the business and they don’t understand how competitive it is,” she says. “A lot of women I know in fashion could take over any big industry job. They have it in them because the job they do is so hard. It’s very far away from sitting on a golden chair in the front row at fashion shows. That’s just a small part of the job.”
