Why Bottega Veneta supported the return of Butt Magazine

Yesterday came the announcement that Bottega Veneta has partnered with Butt Magazine for the return to production of the magazine ten years after its last issue. The publication of the cult magazine on life and the protagonists of the LGBTQ+ world will pick up exactly where it left off in 2011, with a thirtieth issue of 100 pages «spilling over the rim with interviews from a diverse cast of free spirits». On March 3, the pre-launch of the magazine will be held with a special three-day installation at the Palais de Tokyo in collaboration with Bottega Veneta – which is also the only advertiser of the issue. The project, which was also announced by Matthieu Blazy on his Instagram profile, closes with the tradition of Issued by Bottega, a completely digital magazine as well as devoid of verbal content, shifting the brand's link with publishing in the opposite direction: paper ads, cultural commitment and above all a refined method of balancing intellectual prestige (Butt Magazine was revolutionary for its style of interviews,  for his photos, for the themes he dealt with but also for the way in which he told together about culture and lifestyle) and community building – which does not only concern the community of readers of the newspaper, but the LGBTQ+ community that has in Butt Magazine one of its main voices. 

Bottega Veneta's commitment to Butt Magazine is another case of that brand journalism that found new life last November with the revival of Acne Paper, the famous magazine produced by Acne Studios whose publication, like that of Butt, lasted for a decade, from 2004 to 2014. Other examples of branded journalism are Lifewear by Uniqlo, the blogs The Swide by Dolce & Gabbana and The Towner by Moleskine, the Fashion Eye books by Louis Vuitton but also the magazines published over the years by SSENSE or Mr. Porter. Many brands, among other things, such as Louis Vuitton or Gucci, have on their website a newsroom-like section that reports news related to the initiatives of the brands. In general, both types of magazines (and Issued by Bottega is also included in this list) are created to organically expand the cultural ecosystem of the brand – with the added prestige inherent, in an era of hyper-digitization, in the paper medium. Precisely the choice of paper publication, among other things, is not a simple demodé quirk but corresponds to the desire to create a physical, tangible and collectible product – and therefore a content whose value does not end with a simple refresh of your feed and that represents a sort of fixed point in an increasingly digital and incorporeal communicative sphere.

To tell the truth, the operation conducted by Bottega Veneta is more like a form of patronage than the production of a magazine on its own and is therefore different from Acne Papers or the legendary Nike magazine, Swoosh – but the truth is that no publication of brand journalism is similar. Nevertheless, the link between the brand and the magazine remains equally close and highlights a change of gear of the brand on the eve of Matthieu Blazy's debut on the catwalks. If months ago the brand had cultivated an image of incommunicability and exclusivity, the initiatives carried out in the first months of the Blazy era show how the brand wants to start again with a radically more open and "ecumenical" point of view: at Christmas, for example, the brand had presented the Bottega for Bottegas initiative that implicitly placed the Made in Italy products of the main Italian shops on the same level as its own. It is a form of collaboration, as well as the partnership with Butt Magazine, which wants to use the influence of the brand to give visibility to more niche realities but which, on the other hand, underlines the brand's commitment to culture. Simply put, it's a win win for everyone. The "if you know you know" approach that has always distinguished the brand remains identical, the total revolution is in the methods.