To draw a little blood, you have to break the skin of the status quo. In the late 90s, Kira Jolliffe and Bay Garnett did just that with Cheap Date, an anti-fashion magazine that attempted to affectionately shatter some of the illusions of the highly glossy fashion industry; an industry that Garnett is very much a part of as a contributor to Vogue and as a consultant to some major fashion brands. You could call Cheap Date a catharsis of sorts – a catharsis that gained cult and bible status with contributors such as Anita Pallenberg, Chloe Sevigny, Liv Tyler and Debbie Harry, and headlines like “Cellulite Problem? Tough Shit!” After an attempt to move the magazine to New York, Cheap Date folded in the mid-naughts. After feeling the itch to re-start the magazine, Garnett came up with a new idea, which became Fanpages (published by Idea Books) – a publication of one-page fan collages by the likes of Nick Knight, Claire Barrow and Rita Ora. She tells Autre: "My father always used to say 'you've always got to have a project,' and when he died a little while ago I think it galvanized me to get off my arse and do what I wanted to do. Kira and I were talking about doing Cheap Date again, and when we were talking about the contents page, we decided we wanted to do a pinboard of fandom. It all just grew from there – and also I realized that I don't have anything in particular that I want to say, I want to see what other people had to say instead!" On collaborating with contributors, Joliffe says, "What was really brilliant was how into it people were. We just kind of sat down and watched this kind of rainbow spectrum of fan pages fall into our laps.” Fanpages is available now on the Idea Books website, along with this cool t-shirt.
