Purple #42: The Magic Issue

Purple has morphed a fair bit since its 1992 inception as a rejoinder to all that late-80s airbrushed glamour and fashion fromage. The significantly smaller Purple Prose gained some serious heft and took the fashion bull by the horns in the ensuing decades, dropping the ‘prose’ and growing not just in terms of scale and pages, but in its significance among the heavyweight bi-annuals. Now, 30 years on, the magazine has established itself as a modern classic.

This issue explores magic’s potential as an alternative way of approaching everyday reality—‘Magic works!’ proclaims editor Olivier Zahm—informed by the work of a wide range of thinkers and artists: an excerpt from Michel Foucault’s 1966 book The Order of Things kicks the conversation off, followed by Carl Jung’s psychoanalytic illustrations, interviews with Patti Smith, David Lynch and contemporary occultist Mitch Horowitz, an essay on superstitions in the couture workshop, plus one penned by Bjork. Also included is the second edition of the Purple Residence supplement; American painter Elizabeth Glaessner is the current artist-in-residence at Le Corbusier’s Unite d’Habitation in Marseilles.