What is the future of print magazines? Well, for some major leaders in the fashion space, it may still have a home long-term for readers.
Recently Samira Nasr, the newest editor in chief of Harper’s Bazaar, sat down on an Instagram Live with Jesse Gre Rubinstein, the granddaughter of Anne Klein, who also runs a digital marketing agency and social series.
The two talked about a variety of subjects, from Nasr’s leadership style to the future of print magazines. Read below to catch some of the biggest snippets from the interview, and read the entire interview as reported over at WWD.
What excites her most about her role:
“That’s my happy place, collaborating and working with people who know more than I do. In this particular role, it’s great because I’m still learning.… Previously I was focused on fashion, and in this role, I’m involved in features, and digital, and I have an incredible team who inspire me and teach me so much. It’s also exciting to be able to build the team,” Nasr said.
How she’s aligned her teams during the pandemic:
“It’s the same that everyone is using. One thing we do every day is a daily meeting where everyone’s on it, and we start our days where everyone sees one another, even if it’s just faces on the screen. So you feel less isolated. If I think what this period has taught us, it’s how to be nimble and how to stay connected in other ways. Maybe you don’t need the physical closeness to be connected. And it’s forced us to develop other muscles that will help us in the future when this is all behind us,” she said.
On the March issue, the brand’s redesign:
“That’s really exciting for me because I’ve never been so intimately connected to a process. I’ve worked as an editor through a redesign, but to be an editor in chief and to work so closely with the creative director has been really thrilling. And to think about how to reimagine this brand at this moment and carry this legacy,” she said.
What she sees as the future for print magazines:
“Print is the maximum expression of what we do. I think my publisher Carol Smith [senior vice president, group publishing director of Harper’s Bazaar, Elle and Marie Claire] said that first. We are a media brand, and we have digital, we have social media. Print is part of what we do, and print is our storefront. It’s where we get to show the purest expression of what we do, and we communicate now in so many different ways, so it just makes it more exciting. I just don’t see print going away. It is the well that everything springs from. For a brand like Harper’s Bazaar, we’re very committed to print and we’re continuing to evolve that media,” she said.
