It is news of a few days ago that Richardson and Supreme are back together again, on the occasion of the opening of the new flagship store of the English magazine in Tokyo.
A tee with a photographic print depicting actress, model and stylist Chloë Sevigny, photographed by American director William Strobeck, who had already directed the skate videos of Supreme, Cherry (2014), BLESSED (2018) and CANDYLAND (2019) and which will be available from 28th March.

Supreme has always supported Richardson’s cause since the first issue came out in 1998, they have collaborated on many occasions such as the 2005 calendar of Kids director Larry Clark, who described the aesthetics and anger of New York’s skate scene in the mid-1990s with realism and in a crude way. 

But what exactly is Richardson? What is the secret of the success of a magazine that celebrates the porn-chic aesthetic that until recently was the prerogative of another magazine, Playboy, forced to close the paper version after 67 years of honored service?

Its founder is Andrew Richardson, born in Marlow, a town outside London, son of a civil engineer and a housewife. At the age of 19, he left school and became the store manager for Kenzo in the British capital, and began to frequent London nightlife, which included parties organized by the Mutoid Waste Company, a group of London artists and performers, and raves at their embryonic stage. Obsessed with fashion, he dreamed of “buying a pair of Comme des Garçons trousers”. In the late 1980s, he moved to New York to work in a company that designed men’s clothing for Chiarivari, the historic boutique on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, which closed its doors in 1998.
The turning point of his life, however, took place in a loft on 26th Street: during a party, he met a series of assistant photographers who earned much more than him, went around the world and were always surrounded by beautiful women, he decided that in life he would do that.

He received his “education” in styling and photography from Brana Wolf and Steven Meisel, with whom, in 1992, he produced Madonna’s book, Sex, which was to be the inspiration for what would become his magazine in 6 years’ time.

In December 1998, thanks to the Japanese publisher Little More, the first issue of Richardson was published, on the cover, there is the porno actress Jenna Jameson before she became an icon of the genre. Andrew was impressed by Jameson after a surreal hosted by Jenna herself on the radio show of Howard Stern, the most important and influential radio entertainer of the last 30 years.
The cover shot of the first issue was entrusted to Glen Luchford, the photographer who, at the time, was signing Prada campaigns and that was the moment when the foundation stone was laid for an unexpected and explosive success that brought the most important fashion photographers in the world such as Terry Richardson, Mario Sorrenti, and Steven Klein, to serve for the magazine.

But also very fine pens have written for Richardson, like Bret Easton Ellis who, on the occasion of the magazine’s 20th anniversary, interviewed Kim Kardashian West with whom he explores themes such as sex, motherhood, web domination and Donald Trump.

The Magazine represents a unicum in editorial terms, a vertical magazine on sex and sexuality, on the chic aesthetics of porn and that winks at the fashion world in a completely different context in which the topic is addressed. A punk and anti-establishment voice in a standardized world like that of paper magazines dealing with fashion. 

Richardson’s global expansion exploded in 2003 with the first collaboration with Supreme, before founding, in 2004, a complete line of streetwear including denim, sweatshirts, t-shirts, outerwear, accessories, always inspired by the concept of provocation that is intrinsic to the magazine, and in this perspective is the collaboration with Pornhub for a capsule collection in 2018.  

Richardson Magazine plays with porn in a respectful way, never aggressive but at the same time hard, it’s a strong and decisive communication but never screamed, in a world where everyone tries to scream louder than the other.