The Gentlewoman is an independent magazine that focuses on fashion, culture, and lifestyle
The Gentlewoman - British fashion magazine
The Gentlewoman aims to challenge traditional gender norms through its content and style
The Gentlewoman's editorial style combines high-end fashion with intelligent writing and photography
The Gentlewoman has been appealing to its target audience of “modern women of style and purpose” since its launch in 2010.
Subscribing to The Gentlewoman Club and newsletter gives us a strong sense of belonging to the magazine’s community.
The Gentlewoman magazine provides an appeal to our need for personal relationships through its unique events and network of like-minded readers.
The magazine has a distinctive editorial voice, engaging interviews, long-form profiles of inspirational women, and candid fashion photography.
The dominant signifier on the cover of The Gentlewoman is a close up of the cover star, Scarlett Johansson.
Her face fills the frame and her eyes, half-open and dreamy, gaze back at the viewer with a soft confidence.
Portrait photography is meant to reveal the essence of the subject, but there is a hyperreal quality to Johansson’s makeup with the use of thick eyeshadow, full lipstick, and the dark colour and shape of her eyebrows.
This stylised representation alludes to her role as Black Widow, the high-kicking superhero from the Marvel cinematic universe.
The cover story includes a quotation from Noah Baumbach who directed Johansson in the film Marriage Story: “Her face says everything.
It’s that thing when the internal becomes external.
The cover of The Gentlewoman features a great photograph and will certainly grab the attention of the target audience.
The rest of the page follows The Gentlewoman’s house style with the masthead positioned at the top and the cover star’s name at the bottom.
The title uses a variation of the Futura typeface.
The geometric letters and the distinctive “l” and “h” shapes create a feeling of modernity and progress.
The Gentlewoman does not rely on impulse buyers, so there is no need for coverlines to compete for the reader’s attention at the newsstand.
The minimalist approach keeps our focus on Scarlet Johansson’s narrative and celebrates her individuality.
The Gentlewoman is represented by Rock Media who have helped compile a detailed media kit to promote the magazine to companies in the European fashion and luxury market.
The package describes the target audience as “modern women of style and purpose” who are “confident, independent and stylish”.
The readers of The Gentlewoman come from a “strikingly broad range of age groups” with a median age of 32 years.
Using the NRS social grades, 76% of The Gentlewoman’s readers are classified as ABC1 which means they are employed in junior to higher managerial or professional positions.
The readers of The Gentlewoman have a substantial average income of £87,255 – that is more than £50,000 compared to the average annual salary in the UK.
Despite the financial risks of publishing a print magazine when more and more readers are relying on digital media, there has been a quiet resurgence of independent titles in the UK.
The Gentlewoman delivers an “agenda of cultural happenings” to the “40,000 plus active members”, including walking tours, film screenings and card nights.
The Gentlewoman Club is an international society of the magazine’s “sophisticated” and “fabulous” readers.
The producers of The Gentlewoman are able to use the spatial relationship between the words and images to shape meaning – something that is lost on smaller viewports, such as mobile devices.
The Gentlewoman also offers digital packages to access advertising spaces on their website and they offer “creative collaborations” and “bespoke partnerships”, including previous work with brands such as Bottega Veneta and Chanel.
The internet seems like an empty and unfulfilling experience in comparison.
The audience could easily satisfy this surveillance motivation by flicking and scrolling through the internet, but The Gentlewoman offers a more tactile experience compared to the instantly disposable images flashcard>
The mode of address in The Gentlewoman is personal and warm.
The magazine obviously appeals to the readers’ desire to learn about the latest trends and styles from the world of fashion.
The Gentlewoman is produced by the owners who retain their creative control, so the content is imbued with a passion not seen in mainstream magazines which often rely on ideas developed from extensive market research.
The print industry has always relied on advertising to remain profitable because the revenue from single copy sales and subscriptions is not enough to cover the costs of production and distribution of magazines and newspapers.
Readers can also spend time enjoying the weight, texture, and warmth of the pages.
Editorial content will never be free from commercial decisions, but the magazine makes it clear they are adding their opinion and expertise to endorse the designers, giving The Gentlewoman an authentic voice compared to the mainstream publishers.
The Gentlewoman’s newsletter contains a “classifieds section of bespoke advertisements” which is “a discerning platform for brands to reach astute consumers, direct to their inbox”.
While other magazines aimed at this creative class of women struggled to survive, such as Oh Comely, The Gentlewoman’s innovative approach to creating an intimate connection between the editor and the reader has ensured it has remained a viable enterprise.