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Welcome to Retro Lovely Magazine. Our 2.1 Million fans on Social Media place us as one of the most popular print pinup magazines in the world. #2 to be exact.
Begun in 2010 our last mass produced issue was released was in 2013. In those 3 years we published 22 issues and distributed nearly 100,000 physical print copies to fans via our online store and in brick and mortar stores all over the world. (We shipped quite a lot to Australia).
Where we originally published our issues using traditional offset printing with each issue numbering in the thousands we are now entering a new era where we will employ digital presses for our print copies along with online digital versions being available.
Retro Lovely RL-MB332 Michael Bann Tribute Issue Available Now.
2011 Playmate of the Year Claire Sinclair for Retro Lovely Magazine from Retro Lovely on Vimeo.
Click here to read the mission statement full sized.
March 23, 2010. Retro Lovely No.1 arrived on our door. A few short days later it had a world debut at Viva Las Vegas. The groundswell was immediate and beyond our expectations. We ourselves heralded it as groundbreaking and we were right. For the following 3 years we released over 22 issues, Each and every one of them was mass produced. We only ever printed on offset presses with high quality glossy paper. Each issue numbered in the thousands. Through issue N0.10 we sent promotional copies, free of charge to everyone featured in an issue. THOUSANDS of such copies were mailed out. Thousands more were provided to contributors at wholesale and they in turn were afforded the opportunity to make money on their art. Many did. By our estimations Retro Lovely assisted those in the issues realize nearly $125,000 dollars in profit. No other pinup magazine on planet earth can make this claim.
Where did we go? By the time of the last issue we released several dynamics had changed in the marketplace. Smartphones became more capable, Social Media and the “share” pages provided an unending stream of content. Creators and fans traded likes for actual physical art. Print on demand publishing flooded what was left of the market with an array of titles that further diluted what it means to be published. Our sales dipped below a point of sustainability at that level. While we can no longer print thousands of copies of each issue we are ourselves utilizing digital presses to once again bring this storied brand back to life.
Mission Statement, from Retro Lovely No.1, March 23 2010:
In an era where printed publications seem to be a thing of the past and one magazine folds as another multi-title conglomerate sacrifices a masthead like a wild animal caught in a trap might gnaw off its own limb for survival … At a time when big electronics corporations battle to produce “the” electronic means with which to deal a final deathblow to newspapers, magazines and (dare we say it?) … books … Why would anyone in their right mind launch a new magazine?
Because some of us live in a different era. Some of us live with one foot in the past while others live in a surreal, quasi-past — one where Buddy Holly’s Peggy Sue emanates from an MP3 player connected to the stereo of a flat black Merc with a Betty Page air freshener bouncing wildly from the rear view mirror like some alternative reality hula-dancer. We’re launching a new magazine because there is an ever growing army of fans of pinup as well as an impressive corps of artists producing an amazing body of work that is best served by this antiquated medium of ink on paper. We also want to ensure this art lives on, long after this internet fad blows over or some rogue state finally secures a nuke of their own, tripping off what we feared all along during the cold war and the power grid finally goes down for the count. It may be that a new bio-weapon, silicon-eating microorganism is developed that feeds on our precious electronics like they were candy, or simply that a solar flare hits, unplugging us from our high speed, Wi-Fi, 3g dependencies. If any such revolutionary catastrophe occurs, these pages you hold now will become very valuable indeed. Save the smart phone though; it should make a suitable paperweight.
Welcome to Retro Lovely.
This magazine will cater to no one single pinup style. It will bring you Classic Cheesecake, Hollywood Noir, Cabaret, Burlesque, Victorian, Deco, Kitschy, Atomic, Bad Part of Town Rust Queen and every conceivable cross-pollination of these you can imagine. You will find models with and without ink in all manner of settings with all manner of props. You see, Peggy Sue got married and had a little girl and then a granddaughter and now that young lady is a lawyer, but on the weekends she’s a Roller Derby Queen and goes by the name Peggy SoSueMe. She also models and has a devoted fan base who wants nothing more than to pin up her photo as they lead their quasi-past lives.