T Magazine: Seven Creative People Reveal Their Obsessions

“We just did what we wanted — we didn’t care,” says Bay Garnett. She’s describing Cheap Date, the low-budget quarterly magazine for “thinking thrifters” that Garnett, who is a stylist and contributing editor to British Vogue, created along with her friends, the stylist and journalist Kira Jolliffe and the art director Marlon Richards. The magazine, which was started in 1997, went on to become an independent publishing phenomenon. With the tagline “we have no spare change,” Cheap Date was borne from a shared love of thrifting for vintage clothes — and an increasing dissatisfaction with mainstream magazines at the time. “It was about being into clothes but not feeling catered for,” says Jolliffe. “We felt like there was a gap in the market and we felt quite angry about that.”

Drawing inspiration from satirical magazines like Spy and the dark comics of Robert Crumb and Peter Bagge, the magazine took aim at the fashion industry in a subversive way: Stories included Paris and Nicky Hilton styled to look like geeks, fake fashion campaigns shot by Craig McDean and David Mamet rhapsodizing about the humble T-shirt. With a defiantly lo-fi feel and an irreverent wit, Cheap Date drew an impressive lineup of contributors, including Chloë Sevigny, Debbie Harry, Harmony Korine, Anita Pallenberg, Bryan Ferry and Jerry Hall. In all, it led to an impact that far outweighed its small circulation and brief print run (it ended in 2005).

Now, more than 10 years later, Garnett and Jolliffe are back with a limited-edition hardcover book, “Fanpages,” published by IDEA. In the years since Cheap Date folded, both have had children and moved on to other projects — but always wanted to work together again. But making a follow-up to Cheap Date proved harder than they thought. “It didn’t make sense to do it again,” says Garnett, whom Tatler once proclaimed the “undisputed queen of thrift.” She adds: “There was something not right at the time and we didn’t want to force it.” For Jolliffe, it seemed a natural part of growing up. “I did Cheap Date when I was very rebellious and I can’t remember why I felt so rebellious about fashion. My problem with fashion was that it made people feel bad about themselves. And now I realize you just grow out of worrying about that.”

With “Fanpages,” they’ve honed in on another aspect of their teenage years: the time-honored ritual of decorating their bedrooms with their obsessions. “At different points in my life, I’ve had shrines to Morten Harket of A-Ha and Prince,” says Garnett. “I did always have pinboards with loads of different images — I liked the chaos of it all.” Adds Jolliffe: “It was an organic, natural progression — this idea of having a space where people could make fanpages again. It’s just about loving something and singing it from the rooftops!” The first person they approached was the actress Chloë Sevigny, who contributed pictures of her favorite teenage heartthrobs (and was shot by Garnett for the cover).

The brief sent out to contributors was simple: to make a single-page fanzine dedicated to anything each contributor was obsessed with. Says Garnett, “It was about doing something that scratched the surface of stuff. Going back to something pure that one loves.” The results are simultaneously unexpected and deeply personal. “We were surprised by everything and that’s why it was such a pleasure to work on this,” Jolliffe says. The stylist Katie Grand shared intimate photos of her wedding in Azzedine Alaïa; there is a hand-painted homage to Prince by the artist Zac Sandler and Kate and Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte pay tribute to their favorite poets. The cut-and-paste collage and lovingly hand-drawn aesthetic of the pages acts as a glorious riposte to the 2D effect of Instagram and Pinterest.

Garnett and Jolliffe’s vision for “Fanpages” is expansive — they’ve also created T-shirts and sweatshirts to celebrate it, and are already at work on their next issue, due out next year with a whole new cast of contributors. As Jolliffe says: “We want to get everyone making fanpages again!”