Interview: Edgars Club Magazine Editor, Justine Stafford

With a model dressed in a camel Thula Sindi dress in the October issue, popular blogger and former editor of Seventeen Magazine, Justine Stafford, makes her debut as the new editor of Edgars Club Magazine. The Frock Report caught up with her during the launch of the magazine’s new look at the Melrose Arch Edgars store last night.

FR: What changes have you brought to Edgars Club Magazine and why did you deem this necessary?

JS: On a higher level the changes are that it’s not just a magazine, we’ve gone digital, we’ve gone in-store. We’re also doing quite a targetted supplement strategy. The biggest change is that the magazine is now a woman’s fashion and beauty shopping guide. Before, it kind of catered to everyone, but our bigger initiative is to cater to our biggest consumer base, which is women between the ages of 25 to 45. It’s aspirational, it’s fashion-forward. We are applying our knowledge of consumer magazines to a custom title. At the end of the day, the aim is a custom aim which is to sell products but in a way that is very consumer led. We want to give back to the club member who is very loyal.

FR: People out there are tired of being marketed to, they want to be spoken to directly. How are you going to approach this through your content?

JS: What I think is amazing is that Edgars as a brand has got access to incredible content. So, when you look at the brands that they house, when you look at the events that they put on, when you look at the people that are involved in Edgars. We keep on saying ‘wow, this person is coming and will be at the Melrose Arch store’, so there is a lot of content that is happening in the world of Edgars that we are simply bringing to life. When you think from a reader’s point of view, I always try to put myself in their shoes and say ‘would I want to read this, would I be interested in this magazine?’ And so I think by making it aspirational and by bringing the Edgars brand to life… you know, we’ve just done a story (in the October issue) about the retail sponsorship of SA Fashion Week; that is groundbreaking news in the fashion industry. It’s something that, as a fashion blogger and a journalist, I’ve been writing and talking about for a long time. And now it’s happening.

FR: How do you, as a journalist, draw the line between having to obviously push the products that Edgars is selling and being an actual journalist.

JS: What has been amazing is the support we’ve had from Edgars. Before, I think they really led the direction of the magazine. They’ve really handed over that responsibility to us. We are leading the creative direction and they are completely supportive of this. We have one or two moments where they might say ‘we’re not sure about that’ but they’ve also said to us, ‘push back, fight for what you believe in’. As a journalist I come from a very strong base of ethics, so I always have to think about, is this coming from the right direction?

FR: When you first found out that you have the editor’s position for the magazine, what did you first think and what vision do you have for the future of the magazine?

JS: I was eight months pregnant with my second child and they phoned me out of the blue and said they want to chat to me about a project. I’d been freelancing and blogging for several years and not too keen to get back into mags, just because I didn’t want a kind of 9 to 5 job and they sat me down and kind of told me where they saw the magazine going and how my influence would come in and I just became more and more excited about the opportunity. Club speaks to almost a million subscribers every month. When you come from a consumer magazine base- you know most are lucky if they speak to 50,000 people- to speak to a million people, you sort of go ‘wow, that’s a lot of people’. So I became very excited. In terms of vision, I am a magazine junkie. From InStyle to Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar to Wallpaper and even custom publications. At the end of the day my custom line with the team is ‘just make it pretty’. We’re really trying to bring a really beautiful face to the fashion side of Edgars.

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