The style lessons I learned from Courtney Love, and other tales

Canadian magazine Worn is about to release The Worn Archive – a gorgeous little book celebrating the eight-year old publication’s first 14 issues.

Worn Archive cover
Worn Archive cover

The magazine was founded by freelance creative director Serah-Marie McMahon, who worked with Worn art director Alexandra Niit to curate and design the cute little tome respectively.

Throughout its 400-odd pages, The Worn Archive explores not just fashion and its frivolities, but how clothes, design, art and pop culture are all inextricably linked.

Worn Archive spread
Worn Archive spread

There are an abundance of striking illustrations by artists including Shea Chang and Sara Guindon jostling next to photoshoots peopled by refreshingly ‘real’ models, with a distinctly feminist undertone to the proceedings.

Make Me Real
Make Me Real

McMahon says, ‘I wanted to understand the connection between aesthetic and clothing outside of trend, and reconcile my love of clothes with the problems I saw in the fashion industry.

‘I wanted to know everything about everything I was interested in’.

Thankfully, the things McMahon find interesting are generally pretty interesting for the rest of us, too.

Fashion is Art
Fashion is Art

A very cute – if slightly cheesy – mid section shows images from The Mom Project, where daughters (and sons) are styled to look like an old picture of their mothers.

Elsewhere, McMahon describes the ‘style lessons I learned from Courtney Love’ (“dishevelled is sexy”, etc); while another writer, G. Stegelmann, describes how her mother, instead, taught her ‘everything I know about fashion’.

Beauty Actually
Beauty Actually

For the boys as well as the girls, there are tips on tying ties; guides to dry cleaning and some no-nonsense advice on what you can really put in the washing machine (pretty much everything, it seems).

Worn Archive spread
Worn Archive spread

While The Worn Archive does feel rather Americanised at times, it’s a wonderful, heart-warming and funny read; with the layout and design adding to its often anarchic, celebratory, anything-goes tone.

The Worn Archive is published by Drawn and Quarterly in mid-April priced $29.95 (£17.99). It can be pre-ordered at http://www.drawnandquarterly.com/

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