Hiroshi Fujiwara Guest-Edits 30th A Magazine Curated By Issue

Hiroshi Fujiwara has guest-edited the 30th edition of A Magazine Curated By, the fashion publication that hands control of each issue to a guest curator.

The 184-page edition comes with a laser-cut metallic silver dust jacket, according to WWD. It is short. It packs a lot in.

A run of 300 limited-edition copies sits apart from the main print run. Those copies include an exclusive 45-rpm vinyl record, the small single format played at 45 revolutions per minute, from Big Crown Records. The same 300 copies carry an embedded NFC chip, the contactless tag that links to digital content when tapped with a phone, according to Yahoo.

Music runs through the issue. Fujiwara created two remixes of “What’s on Your Mind” by Thee Marloes, the Indonesian band, for the vinyl release. Big Crown Records, the independent New York label founded by Danny Akalepse and Leon Michels, marks its 10th anniversary in the edition.

Blake Abbie is editor in chief of A Magazine Curated By. The guest-editor model gives Fujiwara direction over images, contributors and sequence.

The edition includes portfolios and conversations with artists Ana Scripariu-Ochiai, Keita Morimoto and Ai Weiwei. Each takes space in print. Each is presented as a self-contained contribution rather than an illustration of a theme.

Fujiwara’s own habits get the same treatment. The issue contains a photographic inventory of his possessions, shot object by object. No captions do extra work. The pictures list what he keeps.

Food gets a playful turn. Photographer Hugo Yu and food stylist Pearl Jones reimagined dishes from Fujiwara’s favourite restaurants as prepackaged konbini meals, the ready-to-eat packs sold in Japanese convenience stores. Restaurant plates become plastic-wrapped boxes. Fine dining meets the corner shop.

What makes this stand out is the mix of formats. Print, vinyl and a chip sit inside one cover. For fans, this means the magazine works as a record and a keepsake as well as a read.