A Magazine Editor? Me?

So somehow, a little while ago, I became a magazine editor.
Luckily I didn’t have to bear the shock of this alone – as my two friends are in the same boat.
We have learnt many and varied things:
That you can run a magazine almost entirely over facebook, with a few face to face breakfast meetings thrown in once an issue.
That only one editor can have a nervous breakdown at a time.
That poor designers don’t respond well to 3 screeching females on the morning of a deadline.
But most importantly we have learnt how generous and resourceful a community can be.
Glory Days Vintage Lifestyle Magazine is written mostly by contributors throughout the country. All of them have an interest in some part of the vintage lifestyle and each and every one of them have put in hours of work, voluntarily, for the sake of the magazine.
We have been so lucky to find such talented writers, photographers and designers. As editors our job is easy, a bit of organisation here, some marketing there, and almost like magic each 3 months a magazine appears out of the ether.
Another thing we have learnt is that there is no shortage of stories. They just keep coming. It seems like every time you tell a person that you have a vintage lifestyle magazine, another story comes out. Somebodies grandmother was a WW2 pin up, another’s a model in the 1960’s. You find a vintage printer complete with printing press from the 1890s, or a man who makes his flatmate have dinner with complete Victorian place settings.
It is amazing that whatever you put your mind to you can manifest, and that whatever you say you are you become.
A magazine editor? Who would have thought. But I am, and I love it. It feels like I am helping fashion a community out of a wacky group of people. We have known about some of us previously but the revelation that there are a whole HEAP of us oddbods out there with a penchant for the past has been a revelation.
It’s not like a dry history lesson but more that the past comes to life through what everyone is doing.
I feel this very strongly when I am doing a vintage styling. It feels like a ghost saunters up and whispers in my ear,” a little less eyeshadow and go easy on the blush there missy.”
I’m sure that the World War Two reenactors get the same feeling when they set up their tents in a local park, and so does the Dreamstress when she is sewing up her stays.
Maybe it’s that we all want to be remembered and by remembering who and what went before we are trying to manifest this wish. Or maybe it’s that when we look to the past we see some long lost glamour and intrigue.
But regardless of why we do it, we have a story, and Glory Days is dedicated to telling that story. We will hunt that story down and not let it go until we have emptied it of all its hidden secrets.
If you have an interesting story please email me at editors@glorydaysmagazine.com
I promise we will treat it well!
www.glorydaysmagazine.com