When Sophia Neophitou-Apostolou went to the bank in 2000 to ask for £20,000 to print a fashion magazine, the manager refused to even consider it. So she took out a car loan instead. It was not the first time she had improvised. She had started out studying architecture before having what she describes as a weird midlife crisis at 26 — the realisation that sitting in an office waiting three years to see a finished building was not for her. She needed speed, impact, something that let her work with total conviction and then move on. She found fashion.
After a stint as an intern at British Vogue — where Isabella Blow walked around in holey tights with lipstick all over her face and the office had a bohemian glamour that no longer exists — Neophitou-Apostolou moved to newspapers, working at The Evening Standard and The Independent. Even monthly magazines felt too slow. She wanted the pace of a weekly, the freedom of a quarterly, and the visual ambition of something that did not yet exist. In 2000, she launched 10 Magazine.
The founding impulse was, by her own admission, selfish: she wanted a platform for creative freedom, for herself and people like her. Twenty-five years later, that platform has grown into a global indie media group — Zac Publishing, named after her son — with editions in Australia, the USA, Japan, and Germany, plus the biannual sister title 10 Men (launched 2003) and 10+ (launched 2018). Neophitou-Apostolou owns it all, including the five-storey Georgian townhouse in London's Soho that serves as headquarters. She is publisher, editor-in-chief, and creative director, and has been since day one.
What makes 10 Magazine unusual in the luxury fashion space is what it refuses to do. In twenty-five years, Neophitou-Apostolou has almost never put a Hollywood celebrity on the cover. The 25th anniversary issue featured eighteen covers — a hairdresser, a mixed-race entrepreneur, an androgynous poet, a plus-size burlesque dancer, Edward Enninful embarking on his new magazine — and not a single movie star. She argues that fashion died a death when it started relying on celebrities to sell copies, that publicists create a layer between the image and the idea, and that what matters is the power of the fashion photograph, not the fame of the person in it. The anniversary issue was shot by Nick Knight, Juergen Teller, Richard Burbridge, and Mario Sorrenti. It included a political portfolio dedicated to the trans community. It was, in other words, exactly the kind of magazine that Neophitou-Apostolou has always made: visually uncompromising, politically engaged, and entirely on her own terms.
Alongside the magazine, her career has been strikingly eclectic. She served as creative director for Victoria's Secret for a decade — making headlines when she had model Maria Borges walk with her natural short afro hair instead of the usual long wig. She has worked as fashion director for Vogue China, Japanese Vogue, Russian Vogue, and Harper's Bazaar UK. She has creative-directed collections for Antonio Berardi, Roland Mouret, and others. In 2024, the British Fashion Council awarded her the Special Recognition Award for her contribution to the industry.
Katie Grand, her friend and fellow editor, once said that in a climate where it is very hard to be a monthly magazine — or even to consider content as anything slower than an hourly post — 10 continues to shine bright. It delivers a strong point of view, led by a very strong woman. It is the kind of compliment that sounds simple but contains everything you need to know about why this magazine has survived when so many others have not: it has a person behind it who would rather take out a car loan than ask anyone's permission.
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