When Nick Logan launched the first issue of Arena Homme + in the spring of 1994, it was the last significant expansion of a publishing empire built on instinct. Logan had already created Smash Hits, The Face, and ARENA — each time by making the magazine he wanted to read and trusting that others would want to read it too. Arena Homme + was the logical next step: a biannual fashion publication for men, thicker, slower, and more experimental than anything the monthly ARENA could accommodate. The founding editor was Kathryn Flett, and the first issue featured, among others, a young Jason Statham in a fashion spread — long before anyone knew his name.
The magazine found its defining voice when Ashley Heath took over in late 1995. Heath had cut his teeth as fashion editor at The Face, and he brought that publication's restless creative ambition to Arena Homme +. Under his stewardship, the magazine became a showcase for photographers and art directors who wanted to push menswear imagery beyond the conventions of commercial fashion media — David Sims, Juergen Teller, Wolfgang Tillmans, Nick Knight, Alasdair McLellan, Jamie Hawkesworth. The editorials were cinematic, provocative, and frequently astonishing. One fashion story depicted magazine staff, including Logan himself, drawn as FBI shooting-range targets, complete with actual bullet holes stamped through the pages. Another, a Steven Klein shoot with Justin Timberlake, featured burn marks on the paper and images of the former boy-band star bloodied and bruised in front of the Stars and Stripes.
When ARENA closed in 2009, its biannual sibling survived — and thrived. Arena Homme + became the last magazine standing from Logan's original Wagadon portfolio, a fact that would have seemed absurd in 1994 when it was the smallest and most niche title in the stable. But the biannual format, which freed the magazine from the monthly pressure to fill pages and chase advertisers, turned out to be its greatest asset. Each issue became an event — frequently running to 650 pages, closer in scale and ambition to a book than a conventional magazine. In 2019, a 600-page retrospective titled 25 Years of Arena Homme+: All Killer, No Filler — Heath's favourite mantra — documented a quarter-century of editorial work that had defined the visual language of contemporary menswear.
The magazine continues to publish under editor Max Permain, with recent issues featuring the kind of contributors — Wolfgang Tillmans photographing the Centre Pompidou, for instance — that confirm its position as the world's leading biannual men's fashion title. It is proof that a magazine does not need to publish often to matter. It just needs to matter every time it publishes.