Marcel Schlutt had already run one magazine into the ground before he started the one that stuck. From 2010 to 2012, he published HONK! — a short-lived Berlin title that taught him the mechanics of independent publishing if not yet the formula for survival. In 2012, he and art director Nicolas Simoneau launched KALTBLUT — German for "cold blood" — as a digital-first platform for art, fashion, and music made in Berlin. They wanted a print magazine they could hold at the end of the process, but they also understood that the internet was where their audience lived.
The founding principle was exposure. Schlutt and Simoneau built KALTBLUT as a place for emerging talent — photographers, stylists, musicians, models — who were too unconventional or too unknown for mainstream platforms. In the early days, the two founders did everything themselves: Schlutt handled fashion content, marketing, and social media; Simoneau took care of art direction and the art features. The magazine's voice was unapologetically Berlin: nocturnal, queer-friendly, boundary-pushing, and indifferent to the polished aesthetics of the established fashion press.
Growth came with friction. The magazine took a two-year break from printing, and when it returned, the content had broadened beyond fashion into art, film, and cultural commentary. Schlutt has spoken openly about his fatigue with the fashion industry's repetitive cycles and its expectation that magazines like his would provide free publicity in exchange for access. The honesty is characteristic: KALTBLUT has never pretended to be anything other than what it is — two people and a growing team making a magazine about the things they care about, from a city that rewards exactly that kind of stubbornness.
Now over a decade old and twenty-two issues deep, KALTBLUT reaches 128,000 followers on Facebook alone and has featured everyone from Rossy de Palma to emerging Berlin designers who went on to show at Fashion Week. It remains independent, still edited by Schlutt from Berlin, still refusing to publish anything the team doesn't believe in. In a city where cultural projects burn bright and disappear, KALTBLUT has survived by staying exactly cold-blooded enough to say no to the easy path — and passionate enough to keep making the hard one work.
Explore KALTBLUT at <a href="https://www.kaltblut-magazine.com/" target="\_blank">kaltblut-magazine.com