Leith Clark didn't mean to start a magazine. Born in 1979 in Canada, she had interned at Interview Magazine as a teenager, worked as a fashion assistant at British Vogue, and built a reputation as one of London's most distinctive stylists — Keira Knightley was a regular client. But when she looked at the fashion magazines on the shelf, she saw women photographed for an imaginary man in the room. The imagery was sexualized, competitive, hard-edged. Clark wanted something different: a magazine of women looking at women, without that edge. "I made it for myself," she later said. "I didn't realize people were going to read it too."
In 2005, together with photographer Damon Heath, she launched Lula: Girl of My Dreams — a biannual fashion and culture magazine that described itself as the kind of girl you'd have a crush on or be intimidated by, whose style was all old-fashioned cameras, seventies dresses, patterned stockings, and heavy mascara, who'd live in an apartment where the wallpaper was peeling off but held together lovingly by poems and Polaroids. The first issue, Clark later admitted, might have been the only one she ever made, so she thought: what would be the perfect magazine to show her grandkids?
Each issue began with something unexpected. One was inspired by kaleidoscopes. Another was built around an obsession with Wednesday Addams. For the first anniversary, Clark stalked the woman who created Strawberry Shortcake. When she first met Kirsten Dunst — who would become a cover star — they bonded over their shared love of Blueberry Muffin, a character from that same franchise. Other covers featured Charlotte Gainsbourg (the magazine's most commercially successful issue), Greta Gerwig, and Lizzy Caplan. Issue eleven was guest-edited by Kate and Laura Muleavy of Rodarte. Back issues began selling on eBay for up to two hundred pounds.
In October 2013, after seventeen issues, Clark announced she was leaving. "Lula has been changing, as I have been changing," she wrote on her blog. "I want her to stay as she is. And me, I want to say goodbye now when it's all going so amazingly well. When it's joyful." She was replaced by Sheila Single, and the magazine has continued under new editorial direction. Clark went on to found Violet Book, a publication for older women, inspired by her frustration with the way youth was over-celebrated. It was the same impulse that had driven Lula — the conviction that the magazine she wanted to read didn't exist, and that the only solution was to make it herself.
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