In 2009, Gert Jonkers and Jop van Bennekom — the Dutch duo behind Fantastic Man, the men's style magazine that had already rewritten the rules of what a men's publication could look and feel like — decided to do the same thing for women. They hired Penny Martin, a Scottish art historian, curator, and former editor-in-chief of Nick Knight's SHOWstudio, and gave her a year to build a magazine from scratch. Martin had never edited a print publication before. Everyone told her that launching a consumer title in the middle of a global recession was ludicrous. The first issue of The Gentlewoman appeared in the spring of 2010 with Phoebe Philo on the cover, and it has not stopped proving people wrong since.
The magazine is published twice a year and has a circulation of just under 100,000 worldwide — extraordinary numbers for an independent biannual. Its cover subjects are photographed in black and white, un-retouched, and chosen not for their fame but for the quality of conversation they can sustain: Adele, Angela Lansbury, Beyoncé, Björk, Cindy Sherman, Margaret Atwood, Zadie Smith, Simone Biles, Sofia Coppola, Little Simz. But alongside these names are ceramicists, undertakers, scientists, and activists — each treated with the same editorial seriousness and the same generous allotment of pages.
Martin has described the magazine as defined by what it is not. It is not a sea of women's bodies. It is not a catalogue of products disguised as editorial. It is not breathless or aspirational or anxious. It is, instead, an intelligent fashion magazine for adult women, filled with long-form writing and intimate portraiture, produced with the kind of obsessive attention to detail that makes each issue feel less like a publication and more like an invitation to a very particular kind of club. Lou Stoppard of SHOWstudio once observed that The Gentlewoman took the model of men's magazines — amusing, clever, vaguely political — and offered it to women. There is a certain cool loftiness to it, she added, that is probably part of the appeal. It is demanding of its readers. And its readers, clearly, are fine with that.
Explore The Gentlewoman at <a href="https://thegentlewoman.co.uk/" target="\_blank">thegentlewoman.co.uk