VANITY PRESS

While many large-circulation magazines have gone from bland to worse, there has been a proliferation of small, creatively ambitious publications. New York-basedDetails looks as if it were printed on recycled shopping bags, but it's rife with gossip about the kind of marginal celebrity who usually forgoes a last name, and the striking photos offer reports from the farthest edge of chic—on street fashion, late-night TV, trendy restaurants, nightclub doormen, and party addicts. "We want it to be a form of entertainment," says editor-publisher Annie Flanders, who recently acquired a new partner, investor Gary Bogard.

Nicole Wisniak's French magazine,Egoiste, has been compared toInterview, "but it took on its own personality," Wisniak says^ "It's very much morelitteraire. It's not fashionable. I hate journalism. What I love are things that last."Egoiste has lasted over six years, probably because Wisniak persuaded people like Helmut Newton and Fran^oise Sagan to work for free. Though it will soon be available in the United States,Egoiste couldn't be published in America, she says ruefully. "I don't think you can make people work for nothing here."

Lisa Henricksson