Alice Goddard started Hot and Cool in 2010, when she was eighteen. Today she works as a stylist and publishes the minimalist fashion magazine sporadically, when she has time.

Each issue features a series of visual stories by top photographers and very little by way of explanation; Alice has said of readers, ‘you should never go to them, let them come to you’ and the the result is a very simple, pure project (issue 14 doesn’t even feature the magazine’s name on the front cover). She works on the magazine with photographer Theo Sion and graphic designer Rory Gleeson.

Following a five year break between issues 12 and 13, Alice describes the latest issue 14 as ‘the second of what feels like a new version of Hot and Cool’.

What are you doing this Monday morning?
I’m at my studio in Clerkenwell. I’m working on a few different projects so trying to stay on top of them all, and trying to keep warm, my studio doesn’t have heating.


Describe your work environment—what can you see from your desk/ through the window?
I can see a giant plushie Homer Simpson slouched on some shelving inside the prop house that’s opposite my studio. It’s good to have a view that’s always changing.

Which magazine do you first remember?
I remember getting the bus to Camden to buy the July 2007 issue of i-D with Devon Aoki by Jeremy Scott. I lived in Portobello where there are plenty of magazine shops so I’m not sure why the trip to Camden was necessary!

Which magazine matters to you the most this morning?
When we were finishing this issue of Hot and Cool, we found a box of Sunday Times Magazine from the late seventies dumped around the corner from our house. We loved the size and shape of them—slightly larger and more floppy than we had been planning; luxurious without being difficult or oversized—so we reformatted the magazine and it all clicked into place.

We wanted to bring in a slightly different language this time, without totally losing the blunt minimalism and white space of earlier issues. We also looked at seventies magazines like Photo, and books by Twelvetrees Press and Twin Palms Publishers to find a kind of modern, reduced version of mid-century classicism, led by the collection of Timney Fowler's postmodern/neo-classical fabric pieces that were shot for the issue by Theo Sion and styled by Max Pearmain. The centred type and more refined typeface helped elevate the collection of vintage St. Michael photographed by Alasdair McLellan, and provided an extra friction to mine and Johnny Dufort's recontextualisation of Carri Munden’s brand Cassette Playa.

The front cover of issue 14

The back cover of issue 14

Describe Hot and Cool in three words
Hot and Cool

We once described Hot and Cool as a magazine ‘that just is’, meaning it gave very little away about itself. I guess that’s the Cool part; what’s the Hot part?
The name was copied from a book about Miami interiors when we started the magazine in 2010. There is something in it’s straightforward-ness that I like, everyone wants to be hot and everyone wants to be cool.

How do you and Theo define your roles on the magazine?
We spend a lot of time talking and trying to map out the issue, but at some point we just have to start the ball rolling and hope things fall into place. We don’t tend to shoot together for the magazine so we each work on our separate stories and then bring things together later down the line with Rory Gleeson who design the mag.

You like to play with the conventions and expectations of what a magazine is, talk us through some examples of this and the thinking behind that
I think that’s something instinctive rather than something we’ve thought through. We publish the magazine as when we feel like it, or when we have enough ideas and time to put something together. We don’t have advertising any more, so there are no outside pressures. Each issue comes from what me, Theo and Rory are interested in at the time.

What one piece of advice do you have for someone producing their own magazine?
Make sure it’s within the ‘large letter’ weight at the Post Office!


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