Dutch magazine Velvet Pages brings together fashion, literature and photography in large-format, unbound, pages that challenge the idea of what a fashion-adjacent magazine might be. 

Czech-born stylist,and art director Misha Kratina is one of the three founders of the  magazine, along with photographer Fauve Bouwman and stylist Lotte Wierenga. She describes the magazine as ‘somewhere between a fashion publication, a cultural journal and a personal scrapbook,’ as issue two arrives in shops.
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What are you doing this Monday morning?
My mornings are usually very slow, chill and relaxed. I’ll have my filtered coffee, yogurt with blueberries and a little play with a cat. After that, I put some jazz on YouTube and go through emails and stuff to do.

This Monday I’m in Amsterdam, catching up with my friend Angela, a photographer, and then going into Velvet Pages mode. I and our head of digital Pauline have a call with a potential partner, and in the afternoon, my co-owner Lotte Wierenga and I have planned a meeting to work on admin and the structure of issue three. A mix of creative work and, honestly, a lot of spreadsheets!!! In the evening, the entire Velvet Pages team is invited to the screening of ‘Memoire des Filles’ by Annie Ernaux during Tapis Rouge, French Film Festival in Amsterdam.

Describe your work environment
For the past two years, I’ve been living and working between Amsterdam and Bangkok, so it changes quite a lot. I’m often working from cafés or wherever I happen to be. But as we are coming back to Europe in November, I like the idea of renting a little creative space where I can work on styling projects, meet with the team, and have all my things in one place. I also dream of having there a little library with curated second hand books.

Me and my grandma reading magazines

Which magazine do you first remember?
I was born just a year after the Velvet Revolution (sounds like another century :) but it was only 35 years ago) and grew up in a small town in the Czech Republic. So, my upbringing was not marked by any indie magazines. But I remember my mum bringing magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, and Cosmopolitan home every month, and they felt completely captivating to me. I was taken by the world of fashion imagery and big fashion names. It all felt very unreachable, and in the world before social media, it also felt like having a big sister giving you advice (now, maybe questionable ones) on the autumn diet routine, items to pack for a summer holiday, and what was trending back then.

I also always looked up to big fashion names like Chanel, and it felt completely out of my reach. Back then, I was dying to move to Paris so I could be just a little closer to the glamorous world. It’s funny to think about now: the closest I got to Chanel as a child was walking with my mum through a street in Prague and seeing all the names on the windows of the luxury street called ‘Parisian’ in Prague :)

Years later, I not only work with brands such as Chanel, Dior, Isabel Marant, Celine and many more as a stylist, but Chanel is also one of our close partners for Velvet Pages.
 

Aside from Velvet Pages, what’s your favourite magazine? 
I love discovering new niche magazines, e.g. magazines about Japanese onsens, Yarn Porn or ones with Princess Diana and a mushroom on the cover! I’m especially drawn to more artistic publications that often include collages, drawings, and unexpected ways of telling stories. I love that magazines can introduce you to a topic you didn’t know you were interested in or just visually stimulate you in unexpected ways of someone else looking at the world with a different lens.

But the magazines I keep coming back to, and that continue to inspire me in my styling work, are Self Service, Re-Edition, HommeGirls, Purple, and Interview. I also really love Cabana for its beautiful world of interiors, fabric-bound covers that make each issue a unique collectible and their glossy and matte pages.

Such an honour to be among these legends.

What other piece of media would you recommend?
I love getting into niche topics and being a little nerdy. But in general, I like listening to many BBC podcasts, and my favourite UK podcast is ‘The Rest Is History.’ I also love Bella Freud’s various interviews and podcasts featuring Esther Perel.

I also think YouTube is underrated, as there are some great documentaries there. And I’d also like to mention Arte, which is a free online television platform in French and German (English subtitles available), featuring many documentaries and films.

Describe Velvet Pages in three words.
Friendship, books, fashion.

Together with Fauve and our issue 01 during Paris Fashion Week 2025.

Together with Lotte on our way to a shoot with Chanel for Velvet Pages Digital.

Tell us more about the links between fashion and reading.
It’s a good question, because reading has become quite performative. I think Velvet Pages was right at the beginning of this book wave. But it’s difficult to say whether we sensed it coming or if it was just a coincidence.

For me, reading (especially fiction) is important because it stimulates your imagination. While watching a movie, there is an image that we consume, with a book, it is the opposite. While reading a book, you imagine your character’s face and, from the book’s descriptions, the clothes they are wearing, as well as the places you read about. I like to say that your mind creates its own inner movie.

As a stylist (but also in personal dressing), fashion offers space for play and creativity. It’s about getting to know or creating a character, and thinking about how the clothes and the way you portray someone influence that character. I feel that imagination and the love of stories in books translate into fashion.

Velvet Pages during Amsterdam Fashion Week 2026

Why the huge pages, matt paper and unbound structure?
I wanted to create something that you consume almost like news (hence the newspaper format), but where the content linger a little longer. I like that, in a newspaper as well as in a glossy magazine, you have different sections. In both, you can often find opinion rubrics, recipes, star signs, or crosswords.

Matt paper was a must for my co-founder, Fauve Bouwman, a photographer, because the imagery is very important to us. And I dare say that, due to the 30 × 40cm format, it is quite impactful. When it comes to the unbound structure, I liked the idea of being able to remove pages and use them as posters. Therefore, there is a poster in the middle of every issue, but of course, more pages can be framed :)

Lotte and issue two

Highlight one story from the magazine that sums up your ambitions for the project. 
I’d like to highlight our ‘Girls Who Read’ editorial from issue two, shot by Anna Cuesta and styled by Samantha Browne, featuring Franny Richardson in Paris. It sums up Velvet Pages quite well: the editorial follows a girl reading her way around Paris, dressed in vintage clothes, absorbed in her own world, playful yet conscious.

To add another layer, the editorial is accompanied by two different opinions: an article by Madeleine Woon, ‘Reading Is Hot Right Now,’ and ‘Reading in Public Is Not Performative’ by @literarywarfar. As we don’t want to only show pretty images, we like to offer a little more ‘food for thought.’ We like to stay curious, looking beneath the surface without being pretentious.

What has publishing taught you that may be helpful to anybody else planning to make their own magazine?
I feel like I should be the one getting advice! :) Even now, as we’re already working on our third issue, we’re still learning by doing. Running a magazine can sometimes feel like a survival of the fittest. At times, it’s less about being creative and more about organising, finding partners, and being your own financial chief. It’s also a big investment, because we run the magazine ourselves.

But there’s something incredibly exciting about having the entire agenda in your own hands. We started the magazine as two friends, and now we’re a team of six! Together with Fauve and Lotte, I feel incredibly lucky to have so many friends and Velvet Pages fans around us who genuinely want us to succeed.

So I guess, after that lengthy monologue, my advice would be: don’t over-plan, just do it and have fun.
 

What are you looking forward to this week?
I’m really looking forward to being back in Bangkok with my boyfriend and our cat. I’ll have two weeks there before coming back to Amsterdam.

velvetpagesmagazine.com