Prototype #1
230 x 297mm, 200 pages
London
First published in 2026
Editor-in-chief: Alastair McKimm
Art director: Patrick Slack
Do we need another big fashion magazine? The answer is yes when it’s this strong. Two years in the making, this issue zero—prototype—issue of Prototype is the dream project of stylist/creative director Alistair McKimm, last seen editing i-D at the point it was bought by Karlie Kloss.
As McKimm explains in the issue, ‘Prototype is a reaction to where I’d been before—and where I’d been before was working at magazines with endless covers, advertiser-driven restrictions, and petty politics. What Prototype had to be was a magazine created with one goal in mind: creative freedom.’
The result is a blank cover featuring only the magazine name in black, behind which sit a series of 20-page full-bleed stories, each accompanied by 4 pages of text—the publishers like to call them zines (each one opens with the Prototype logo, as if a separate zine.) Such a simple structure might struggle with lesser material to showcase but the 12 stories each offer something unique: from Alasdair McLellan’s images of Skepta on the London tube, to a round-up of Anthony Vaccarello’s ten years at YSL, via Naomi Fry’s review of Tom Sach’s recent ‘31 Rue Cambon’ Chanel pop-up in NYC, and McKimm’s own selections from photographer Steven Meisel’s archive, this debut shows what creative freedom in the right hands can offer.
No cover image, no ads, and, we hope, no petty politics. Intriguingly, the magazine has been launched with the support of ‘Dragon Den’s Peter Jones.