Interview: Cecilia Dean Goes Visionary

Earlier this year, Visionaire made all of its 50 issues for sale in a souped up Goyard trunk with a $150k price tag. To those who know the groundbreaking publication, Visionaire is distinguished as a creative platform for fashion's bold-faced talents (Mario Testino, Bruce Weber and Steven Meisel included) and such a fee for its highly collectible editions is in sync with its allure. In anticipation of JC Report's cover curation of images from Visionaire (beginning with its next issue,Visionaire 55 Surprise, this week), we sat down with editor and co-founder Cecilia Dean to find out how this independent pub has kept ticking in the outer orbit of creativity since their debut in 1991.

JC Report: The next issue, Visionaire 55 Surprise, is a pop-up issue. It has a print identity with a web feel—how does the web influence the pop-up issue?

Cecilia Dean: I don't think it's influenced at all by the web. We [partners Stephen Gan and James Kaliardos] love the internet and we have a fun time with our website, but Visionaire is so much about the tactile experience that it's very non-digital. What was so much fun with the pop-up issue is that we all love pop-up and we've been inspired by pop-ups for a longtime, but they're always geared towards kids. We've never seen pop-ups with really serious artists so we decided to do our take on it.