Paperweight

Paper magazine’s circulation is about 100,000 but its reach is far more expansive.

As pop culture physics has shown, what’s downtown — or underground — must come up; and a lot of the creative, beautiful and/or nocturnal creatures who have walked fame-lessly into a Paper shoot have exited into the public consciousness. 

Calling first dibs on culture — on what eventually gets replayed, re-tweeted, or has Vogue raising its dark glasses to acknowledge — is a demanding job. It’s why the Paper office in New York City’s Koreatown resembles a frenetic political campaign site with everyone wearing their offbeat urban best. Clutching garment bags or editorial proofs, staff pace narrow hallways and cramped cubicles, their intersections bearing consultation or update. A revolution is always underway at Paper. 

“We’re doing a ton of shoots for our next issue,” says publisher Kim Hastreiter, whose kitchen table was where she and co-editor David Hershkovitz pooled a couple thousand dollars and put their plans to Paper in 1984.

Paper trail: From the first issue, where Paper declared itself “Timelier than the Times”; “New Yorker than the New Yorker”; with “Nothing out of Vogue”, to last year’s social networking issue. 

Though it’s evolved from a black-and-white zine assembled on the sly at the New York Times office to a glossy with a hulking marketing arm called ExtraExtra, Paper’s pulp is still made up of people who are less “in crowd” and more interesting. While artist Keith Haring once modeled, you’ve got last year’s “Beautiful Issue” with not just a Kardashian or two thrown in but its cover star Beth Ditto, To get us to open our eyes to new talent, no matter what size or shape it comes in, Hastreiter points to her nose.

“By nature, I can smell a good idea,” she says, looking like a space-age sage in her uniform of pucker-red glasses and aqua green smock. Sitting down with Paper’s rock and editorial scissors, we know that, at 60, her senses haven’t dulled in the slightest bit.    

YOUNG STAR: You turned 60 over the weekend. It’s interesting ‘cause on (the cover of) the latest issue of Paper, Miranda July’s holding up a sign that says, “Everything starts now.”

KIM HASTREITER: Every day of my life, I have something fun to look forward to. I’m looking forward to today. Tonight, I’m doing a Q&A with Pedro Almodóvar, who I’ve known for 30 years. I’m gonna do a little talk with him for his new book for Taschen. I collect amazing people that I think are brilliant and interesting and smart. That’s kind of what I live for. And I try to turn everybody else on to them also.

So there’s always this creative collaboration among friends?

I just love to connect people, and if they’re talented, I want them to share their talent and inspiration with each other. I introduced Isabel Toledo to Ted Muehling, and now he does all of Isabel’s jewelry. I love Aggie Gund, who’s a wonderful philanthropist and the director of the Museum of Modern Art. I introduced her to Tauba Auerbach, who I really think is an amazing artist. I met Eric Ripert, who I think is a brilliant chef — I met him Friday night, for the first time. I DJ sometimes and we were talking and he said, ‘Oh my God, I love to DJ, too,’ so I texted Marcus (Samuelsson) and now he and I are going to DJ at the Red Rooster sometime.

Has it been more difficult to stay ahead with content because the Internet’s made magazines an afterthought?

Yeah, we never operated by press releases. We always operated on a street level. We have young people here that are going out every night and that are experiencing stuff in New York City, which is where everything starts.

Everything’s a lot faster and you have to be fast. We don’t even try and cover fashion on the Internet because I don’t have the resources to do it. We can cover the weird little shows. We try to stay with what we’re good at.

Tell me about the Party Snaps app you launched.

Paper Doll: Kim Hastreiter in front of a wall of covers. “We don’t have millions of readers but every reader seeks stuff out, knows good from bad, and then shares. So that’s a super valuable type of person.

We’re out every night and we have all the party pictures. People love them, so it’s something that we just decided to do. We have a lot of ideas for more special things like that. That’s where I think we’d like to go online. Online, everything’s very micro. We can’t be one thing for everybody.

I always think of ourselves like The New Yorker. When people ask, ‘What do you compare yourselves to?’ The New Yorker’s the only thing I can think of. Not that we’re the same but it’s very specific, the people who read it feel very personal about it. There’s a Paper person. Now, I see these mainstream magazines that are inspired by Paper, don’t you think?

You inspired our [Young Star’s] shoots. We put creative kids in one room and, boom, that’s it.

That’s cool, I love that.

Have your responsibilities changed over the years?

Yeah, ‘cause now I’m doing ExtraExtra. I love what I’m doing — I’ll only do what I love. The only hard thing is that we grow and I’m not good at being a businessperson. I don’t really wanna do that. It’s just not my strength. I’m a creative person and I love doing that. I love ideas and I love coming up with ideas. I love doing the magazines, I’ll never stop doing that.

The New York Times mentioned that you’re high, mighty, but not haughty. That approachability plays a huge role in connecting with new talent, doesn’t it?

Well, my door is open. When you’re an editor, you get a lot of people calling you and torturing you to see stuff. I could spend all my day having people coming and showing me stuff but you have to know the difference — the people who aren’t good salespeople and the people who don’t have PR people.

You have to have your door open and look at everything that comes across your desk. ‘Cause shy people will send you packages. This girl sent me this fashion thing and I just had it on my desk for three months — I couldn’t put it away — ‘cause there was something interesting in there. And then I went to the Ecco Domani (a foundation that supports careers of aspiring fashion designers) thing ‘cause I was a judge and there she was.

You have to open your eyes to everything. You can’t just listen to the people who are the loudest or the flashiest or the people with money. You have to look at what people do and not get dazed if they’re cute or famous or hyped. You just have to look at the work.

New York’s now perceived as this place that’s creatively dried up. Have you looked elsewhere?

Yeah, it’s hard to be creative in New York ‘cause of the rents. It’s gentrified. So for the past 15 years, we’ve been going to LA. We’ve been feeling LA happening. New York is more the marketplace now. It’s very difficult to have no money, move to New York and make art. You have to go somewhere else. We follow where that is — Seattle, Portland…

When you were a kid living in New Jersey, what got you so drawn to the unusual?

I think I was normal until I went to college. But I went to college in 1969 when there was this big revolution. 1970 was the war in Vietnam, all these protests, gay and women’s liberation, anti-war and people were radical. I jumped in and joined everything. I went to art school and came back six months later a whole different person.

You know, I took acid. Steve Jobs said it was one of the most important things in his life, taking acid. No, really. That was a big part of my formation, taking acid and psychedelics and it was amazing.

You’ve talked about being able to smell cultural movements and articulate them through Paper. What’s an emerging movement now?

The truth is in the Paper: Unforgettable covers through the years, everyone from the reborn Duran Duran to the filthy-fabulous Ke$ha.

There’s always a million cultural movements that are going on at one time. The big thing is that it’s the end of corporate culture. That’s why the whole Occupy Wall Street is so interesting ‘cause the language of corporate culture and government — ‘cause governments are run like corporations — is irrelevant.

What is relevant is a new language: more nimble, more conversational. Corporations are gonna have to change. I think there are pretty revolutionary times that are gonna happen and that’s really exciting to me.

Let’s talk about the future. Do you think Paper’s ever not going to be on actual paper?

Not when I’m alive, probably. I don’t think even young people want zero things to touch. I think that the New York Times and all those other things could be without paper. But something that’s very visual with photography, beauty and art direction, you do lose when it turns to pixels. And I’m an artist — I love creative direction. I love the way things look and feel.

If the world’s slated to end in October, what would Paper’s September issue be like?

I’m an optimist so I always try and come up with what’s good. What to do on that last day — like what to take on that last day, like LSD. I don’t know what I’d do.

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Paper magazine is available at Fully Booked