Yet Another Men's Magazine Bites the Dust: Say Goodbye to Details

Third-tier men’s magazine Details will publish its last issue in December, the Wall Street Journal reports, after months of speculation that the publication would be shuttered.

The WSJ writes that some of Details content and staff will move to GQ (recently hit by layoffs), which will start publishing GQ Style twice a year. Details.com will redirect to gqstyle.com, and about 20 percent of the brand’s 60 staffers will be assigned elsewhere under parent company Condé Nast’s umbrella.

Founded in 1982 by Annie Flanders, Details was then described as an “offbeat fashion magazine” by the New York Times. When Condé bought the publication in 1988, it was turned into a specifically men’s fashion magazine, one that lost its luster after the ‘90s passed. In the 2000s, it was described as a publication that was redesigned to become a “raunchy publication for young males,” to compete with a then-successful Maxim (which has also struggled with a rebrand recently).

Per the Details press release, those days are over: Details is neither as successful a fashion magazine as GQ, nor a sexy men’s magazine able to compete with Esquire or even the struggling Playboy.

Additionally, we have decided to build on the success and massive overall audience of GQ as our men’s brand, and will be expanding the business through their GQ Style franchise. GQ Style, which has consistently been popular among upscale millennials and luxury advertisers alike, will significantly expand its digital presence and also increase to a quarterly print schedule.

It’s been a busy fall for Condé Nast (as well as the rest of the media world): while there was speculation that the company would close women’s fitness magazine Self as well, Self is being saved, though its business team will be merging with Glamour’s. Last week, Allure’s founder Linda Wells was replaced with former Nylon editor Michelle Lee, a move that Women’s Wear Daily reported had been shepherded in by Anna Wintour.

Also at play in this decision: Condé Nast’s recent acquisition of Pitchfork, which gives them a brand popular with “upscale” millennial males in a way Details apparently has not been. In the greater men’s content market, these closures indicate that what men want is changing: “raunchy” men’s magazine FHM closed this week as well.