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After acquiring fashion, music and cultural site Nylon last summer, Bustle Digital Group is ready to unveil its digital relaunch today — but its print issue has been delayed due to the coronavirus.
The relaunch includes a new and improved web site plus its first digital issue under BDG, with cover star actress and singer Maya Hawke shot at a colorful Brooklyn abode before the lockdown.
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The print aspect was originally due later this year and just before COVID-19 spread throughout the U.S., the thinking was more around spring next year. Now, the virus’ impact on the media industry and advertising landscape has pushed that back to fall 2021. BDG is insistent, though, that it’s committed to a print issue, which will be the only one in the whole company.
“[Print has been delayed] because of the coronavirus and what it’s done to the industry and there’s uncertainty there and it’s a big project and undertaking for us and we’ll have to hire people. We’re still really excited about it,” said Emma Rosenblum, editor in chief of BDG’s lifestyle arm, which includes Bustle, Elite, Romper and The Zoe Report.
“The timeline has just been pushed back somewhat and I still think that it really adds a nice piece to this brand in a kind of in your hand coffee table-esque product that complements the cool digital stuff that’s going up every day.”
When it’s released, it will be the first print issue of Nylon since its previous owner, investor and real-estate magnate Marc Luzzatto, ceased print in 2017.
A live music monthly series, Nylon Nights, was also planned to coincide with the relaunch of Nylon, but that, too, has been postponed due to gatherings of greater than 10 being banned for the time being. Execs are currently looking at how this could work virtually and how they can restart it once the country starts to open up again.
As for the digital issue, which partnered with Sephora Collection, Rosenblum told WWD it never crossed their mind to press pause. “It made sense for us to go forward with it and we felt it would just be a little bright spot not just in our internal teams because it has been that, but also externally for our readers to see a beautiful new site and learn to love a brand that they might have once loved at a certain point in their youth.”
For this issue and other content on the site, editor in chief Alyssa Vingan Klein is looking back to Nylon’s roots when it began in the late Nineties in New York as a monthly print publication.