The team behind a North East luxury lifestyle magazine is celebrating after publishing the 100th edition.
Luxe magazine was launched in 2009 by publisher Chris March and then editor Kathryn Armstrong as a publication to celebrate everything wonderful about the region, says the publisher.
A glossy, bi-monthly magazine, Luxe is hand delivered to postcodes in the North East with an average home value in excess of £1million and is also available to purchase online, the publisher continued.
Designed to be upmarket and aspirational, Luxe was created to answer the call of the region’s business community which wanted a contemporary luxury publication it could identify with.
Each edition features a mix of news, features, reviews, fashion, beauty, food and drink, leading columnists and more. Since launch, the publisher says it has featured many of the region’s biggest names as its cover stars, from Ant & Dec, Sarah Millican and Dave Stewart to Shola Ameobi, Sara Davies and George Clarke.
After 10 years at the helm, Armstrong departed in 2019 with Elyssia Fryer stepping up as editor - but the publication still operates under March and the Allies Group, along with sales director Debi Coldwell, who was instrumental in the magazine’s launch.
“When we launched Luxe some 16 years ago, I don’t think any of us imagined our 100th edition,” said Chris March. “At the time, we just wanted to produce a great magazine which celebrated and championed our wonderful region.
“Now, as we mark this amazing milestone, I feel incredibly proud of the team who have worked tirelessly to get us here. We have to thank Kathryn Armstrong our founding editor - she did a sterling job and set the groundwork for everyone and everything which followed.
“It’s been a whirlwind journey, we’ve had some tremendous highs and some very hard lows, particularly around the time of the pandemic which was a real blow for our community - but we fought on and got through it and here we are today, still going strong and celebrating our 100th edition.”
To mark the milestone, the Luxe team has given the magazine a fresh new look for issue 100, which features Charlotte Reilly on the cover, as she reflects on her journey from a childhood in Teesside to film sets around the world.
The edition also revisits one of its early cover stars, Eugene McCoy, celebrates 40 years of Gateshead’s Metrocentre and more.
Speaking of the redesign David Stubbs, Allies Group's operations director said: “We’ve made changes to the layout, fonts and colours. We didn’t want to make any changes to the masthead as that’s the brand so we decided to freshen it up by giving it a bit of a facelift. It’s the first refresh we’ve had since launch.
“The magazine has evolved over time but this is the first time it’s had a deliberate overhaul. We acted in response to audience feedback and the result is it’s a lot cleaner.
“The pages appear larger which we feel is down to raising the text size slightly and making some changes to the colours which I think makes the content bounce off the page a bit more.
“The changes aren’t huge but they are significant and the result is a cleaner, fresher publication which has been brought right up to date.”
Along with the printed magazine, Luxe says its website is updated regularly with latest launches, news and events across the region and also publishes a monthly newsletter, Luxe at Large.
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