Brutal Darlings

For 16 years, the German magazine 032c has been the  fashion insider’s bible,but recently founder joerg koch expanded his vision, got down with Kanye, and started selling T-shirts. The changes are raising eyebrows in the industry, but no matter—‘032c’ has become a full-blown movement.

- Noah Johnson

Joerg and Maria Koch are in Paris at Silencio, the semi-private nightclub conceived by David Lynch. It’s a subterranean labyrinth of rooms, intended to be a place for creative types to exchange ideas, like the Parisian literary salons of the 18th century or Zurich’s Cabaret Voltaire, where Dadaists hung out in the early 1900s, or Studio 54. But tonight it’s simply the best party in town—perhaps the best party on the planet—and the Kochs are hosting. It’s a Paris Fashion Week get-down. Bella Hadid is here. So is A$AP Rocky. Virgil Abloh is DJ’ing. Outside, the crowd is twice as large as the crowd inside, and it’s growing. But Joerg and Maria can’t stay long. They’re getting up early to see their friend and business partner, Justin O’Shea, launch SSS World Corp with a guerrilla fashion show on the street outside the Ritz Hotel. Then it’s back to Berlin, to St. Agnes, the 1960s brutalist church where they live with their kids and dog, Toastie, to work on all things 032c: the magazine, the apparel brand, and the cultural instigation mechanism they run together.

“032c is like our last name,” Maria told me when I was visiting them at St. Agnes recently. “Everything we do, whatever it is, is under this roof.” 032c is the quintessential magazine for a generation that feels no obligation to systems and structures put in place before its time. It is a publication that sometimes operates as an agency, or as a gallery, or as a fashion brand.