Habiba ElGaniny As a magazine lover, a writer and, more importantly, an adult who still still finds herself answering ‘17’ whenever someone asks, “How old are you?”, nostalgia has become my lifelong companion. For those who have encountered my writing before know by now that I am not an advocate of minimalism; I thrive on extra. And I feel alive whenever any man-made restrictions are genuinely overlooked.
I bet we’ve all had those days when deep cleaning feels less like a chore and more like a therapy session, one that usually reveals tons of surprises. One of them might be stumbling upon an old magazine you bought while thinking you were the main character who’d buy a magazine and skip dinner (as the one and only Miss Carrie Bradshaw used to do).
Opening one feels like opening a portal to a different world.
Where did our glamour escape to?
Magazines back then were fun. Right there on the cover, you could feel the vitality radiating from them. Covers were adorned with a kaleidoscope of vibrant colours, clashing neon fonts, drop shadows and exploding starburst bubbles. Their Centre spread always featured a giant, glossy poster of a pop star or actor that readers would carefully rip out and tape to their bedroom walls.
Which leads me to the thought: magazines were really multitasking.
People used to buy magazines not just for the wild ride through the words, experiences, wisdom and lives of other real people, but also to get completely absorbed in the world of visually enchanting imagery they offered. They opened another portal of creativity and intuitive flow: carefully cutting pictures out and hanging them in their rooms, or perhaps adding them to their own personal scrapbooks, which is usually inspired by the way the magazine itself looked.
Buying a magazine was more of an experience than simply acquiring an ornamental object to lie peacefully in your room.
The Art of Comparison: How to Creatively Ruin Your Day
Unfortunately, I can get remarkably inventive when it comes to how to ruin my day in 10 minutes. So, my favourite go-to routine would be to combine nostalgia with comparison and observation.
Let me give you an example: comparing the lost glamour of ’90s magazines with today’s, alongside the endless stream of AI-generated posters and the same soulless colour palettes being recycled over and over again.
Back then, every movie and every magazine edition had a colour palette. When the seasons changed, the palette changed, too. But the thing is back then, there was always a versatile palette to alter.
But now, these differences bother me, but more than that, they scare me. The ultimate question remains: are we setting our intuition aside for the sake of playing it safe?
And my personal question is: who set the rules we’re trying to tie ourselves to?
The Age Before AI and Social Media-Curated Trends
The idea that there was a time before ChatGPT, Gemini and AI tools is just mesmerising. Everything used to be anything but generic. Generic was a word that described something conventional, perhaps, but robotic? No way.
Turns out the future with flying cars actually does exist, thanks to Elon musk of course.
The idea of a collective of genuinely creative minds writing and curating a magazine feels almost utopian. You get to read the writers’ thoughts about everything, and what enriched the experience back then was the fact that it wasn’t trying to be anything. They weren’t striving to appear enigmatic, alluring or luxurious, or to fit some kind of imaginary guidelines or, once again, man-made restrictions that made the wording soulless. The content back then had a signature heartbeat.
The unfiltered wording, the thought-provoking and confronting ideas, the harsh reality checks, and the tender recommendations after scoring horribly out of ten on a quiz were all part of the roller-coaster experience of buying a magazine.
Has the quiz page been taken over by AI-generated pics?
Pages were broken up by colourful personality quizzes (“Does he like you back?”) and agony-aunt advice columns, all tucked beneath that vibrant, glossy aesthetic. People used to bring those quizzes to sleepovers or go through them over the phone. The most popular quizzes were The Crush & Relationship Predictor, The Friendship & Popularity Meter and The “What’s Your Future?” Destiny Quiz.
The results always felt like they were working undercover in your favour, acting like a faithful friend who’d recommend a makeup tutorial, a breakfast recipe, a skincare product or uncaps reassuring little mantras we all need to hear every once in a while:
“Be confident” and “Don’t overthink it.”
So, after closing the drawer and snapping back back to 2026, I noticed that some people stopped buying magazines and took an oath of allegiance to the digital world, calling print magazines a dying art. Maybe the problem is that magazines have stopped being artistic altogether.
So I wonder which part is mistaken: the “dying” part or the “art” part?
Are TikTok personality trends and Spotify quizzes the new quiz pages?
I guess that’s quite disturbing news for anyone born in the ’90s and early 2000s. Personally, I don’t have any problems with TikTok trends, the “put a finger down if you did that” challenges or the “if you put down more than five fingers, that means he does like you” kind of quizzes. But I’d much rather grab a pen, lean over a table or find a friend’s back (whatever is closer) and read the questions aloud to an audience.
You can call me old-school, a vintage lover, a sensual antique or simply a person who enjoys the feel of a pen in one hand and paper in the other. To answer my earlier question, I don’t think magazines are dying. I just think we might have gotten lost in translation (trust me, my friend, that has nothing to do with the fact that I am a writer in a magazine). But in glamour, we believe, and I believe it’ll find its way back.
