Reimagining the Brand: ‘Restyling’ Culture and Nostalgia in the Magazines of ASOS and TOPSHOP

In 2025, journalist Angelo Ruggeri wrote about the emerging trend of fashion-brand magazines, focusing on the fashion powerhouses Chanel and Dior. Ruggeri aimed to define print media as ‘the new frontier’ of brand storytelling, a pioneering ‘strategic shift’ in luxury marketing. Yet this is no new frontier, but a resurgence of an enduring marketing device. Print media is a promotional tool that maps fashion’s symbiotic relationship with the brand magazine, used not only by luxury fashion but also by high-street retailers.

Mass-market fashion brands have historically worked in tandem with print, a crucial tool for communicating aspirational lifestyles, aesthetic ideals, and culture through curated desirability. Through the twentieth century, British high-street fashion retailer Marks and Spencer created its own ‘in-house’ customer magazines, distributed alongside its sales catalogues; fashion editorials featuring celebrities and narratives of beauty and fashion were interspersed with articles on contemporary feminist themes and seasonal inspiration. The early twenty-first century saw leading fast-fashion brands Topshop and ASOS utilising print and, from the 2000s, digital publications to encourage creative expression through fashion; however, by the late 2010s, both Topshop and ASOS ceased print production due to a transforming marketing approach and, in the case of Topshop, withdrawing from the high street. Recently, both brands have changed the format of their magazine platforms. In 2025, Topshop shifted back to publishing a print magazine, as it reimagined itself as a brand and within consumers’ perceptions. Shortly after publishing its 2018 ASOS.com Work-in-Progress unisex issue, ASOS moved from a hardcopy periodical format to ‘social-first digital content’ (Goedluck, 2018).

ASOS is currently promoting its 25th year of ‘iconic’ trading and ‘restyling culture’ by resharing the covers from its ASOS.com ‘magazine archive’ on the pages of its online shop, while Topshop’s renewed print, and recently digital, magazine relies on nostalgia to revive its ‘trailblazing reputation’ (Reid, 2025). This case study focuses on storytelling in ASOS and Topshop magazines to explore brand narratives and time-specific cultural representation. Taking direction from philosopher Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the ‘cultural intermediary’, writer Patrick Metzger’s phenomenon of the ‘nostalgia pendulum’, and theorist Joseph Hancock’s ‘branding identity’, this case study will reflect on how the fashion brand magazine exists as a conflicted space of cultural storytelling, subtle sales pitches and company promotion.