It’s a frequent sore point for us that the men/women ratio of mono.kultur features tends to be at 3:1, and we’re sometimes struggling even to that end. It has certainly nothing to do with that there aren’t as many talented and interesting women out there, but when it comes to having made a name for themselves that will be familiar to a larger audience, men unfortunately still outnumber women, even within the creative industries. Arguably, this has also to do with media exposure, and that’s exactly where new London-based Riposte come in.
Describing themselves as a ’smart magazine for women’, it’s also a smart magazine about women. And lo and behold, it turns out that Kanye West has his stage sets designed by one Es Devlin, that even that most male-dominated field of computer technology would not be the same without the pioneering work of Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper, that many art institutions across the world are actually defined by women – they just don’t get talked about as much as their male couterparts.
And so Riposte is a charming equivalent to men’s titles like Port or even Monocle that work on the premise that their readers have a wide range of interests, from politics to design – whereas most women’s magazines will have us believe that women care about little else than fashion, cosmetics and celebrities, for whatever outmoded reasoning. Riposte, on the other hand, barely mentions fashion – and might possibly be the only women’s magazine to get by without any fashion editorials – but instead features a refreshing and unusual focus on women of excellence.
Lighthearted in its approach (with the writing possibly a little too lighthearted at times), beautifully designed and generally enthusiastic, it’s a title that even works for men.
