These days, keeping track of what's hot and current in fashion is not as easy as it once was. Not so long ago browsing store windows of directional fashion outlets or thumbing through the popular consumer magazines was enough for fashion insight, however diluted. Nowadays it's the off-the-trodden-path shops - such as Martin Margiela's store - that are setting the trends just as much as fashion and challenging magazines such as Frank and Strippedbare.

On the publishing front, a new wave of cultural arts magazines has appeared and it's changing the underlying structure of the dialogue between fashion and art. Publications such as Berlin-based 032c, Strippedbare, and The Berliner, along with New York's Archis, and Milan's Boiler, have become required reading for multidisciplinary designers such as Hedi Slimane and Helmut Lang. Picking up where magazines like Purple started a few years back, these journals delve into heady discussions about the uncertainty of the interrelations between commerce, art, fashion, literature, and technology, while uncovering a wealth of ideas and creative possibilities.

Each challenges established notions of readers' definitions of beauty, form, and prose with a visceral intensity that provokes us to distort and re-evaluate our visions for the future. In contrast to the prettied-up images of conventional publications, these magazines create a new architecture of language (in both text and image) which shows the current landscape to be bleak and apocalyptic. Voices of dissent declare war against topics such as the obvious, perception, solitude, ignorance, and of course, the status quo. With a roster of contributors that reads like a veritable who's who of fashion, art, and contemporary lit, we are, without question, witnessing a revolution in how the creative world will convey ideas to its audience.