Tina Turner on the cover - not many magazines can give themselves such a birthday present.

The "Madame" treats herself to the 70th anniversary of her founding.

And the singer also finds lyrical words in an interview with the magazine: "In difficult times we often have the feeling of being stuck in a cold winter.

A winter that seems endless.

But despair is not good counsel, while hope is.”

Alphonse Kaiser

Responsible editor for the department "Germany and the World" and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Magazin.

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Did the eighty-one-year-old, who has already survived a lot, describe the German fashion magazine market with that?

Because the magazine makers are really stuck in the cold winter: "Elle", "Harper's Bazaar", "Vogue" and also "Madame" - they all had to shiver in the past decade because Instagram is much faster and cheaper because of the corona pandemic affected kiosk sales and because there are more relevant issues in times of climate change and war.

The new style at Condé-Nast is symbolic of the crisis: At “Vogue”, Anna Wintour now determines from New York what is fashionable, the German editors feel dwarfed as translators, and the new boss Kerstin Weng (“ Head of Editorial Content") may not even be allowed to sit in the front row in Paris because of the Anglo-American supremacy.

Still, everyone with Tina Turner believes that hope is the best counsel.

Something is moving in the market, and that in Munich!

A whole squad of young bosses, who are now all just "heads of something", want to open up new pages.

Kerstin Weng will give Vogue impetus despite translated texts and fashion spreads that have been taken over;

her successor at “Instyle”, Sophie Grützner, will energetically counter bad news in Arabellapark, such as the fact that the American “Instyle” will now be discontinued as a paper edition;

“Glamour” gets back into the conversation with “Shopping Week” in April after a long dry spell in lockdown;

and Kerstin Schneider from "Harper's Bazaar" is even gaining new readers in cooperation with "Germany's Next Topmodel".

Makeover for the "Madame"

Among all the magazines with the retouched titles, the "Madame" has always shown her own face.

No wonder, because while the other big names are just licenses from American publishers, the lady with the French name is an original German foundation.

Launched on the post-war market in 1952, it always had to emphasize its education in competition with the first name books "Constanze", "Petra" and "Brigitte".

Long statements about the downside of equal rights in the 1970s or about rising wage costs and a crippling state “subsidy system” in the 1980s had conservative charm.

Whoever read "Madame" had achieved something.

The current editor-in-chief, Petra Winter, also has tangible access to reality;

she was with "Bild" for a long time.

She has been back in Munich since 2014.

Eight years in such a job is an eternity by today's standards.

Time will seem short to your editors.

Because the dynamic boss not only founded the dinghy "Monsieur", which is now included four times a year as a lifestyle supplement in the "Handelsblatt" (the business newspaper has discontinued its own magazine).

Since the beginning of 2021, the "Madame" no longer belongs to Bauer, but to the Looping Group.

That was a risky change of sides: Because the agency, founded by the former “SZ-Magazine” and “Stern” editor-in-chief Dominik Wichmann with three friends in 2017, does marketing for Mercedes, BMW and other customers.

That doesn't mean that you can also win advertising customers in "Madame": "Before, there were more adverts from Mercedes," jokes the editor-in-chief.

The "Madame" should remain independent within the Looping Group, which already has more than 250 employees, as Wichmann and Winter emphasize.

"We wanted to change something," says Winter.

"And so it was a good thing that we met partners who also came from major publishers and know how to make a magazine and develop a media brand."

Getting started felt like a fountain of youth: According to media data, the age of the readers has fallen to 46.9 years and the net household income has grown to almost 4,000 euros.

The total circulation is almost 60,000, the "hard circulation" (single sales and subscriptions) 26,000 copies.

Petra Winter calls her paper “particularly text-strong” in the large forest of papers, which is what her predecessors Irene Krawehl and Katrin Riebartsch also thought.

There is indeed a lot to read in this booklet.

The approximately 20 editors still write themselves. And the boss sets a good example.

When she meets Anke Engelke for lunch, it's not just about the red top with padded shoulders, but also about the "role understanding of self-determined mothers".

For the series “Lunch with .

.

.”, rubricated somewhat pompously as “Reflection”,

Contrasting program on the web

But it looks different on the website.

It is free of editorial superstructure.

If you click on the headline “How the coveted glow is created”, you will go straight to the glow gel peeling for 65 euros.

"Finally come to rest"?

Perfect Night Sleeping Balm for 75 euros.

Under the title "Maison Madame" it's about self-care, beauty, luxury, in short: about business.

The magazine is for the nice content, the website for the ugly commerce.

Working together with the big brother Looping Group, says Petra Winter, is “like ping-pong”.

The Tina Turner story also owes its existence to the back and forth. Because Dominik Wichmann helped the legendary singer with her autobiography "My Love Story".

The "Madame" title is a kind of thank you.

She is simply the best.