Women’s Wear Daily (WWD) is the New York Times of fashion. It has published news everyday on anything and everything to do with the fashion and beauty world for the past 100-plus years. Some even refer to it as the “fashion bible.”

Want to know what was big at Milan Fashion Week? Read WWD. Want to know which designer just partnered with Kendall Jenner for their new spring line? Read WWD.

It’s only flaw? With a yearly subscription price (for print only) of a whopping $149 (or $109 with the student discount), the demographic of the people who read the publication is highly limited: upper-middle to upper-class urban fashionistas.

Everyday I go into work and see freshly pressed copies sitting on my editor’s desks, waiting for them to arrive and open the crisp pages and read all about what’s going on in their world.

I, myself, would love to have a subscription to WWD because as someone who wants to enter the fashion industry, knowing what’s going on is important. But for a little over 10 bucks I could get a subscription to ELLE or Vogue – just as prestigious publications – but I wouldn’t get my news as often. And I’d be OK with that, as I’m sure many other people are.

But WWD recognizes this problem and is making efforts to reach a wider audience.

Penske Media Corp. (PMC), the publishing company for WWD, and Tribune Publishing Co. (TPC) announced earlier this month that WWD will appear on LATimes.com and be distributed to select Los Angeles Times, the San Diego Union-Tribune, Chicago Tribune and Sun Sentinel (South Florida) subscribers once a month. The new service will start in September, just in time for Fashion Week.

So once a month, select readers will receive a special print edition of fashion and beauty content that is specifically curated with them in mind in addition to the fashion content that their typical paper would provide. Not to mention that they will also get two issues from Footwear News, as well as a beauty-focused issue from Beauty Inc and WWD and an accessories special issue. Not a bad deal.

WWD has a very New York City-centered reader base, as it is the United States’ fashion capital. The aim of partnering with TPC is to reach a wider base of fashion readers in Los Angeles and Chicago, two of the United States’ other cities with immense fashion influence. They are hoping to reach an additional 200,000 readers across the United States with this partnership.

If only I lived in either L.A. or Chicago so I could get this special content, or if I had 100 bucks to get it everyday.

I’m interested to see how this partnership is going to work and how it is going to expand the readership of WWD. I’m also interested to see if they would consider expanding the new print media to other cities besides L.A., Chicago and Miami.

While big cities are obvious fashion targets, there are plenty of fashionistas in small towns. And we need our WWD.

Alexis McDonell is a junior magazine journalism major. You can email her at admcdone@syr.edu.

Published on July 31, 2015 at 4:12 pm