Celebrating Sportswear International

Since last December on my Instagram account @musgraveeric I regularly have been highlighting the brilliant magazine Sportswear International, which flourished from 1975 until spring 2021.

This was the first IG post https://www.instagram.com/p/CIRWUshLi-W/

As a freelance writer, I was UK correspondent for SI from 1987, then from 1994 I worked in the magazine’s head office in Milan for about 18 months as deputy editor (although my title was managing editor).

Covering almost a decade, this was an exciting period for the fashion biz.

Sportswear International had been founded as Jean Intern in Germany in August 1975 by Peter Schindler, who created what became the No 1 trade title for the jeans, casualwear and young fashion sectors. Originally publishing only in German, he hit on the idea of giving SI international appeal by producing an identical edition with the same images but with the text in English.

The Sportswear sub-brand – used in the American sense to mean casualwear – was introduced in 1978. By 1983 the magazine was known as Sportswear International. By the time I joined the excellent team, which by then had its head office in Milan, the magazine’s reputation was rock solid. By 1987 the frequency followed the fashion trade fair calendar, so we had three issues in the spring (Jan, Feb and March) and three in the autumn (July, August and September). They were sizable productions – heading for 200 pages was not uncommon.

The original large almost-A3 format (which was slightly reduced in later years) and the high-quality paper and excellent production values meant the publication was brilliant for impactive fashion shoots. Skilled photographers and stylists loved working for Sportswear.

Equally importantly, the large format and SI’s position as THE authority in the denim jeans market, the young fashion market and, from the late 1980s onwards the new Fashion Sport sector, made it a very popular and effective choice as an advertising vehicle for big brands in the market. The impact of editorial and advertising made this a visual feast.

Working for Sportswear was one of the highlights of my career as I was allowed to interview and feature anyone who I thought would be of interest to our readership. A significant part of my time was spent visiting interesting retailers around the UK, with special emphasis on innovative independents. Occasionally I would also cover a major new developments for a big brand, such as the Emporio Armani store in Knighstbridge, London.

Peter Schindler sold SI to the German trade publishing house Deutscher Fachverlag (dfv) in 1994. I have featured lots of pages from Sportswear International on my @musgraveeric Instagram feed since December 2020 but when I started the sequence I had no idea that dfv planned to close Sportswear International in spring 2021 and replace it with a new publication called The Spin Off, which has as its focus sustainable fashion.

I was pleased to see SPortswear INternational referenced in the word Spin.

Good luck to all involved in The Spin Off. I hope you have as much fun on it as I had on Sportswear international.

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