TREATS Magazine Throws a Party

As the Clothes Come Off, the Magazines Dress Up

Treats Magazine Throws a Party: Mr. Shaw threw the kind of Halloween party that Hugh Hefner might have given in his heyday.

By BEE SHAPIRO

It was the kind of Halloween party that Hugh Hefner might have given in his heyday. Young, almost-but-not-quite-A-list celebrities like Derek Hough, Russell Simmons, Aaron Paul, Jeremy Piven and Ryan Seacrest mingled among a crowd of barely clad, voluptuous women (some who performed fire-throwing tricks in Indian-themed, barely there costumes) while occasionally flipping through copies of an erotic magazine featuring more barely clad (or not clad at all) women on its glossy pages.

But the party was at the No Vacancy club in Los Angeles, not a grotto in Holmby Hills. The magazine was Treats, not Playboy. And the host was Steve Shaw, 47, yet another in a long line of fledgling publishers eager to be anointed “the next Hugh Hefner.”

Yet Mr. Shaw, when discussing the annual “Trick or Treats” party a week later, was quick to put some distance between himself and the infamous Playboy Mansion parties hosted by Mr. Hefner, now 87. “It wasn’t a bunch of cheesy people or cheesy girls,” Mr. Shaw wrote in an email.

“Major people were coming up to me,” he added, ticking off the list of his celebrity guests. “They were saying, ‘I’ve never seen so many beautiful, classy people at a party, ever.’ ”

James Goldstein and Lena Gora.

A few weeks earlier, Mr. Shaw had been in New York for a meeting with Vice and sat down for an interview at the Soho House in the meatpacking district. With a noticeable British accent (a remnant of his Manchester upbringing), California tan and rose-gold Rolex, he cut a sharp figure, and perhaps a sharper sales pitch.

There’s no one doing anything similar to Treats, he pronounced. As a photographer, Mr. Shaw shot covers for Maxim in the ’90s. He started the magazine, which he described as fashion-forward and riskier (read: copious amounts of nudity) for, say, the Maxim graduate, in 2011 with $600,000 of his money. He has enjoyed a buzzy if nascent success since; despite its $30 price tag, the magazine has sold well (about 600 copies across five issues) at Book Soup, an influential store in Los Angeles, said Melissa Reekers, Book Soup’s buyer. 

“We had a lot of people calling before the magazine was even out,” she said. “It kind of went around underground.”

Mr. Shaw credited the magazine’s contributing photographers, respected names like Mark Seliger, Tony Duran and Ben Watts, for much of the draw. It also can’t hurt that early on Treats attracted famous fanboys like Brett Ratner, Adam Levine, Robin Thicke and Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. Mr. Ratner would go on to shoot two spreads for Issue 4; Mr. Levine and Mr. Thicke would each cast the Issue 3 cover girl, Emily Ratajkowski, in their music videos; and Mr. Thicke would appear on the cover of Issue 6 surrounded by five nearly nude women.

Mr. Shaw said that Mr. Hefner “is brilliant,” but added that Playboy was out of touch. Describing a 5:30 p.m. dinner he had at the Playboy Mansion as Mr. Hefner’s guest, he said, “it was like an old people’s home. They have this buffet of food that they serve every night. All of Hefner’s old friends are there.”

But if Mr. Shaw, whose magazine has only three staff members, really has designs on becoming the next Hugh Hefner, he has a lot of competition.

On the indie newsstands, several recent erotic publications like Wolf, Stalker, and Adult and 25 Magazine, which both claim to approach the subject from a woman’s gaze, aim to titillate and provoke. In fashion, clothes have often become an afterthought, as in the topless pictorials published in CR Fashion Book, Vogue Italia and Vs. Magazine. And more in the mainstream, American Apparel’s suggestive visuals, Tom Ford’s sexually charged ads and music videos like Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball,” directed by Terry Richardson, who often favors a dirty realist sort of perspective, have pushed the R-rated envelope.

“In France, there is a term for this; we call it ‘porn chic,’ ” said Frédéric Beigbeder, 48, a novelist and the editorial director behind the newly revived Lui magazine. Once dubbed the French Playboy in the ’60s and ’70s, Lui stopped publication about 19 years ago, but Mr. Beigbeder’s pal Jean-Yves Le Fur, founder of Numéro, revived the enterprise this September. The reimagined and softened Lui is more about “seduction than sex,” said Mr. Beigbeder, pointing to its first cover, with the actress Léa Seydoux. Shot by Mario Sorrenti, Ms. Seydoux wears only a sheer black cape. Georgia May Jagger, in a cover shot by Mr. Richardson for Issue 2, gets away with slightly more: panties and a black blazer worn strategically open. 

Mr. Beigbeder has also persuaded some of his writer friends to contribute “intellectual text” and plans to mine his ’70s nostalgia. “I remember when I was young, there were lots of magazines with naked women,” he said. “The era felt free. Not anymore. Now you have it on the Internet, but it’s not aesthetic. It’s mainly porn.”

Why the seemingly sudden surge of upscale pornography? 

One factor may be the “need to appear ‘edgy’ and new or even shocking to cut through the media clutter,” said Chyng Sun, a clinical associate professor of media studies at New York University. “In a time when advertising already looks like soft-core porn, where will they go? It is a predictable progression that these industries will go more and more extreme.”

Eugena Washington, Christi Burns and Porsche Thomas.

Samir Husni, a professor at the University of Mississippi who has selected the winners of the annual MIN Awards by the Media Industry Newsletter for the last 30 years, says Treats, which he awarded with a Hottest Launch honor in 2011, “has taken the pornography out of nudity.”

Treats, he said, stands out from its more explicit forebears, like Penthouse and Hustler, with its “European erotic approach rather than the American approach, which is more pornographic.” He also liked that the Treats business model had other extensions, like selling photos as limited-edition collector’s items. “What differentiates Treats is the sense of curation,” he said.

But for some, it all seems very familiar. “It’s an old cliché: Sex sells,” said Mr. Watts, the photographer, who thinks there is room in the market for Playboy and for magazines like Treats.

“When I take pictures, I don’t think about clothes. I don’t think about photographing people naked.

It’s about creating a narrative that just happens to look good naked.”

A version of this article appears in print on November 24, 2013, on page ST10 of the New York edition with the headline: As the Clothes Come Off, the Magazines Dress Up.

You have read this article with the title TREATS Magazine Throws a Party. You can bookmark this page URL https://duk78.blogspot.com/2013/11/treats-magazine-throws-party.html. Thanks!