New Delhi: Phillip Picardi has finally made it to Playboy’s Miami headquarters. He is the first openly gay editor-in-chief of the magazine. It has led to a major overhaul of Playboy, which has been published since the 1950s for a male audience.
Picardi, the new chief brand officer and EOC, joined on 11 March. He was formerly the editorial director of Teen Vogue. He is also the founder of Condé Nast’s queer-focused outlet named Them. Now, the Playboy website mentions an updated brand mission where “all people can pursue pleasure”.
“Queer rights don’t exist without women’s rights,” Picardi told a media outlet. “These things are connected, and Playboy has always been very engaged with that.”
High-brow Playboy?
The recent features in the magazine have been tackling loaded subjects such as trans pornography, reclaiming sexuality, among other things.
“Our moment right now is both extremely prudish and extremely pornographic,” he told Adweek. “The idea that we need a publication that is able to explain sexuality as a cultural force, especially as our younger folks are facing a sex recession and loneliness epidemic—it felt like the right challenge.”
In his latest post on Instagram, Picardi seems to have shared a screenshot of The Times profile on him.
“I am sorry to be crass about it,” he said. “But I don’t think the point of the magazine is for self-pleasure [anymore]. You no longer need a print magazine for that.”
He shared what kind of images the magazine will showcase from now on.
“It weirdly offers an artistic and high-brow view of the female nude, at a time when it is hard to come by.”
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The latest cover explored Cara Delevingne’s profile, her modelling career and more.
Picardi had shared on his social media account that his is a family of immigrants in America. His grandmother fled Italy and came to Ellis Island. She worked in a factory sewing buttons on coats, he said.
“When my grandmother spoke to us about wrong or right, or voting, or God, she reminded us of her experience living without much money, or feeling displaced in a new country. She wanted us to understand, even after she left us, that we, too, come from the dirt—but also, and in a more complicated way, that the dirt is what connects us to the stars,” Picardi wrote in a heartfelt post.