Fashion Publications Ranked by Reach: 86 Titles, Real Numbers

Here is the top of the list, with the numbers that matter.

The ranking

The thing worth noticing

Three of the famous names on this list are regional editions, and the table says which.

"Vogue" in a ranking table is exactly the thing regional edition vs flagship tells you to check, so here is the check, done.

• Vogue Ukraine is vogue.ua, published in Ukrainian, 1.1 million monthly visits, domain rating 73.
• Elle Ukraine is elle.ua, also Ukrainian, 563,000 monthly visits, domain rating 70.
• Harper's Bazaar Australia is harpersbazaar.com.au, 416,000 monthly visits, domain rating 74.

The American and British flagships of all three are different publications with different numbers and are not what is on offer. These are perfectly good placements for the right person. They are simply not the magazines most people picture when they read the names, and the difference belongs in the table rather than in a footnote.

Teen Vogue, at 2.9 million, is the largest title here carrying the Vogue name, and it is the US edition.

Complex leads, and it is not really a fashion magazine. It covers streetwear, music and culture together, which is where a large part of the fashion conversation actually happens now.

WWD is second and sells to a different person entirely. Women's Wear Daily is the trade: buyers, brands, retail executives. Nearly seven million monthly visits of people who work in the industry rather than people who shop in it. For a label trying to reach stockists rather than customers, it is the single most useful title on this list.

The link pattern holds here too

Of the fifteen titles above, nine pass a do-follow link and six do not. Across all 86 fashion and beauty titles the split is 63 do-follow to 23 nofollow, so the category is unusually generous. The exception is the top of it, which matches what we found across the whole catalogue in which publications give do-follow links: the names at the top are the ones least likely to link.

WWD, Allure, Glamour and Teen Vogue, four of the six biggest, all mark their outbound links nofollow, and so do Grazia and Elle Ukraine. Complex, Bustle, Flaunt, Vogue Ukraine, Elle India, The Zoe Report, Nylon, The Manual and Harper's Bazaar Australia all pass one.

If the goal is your own site's ranking, that narrows the list considerably. If the goal is credibility with a buyer or a casting director, it does not matter at all.

How to choose among them

Fashion is one of the few categories where the title says something about the work before anyone reads the piece, so fit matters more here than scale.

Selling to consumers: Bustle, Glamour, Allure and The Zoe Report reach readers who buy. Bustle and The Zoe Report also pass a link.

Selling to the trade: WWD, and nothing else comes close. A buyer reads it; a shopper does not.

Streetwear, music-adjacent or youth brands: Complex and Nylon, where the audience already lives in that world.

Reaching Ukraine: Vogue Ukraine, Elle Ukraine and Marie Claire Ukraine, all real fashion titles with real readerships in that market. Running two of them covers most of it twice.

Men's fashion and grooming: The Manual at 432,000, AskMen at 248,000 and Esquire Australia for that market. The Manual is the one that passes a link; AskMen runs marked as sponsored.

Beauty specifically: Allure is the category title. Its readers are there for beauty rather than fashion generally.

Younger audiences: Teen Vogue, which is larger than most people assume and has become a serious title in its own right.

The other 71

The table above is the top of a list of 86. Below it sit regional editions, trade titles, independent magazines and the niche publications that cover one corner of the industry well.

Several of them are better buys than the famous names for a specific brand, for exactly the reason WWD beats Vogue for a wholesaler: a smaller readership made entirely of the right people outperforms a larger one made mostly of the wrong ones. Four worth naming:

• Fashion Week Daily publishes as The Daily Front Row and is read by the industry about itself: editors, designers, agencies, castings. A trade title wearing a consumer title's clothes.
• Retail Insider reports Canadian retail: who is opening where, which brands are entering the market, who signed the lease. If you want stockists in Canada, this is the one.
• FASHION Magazine is Canada's own national glossy, published from Toronto since 1977, and it does more for a Canadian customer than a US title of the same size.
• 1883 Magazine and KALTBLUT are independents, London and Berlin, whose editorial purpose is finding people before they are known.

Everything we place in is listed by name on our publications page.

The short version

Complex and WWD are the two largest fashion placements available, at around seven million monthly visits each. The Vogue on offer is Vogue Ukraine, not the American flagship, and Teen Vogue is bigger than both.

The biggest names are also the least likely to pass a link, which matters if you are buying for SEO and not at all if you are buying for credibility.

Pick the title your specific buyer reads, then check its own number rather than the brand's reputation.

Related reading: which publications give do-follow links, regional edition vs flagship, and how to choose the right publication.