Founded in 2024

NOT YOUR REGULAR FASHION PUBLICATION.

Obscura Zine focuses on providing accurate pieces that watch dog the industry, not appease it. Flipping the fashion world on its head, we strive to shed light on issues the future generation looks to change through engaging, transparent storytelling.

It is your one-stop watering hole for both objective news reporting and oddball editorials with a humanistic approach. Through our reporting, we are sparking conversations that are unswayed by the industry. Informing, observing, creating and investigating are what we do by centering content on market needs rather than individual brands.

MEET THE TEAM

  • Editor in Chief

    Yesenia is a fashion writer, editor, and loves thrifting, Carla Fernández, and a good cafe.

  • Founder, Creative Director

    Alexia is a reporter, poet, graphic designer, public relations consultant, forever learner, and coffee lover.

  • Fashion Reporter

    Audrey is an avid reader, Substack writer, and Alexander McQueen appreciator.

BEHIND THE NAME

The camera obscura phenomenon was a revolutionary stepping stone in creating the first photographic camera by having light pass through a small hole into a dark room, projecting the view from outside onto the walls. The original camera obscura projections, or pinhole images, projected these scenes upside down and reversed.  

The word obscure can be defined as uncertainty and ambiguity, while the word obscura, an inflected form of obscurus in latin, can be defined as shadowy and indistinct. 

It is no coincidence that both ties to the word curated the perfect juxtaposition to what we wanted to do with our publication – shed light on issues the future generation looks to change through engaging, transparent storytelling. We want to flip the fashion industry on its head, much like the images created by the camera obscura. Reporting on the good and bad while staying true and unswayed by the big names, we are building a hub for true fashion news and aberrant views. 

BEHIND THE SPIRAL

Spirals appear in our natural and physical world like synchronicities. In visual semiotics, the spiral represents duality, transcendence and harmonious transformation. It calls on the notion that our intuition propels us toward evolution and to step out of the endless cycles we find ourselves caught up in. 

In psychology, the Spiral Theory is a model signifying the different stages of human development that we go through and grow through. It showcases the way we ebb and flow between various mindsets, with structures and desires becoming more complex at each stage of the spiral. This can in essence be applied to our development in the fashion world as well, repeatedly coming round to the same point again but elevating levels and understanding with each layer. 

Historically the eye of the spiral represents a natural center of balance around which all motion and turbulence revolve. The spiral's eye evokes one’s own center as a divine source, the eye of wisdom that observes all but is never entangled in the chaos. 

We aspire to be your spiral’s eye in the chaos of the fashion world: a place to observe, learn, elevate, communicate, and eventually transform the industry.