Boulevard (lifestyle magazine)

Boulevard was a lifestyle magazine created by Fiona Scott-Lazareff in 1990 in Paris.^[1] Boulevard was the flagship of the publishing group Mediatime France. It was a monthly glossy in English, targeting sophisticated, cosmopolitan readers and covering the latest trends in fashion, food, design, arts and culture in Paris.

History

Fiona Lazareff, managing director of the Group Mediatime, is an entrepreneur of Scottish origin. Having started out with a career in finance, she arrived in Paris aged 32 and raised 3.2 MF from French institutional investors including Europar and Orfimar.^[2]
In 1991, as a marketing "stunt" for Boulevard, Fiona Lazareff, created the Bal des Débutantes at the Hôtel de Crillon. She decided to turn Boulevard's annual photo shoot of eligible young girls, dressed in Haute Couture, into a live event, inspired in part by the Barclay dress show in London.^[3] It gave birth to a new annual and major international social event which now takes place every year in Paris.

Editorial slant

Described at its launch as the magazine of three P's, «People, Power and Panache»,^[4] this magazine targets, according to Fiona Lazareff, the founder and editor-in-chief, an «élite cosmopolite des grands voyageurs d'affaires attachés à découvrir la réalité française avec un éclairage international»,^[5] (an elite and cosmopolitan group of business men and women curious about what's really going on in France). Focusing on art and culture, this magazine, according to the article describing it in Le Figaro, appears to be the «petit frère dévergondé du Financial Times et de Wall Street Journal».^[6] (weekend supplement of the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal ).
Boulevard built a reputation for attracting celebrity columnists and talented young writers such as C. Z. Guest, Lucy Yeomans, Emmanuel de Brantes, Edouard Carmignac, Alexandre Lazareff, Diana Geddes, and Stephanie Theobald. For its covers, the magazine counted on famous international photographers such as Lyu Hanabusa.
Between 1992 and 1995 a Chinese and a Japanese versions of Boulevard were launched.^[7]

References

1. «"Paris Boulevard" lancé par Fiona Scott Lazareff», Telerama, May 1990
2. "Fiona Scott Roberts lance Boulevard à Paris", Capital Finance, 23 September 1999. Archived 19 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine.
3. «"Les debs défilent", Le coup d’œil de Janie Samet», Le Figaro, 26 September 1991
4. « BOULEVARD entre en Bourse », Emmanuel de Brantes, Le Quotidien, 21 April 1990. Archived 19 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine.
5. ibidem
6. «Portrait : Fiona Scott-Roberts : une Ecossaise lance "Boulevard"», Isabelle Nataf, Le Fig-Eco, 17 July 1990. Archived 19 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine.
7. Ivan Rioufoul, Le Figaro, April 1992