March Zipper is out.

Why you should care? Because there’s a 90% probability that you’d be looking at one of Marc Jacobs’s 2011 collections. From what I’ve seen in recent years, it’s a safe bet that Jacobs has a standing Zipper subscription.

When it comes to how much he takes “inspiration” from Japanese fashion, the line between “inspiration” and “copying” is very, very blurry. But there’s no arguing that he knows what are the right things to pick and how to tweak them to make them not only appear attractive to a Western/ global mainstream audience, which the originals often aren’t, but look good on them too, which most other equally “inspired” designers (mostly American) fail to.

Content preview here.

Note: The preview platform does not work on all browsers.

If you see nothing, it means it’s not working. If you see pictures but not the page-flip and zoom-in/ out menu at the bottom, then it’s partially working; you can still flip the pages by clicking on the bottom page corners, but no zoom-in for you. If see you see everything I’ve mentioned, congrats!

The cover model is KIMURA Kaera (pronounced “ka-eh-ra.” Capitalization indicates family name), a popular model/ celebrity in Japan, known for her personal style and on-camera presence. This is their 200th issue, so they got ARAKI Nobuyoshi to shoot the cover and a tiny fashion spread. The choice of Araki is a very odd one, as Zipper is one of the most unsexy fashion magazines ever (it’s really all about the clothes), while Araki is essentially the Japanese Terry Richardson. There’s no point in hiring Richardson if you don’t want your pictures to look sex-y in any way, which is exactly the problem with this shoot. The Araki assignment ended up being one of the weakest Zipper shoots ever, if not the weakest. Both model and photographer seem strangely uncomfortable with what they are doing. I wouldn’t be surprised if these are also Araki’s worst pieces.

Araki disappointment aside, the fashion/ art photographer NINAGAWA Mika has an interesting monthly one-page photo feature in Zipper. It’s not necessarily about fashion but always exorbitant and fantasy-driven, a kind of fantasy that you can live in real life if you want to, just like Japanese fashion.

This month’s NinaMika column captures the “Mori Gyaru” (forest girl) trend that’s getting very mainstream (read: commercialized and commoditized and boring-ized) lately. It’s kinda unoriginal interesting and/ but very well realized, except that because of the print quality, it’ll translate very poorly in a scan, so I’m skipping it. Check out Nina’s own site instead.

P.S. I love how Mademoiselle Agnés satirizes Jacobs in Habilées .