Katie Grand leaves Love magazine more than a decade after founding the publication

The editor-in-chief of Love magazine Katie Grand has announced she is leaving the publication more than a decade after founding it.

The journalist, 49, from Birmingham, who launched the groundbreaking biannual fashion magazine in 2009, posted the news on Instagram.

Sharing a series of Love’s most famous covers, Katie recalled the magazine’s first issue, which featured her longtime friend Beth Ditto posing naked on the cover.

She added that the most recent issue of the magazine, which focused on Covid and the Black Lives Matter protests was ‘a book of pictures and words that reflected this year’s chaos, soul-searching, heartbreak and – although sometimes it was hard to see – positivity and hope’, adding: ‘This issue is the most important magazine I have ever produced. It is the one I am most proud of, it is the one that means the most; it is the one that I can’t improve on.’

Sharing the news, she started by recalling the launch of the magazine in 2009, writing: ‘Where to begin (and what a way to end)? At the beginning, I suppose. 

‘It started with a few notes and a few phone calls (probably on landlines). 

‘Our first cover was of my longtime friend Beth Ditto and us dyeing her hair orange and photographing her in the presidential suite at the Chateau Marmont Hotel in Los Angeles with Mert and Marcus.  

‘The clothes were specially made by Gareth Pugh, Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton and many others.’

Commenting on the decision for the singer to pose nude, she wrote: ‘We didn’t think about making a statement or being controversial – it was a gut instinct of loving Beth and her music and wanting to take strong, sexy pictures of her.’  

She continued: ‘This month we published issue 24 of LOVE. During the most politically and sociologically turbulent period I believe I’ve seen in my lifetime, we produced something special that I hope reflected the unpredictable times we are living in. 

‘From Covid to the Black Lives Matter protests, me and the team sought to listen to our contributors and give them the space they deserved.’

She added: ‘Love Diaries was not really a fashion magazine… This issue is the most important magazine I have ever produced. 

‘The world has changed, and I have changed, and what is important is now so clear.

‘Telling beautiful and important stories will never change. But it’s time for something new, it’s time for something different.’

She explained: ‘Thank you to every single person who has collaborated, who has created and who has supported us. It’s been an incredible, unforgettable and life-changing journey. Now, we are on to the next… And it’s exciting.’ 

The post was quickly flooded with praise from celebrity friends and collaborators, with Adwoa Aboah writing: ‘Thank you for bringing me along on the journey.’

Meanwhile Paloma Faith wrote: ‘ Congratulations on such an iconic magazine. Sending you all the love in what you choose to do next!!’

And Kendall Jenner added: ‘Lots and lots of LOVE! excited for whats next for you!’

Katie, who was once named ‘one of the most powerful stylists in the world’ by The Telegraph, began her career with  a foundation course at Birmingham’s Bournville College of Art before moving on to Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.

She began fashion styling while still at college and was involved with directing and styling fashion shoots for newly launched magazine Dazed and Confused in the 1990s.

She later joined The Face as Fashion Director before becoming Editor-in-Chief of POP, where she famously convinced Elizabeth Hurley to pose naked on the cover shortly after giving birth. 

It was while she was working for the magazine that Nicholas Coleridge, managing director of Condé Nast U.K., fell under her spell.

He told the Wall Street Journal in 2011: ‘There was a rumor Pop might be for sale, so we stalked it for three years, but EMAP [Pop’s publisher] wouldn’t sell.

‘I met Katie and suggested as a joke—a serious joke—she might like to start a competitor to Pop, so we took her and everybody who worked on Pop. We bought the magazine without buying it.’ 

Love has since expanded into film and garners attention each year for its digital advent calendar, which was reformatted in 2018 after the #MeToo movement rendered its sexual approach outdated. 

In the latest issue, Katie wrote about contracting Covid-19 after travelling to Milan and Paris for fashion month in March.

She said she experienced difficult symptoms for four weeks, during which she also was thought to have pneumonia. 

Katie has not revealed any immediate future plans, but has confirmed that she will be working with Sarabande, the charity set up in memory of Alexander McQueen. 

One of her plans sees her taking part in Miles for refugees, where she will be raising money for the Red Cross by running 555 miles during the month of September alongside a team of others.