But with sales of lad mags in decline, are dad mags the new cultural bibles?
If there’s one thing that doesn’t sit well with baby sick it’s a 200 designer T-shirt. But that’s not a view shared by the creators of a new magazine aimed exclusively at fathers. FQ Magazine is the second so-called “dad mag” to hit the streets in as many months, featuring a previously unheard of mix of male fashion shoots and articles about parenting. Along with Dad magazine, which launched in April under former Esquire and Arena editor Peter Howarth, it is breaking new ground by reaching out to a market that has long been cold-shouldered at the newsstands. Men’s lifestyle magazines have always been rocky ground for publishing houses. But the astonishing success of lads mags like FHM and Loaded in the 1990s proved that magazines could be a useful barometer of cultural trends among young men. Once you become a dad you don’t immediately have to join the cardigan brigade Damion Queva, FQ magazine It’s still debated as to whether the lad spawned the mag or vice versa. In the noughties how
