“Since I was really little I always had this feeling of fighting against everybody. I knew that I was different, I knew that I was right. They didn’t know there was another world out there, they thought that the world was [our] little town. They never really thought about it, and to me that was crazy. So I moved.” He moved north at first, to Madrid from his hometown on the outskirts of Seville, then west to Miami to study Graphic Design and Art Direction. North again to New York City for an internship, west to Los Angeles for a job then back east to Paris to work on the Louis Vuitton account at advertising agency Ogilvy. “Paris is amazing, but it’s not open to everything,” he tells me. “New York offers your more possibilities.” And like that, for Fernando Lahoz, Designer, Art Director, Co-founder and current Editor In Chief of Vaga magazine, it was back to NYC. “People who are here are here because they want to do something.” Fernando is much like I always imagine Spaniards to be—his accent is thick, his smile is smooth, his hair is dark, and he wears a leather jacket. When he speaks of Vaga, the magazine he co-founded with Walker Brockington, his words quicken and his sentences leap from his mouth with the zeal of an excited artist whose passion piece is still in progress. “I had this idea of creating a publication that feels like a European publication but it's done in America, in New York, and it has the marriage of these two markets. It has the celebrity aspect, the music aspect of America, with the European feeling of the editorials. I call it more than a fashion magazine. I call it a style magazine, or a noir publication mixed with style. For us it doesn’t matter if you’re wearing really expensive clothes it’s about how you do it and how you define yourself. You’re cool because you’re actually doing something, not because you own something.” “He’s one of those follow-through type guys,” Walker informs me. Walker, Vaga’s additional Co-founder and Managing Editor is the details man to compliment Fernando’s free spirit. He's intense, well-groomed, and well-connected—much like I imagine New Yorkers living in the Lower East Side to be, which he does. He too wears a leather jacket. “[Fernando] is full of ideas, like ADD with ideas, and one of his ideas was Vaga.” So in 2010, when Fernando approached Walker, a photographer and agent at Ford Artists, with his idea, the two began concepting and shooting. “My idea of a good time is doing a photoshoot,” notes Walker, a South Carolina native who studied English and Art in Chicago and London respectively before making his way into the New York City fashion world. “[Fernando] always wanted a story, even if it was shot as a test it was always shot as a story so it could potentially be pitched.” It’s obvious that the strengths Fernando and Walker possesses independently work well to compliment one another and have led them to successfully produce their print publication—no small feat in a post-print world. “Our magazine—it’s not a monthly magazine, it’s not a ‘selly’ magazine,” Walker declares. “It’s important that there’s longevity in what it is because ultimately when somebody's gonna purchase this they're going to put it in their bookshelf or leave it on their coffee table for hopefully a few years and use it as a reference tool. That’s kinda the point I think and I think that’s the way print magazines are going. There has to be something special because there’s so much information online that if you’re going to purchase a magazine there has to be either an interest in the overall theme or something tangible about it that makes it worthwhile." When I ask the two where they draw their inspiration, Fernando walks to his bookshelf and passes me a copy of The Face from December, 1995 with Amber Valetta on the cover. “The fashion sense is really mixed with art and with style,” he explains. “I love Dazed and Confused of course, which is major, but what I really love is that I think technology has given us the opportunity to do whatever we want to do with our life. What really inspires me is all these people who are doing a lot of creative stuff. People don’t realize how much we are able to do and how much we can take control of our lives. You can make it happen if you really want it. I don’t only put my heart, I also put my savings, my weekends, my vacation, my going out—you put everything.”
FERNANDO LAHOZ AND WALKER BROCKINGTON, VAGA | vagazine.com
PHOTOS: MEGHAN MCGARRY | WORDS: KELLY SHERMAN
