American Teens Still Mean Business
In 2014, American teens are more connected than ever to the world around them. Teens have always been a driving force of change, but this time they come into adulthood with a variety of social media channels to fuel their creative minds. The digitalization of adolescent culture has created a breed of young entrepreneurs who refuse to be held back by the limitations ordinary business education imposes on them.
Some teens are already making their mark on the business world at a young age. Tavi Gevinson, founder and editor-in-chief of the popular online magazine Rookie, is one of those young entrepreneurs. At age 13, she created a space for teen girls to discuss the trials and tribulations of growing up in the 21st century. At 16 she had her first book published. She has since traveled across the country speaking at conferences.
After learning that most teen girls don't have enough power in terms of decision making or resources, she decided to use Rookie to create a community where girls could learn from each other and find their voice.
In May 2014, Condé Nast moved Rookie to New York City and gave Gevinson a staff of ten. Condé Nast is the same publisher of leading magazines such as Vogue, Glamour, and The New Yorker. Rookie has undergone a complete redesign in its new home in Manhattan's Flatiron District, with "light fixtures and vintage furniture [that]" is meant to resemble an apartment instead of a traditional editorial office.
Rookie magazine's first issue was released online on September 19, 2009. The last issue was published online on June 8, 2014. There have been five print issues that have been distributed as special issues only; they do not count as regular issues in the numbering system. The following issues were published as regular issues: Issue #1, published in September 2009, Issue #2, published in December 2009, Issue #3, published in April 2010, Issue #4, published in June 2010 and Issue #5 was released with Rookie's 5th birthday special issue on June 8, 2014.
Gevinson has been featured on the shows "The Ellen DeGeneres Show", "CBS This Morning", "Good Morning America" and "The Today Show". She has also been featured on several publications such as Oprah.com and Seventeen Magazine.
Gevinson routinely tweets about her life as a teenage entrepreneur. She works online at Rookie magazine through her company Teen Vogue LLC. She hosts a weekly Yahoo! Live chat broadcasts at 8 p.m. EST on Wednesdays, which she has done since October 2009. She also appeared in the British teen film "It's Our Sex Pistols", released in April 2014.
Every year Rookie releases a themed issue celebrating girlhood, based on an events, place or mode of clothing of the time. "Rookie Yearbook" is one of the most popular features with readers; it was first published in December 2009, and every year since then until June 2014 when the last issue was released online only. The custom magazine features content from interviews with designers and opinionated questionnaires about what is cool for teenagers to wear each season..
"Rookie: Issue #1", a special issue distributed only to subscribers, was printed on November 26, 2009. "Rookie: Issue #2", a special issue distributed only to subscribers, was printed on December 21, 2009. The "special" issues were similar to their normal issues except only subscription holders received them and they didn't have a cover page or cover price but every cover kept the regular site's logo. "Rookie #3", a special issue distributed to members of the Rookie community who signed up for the subscriber-only rewards program, was released in April 2010. "Rookie: Issue #4", a special issue distributed to members of the Rookie community who signed up for the subscriber-only rewards program, was printed on June 19, 2010. "Rookie: Issue #5" is the fifth birthday special issue, and it was released on June 8, 2014.
In 2012 Tavi Gevinson and Amber Fields won the Champion of Change award for their online magazine.
Gevinson grew up in Chicago, Illinois but moved to Los Angeles in 2011 so she could work with Dr. Janina Scarlet's media consulting group at The New School college in West Hollywood, California. Gevinson is currently in New York City as the editor-in-chief of Rookie.
For some time Gevinson had been writing a blog, Tavi's Diary, since October 2008 when she was twelve years old. She started out writing about her life and her friends and family. However, after the blog started gaining popularity, she began covering issues that influenced young girls like body image and sexual education. In March 2010 Gevinson had a second blog with Oprah.com titled Tavi Talks about Girls that covered similar topics to her diary as well as being more formalized and developed them into articles for magazines such as Teen Vogue. She also began interviewing celebrities, including Justin Timberlake and Taylor Swift.
Gevinson began creating videos as early as 2010, but she didn't get very far until she started to collaborate with other independent filmmakers and other female filmmakers. Her most recent video, "I Feel for You" was directed by her friend and cinematographer Julia Wyman alongside director of photography Amy Roper and editor (and Rookie writer) Grace Hwang Lynch.
In the fall of 2012 Gevinson hosted The Rookie Yearbook Bash in Los Angeles where past contributors from the magazine performed and attended a discussion about girlhood with Gevinson and her friends.
In October 2012 Gevinson published a book entitled "Rookie Yearbook Two". It is a collection of interviews and writing from the magazine as well as essays from Gevinson about girlhood and fashion. The book was published by Abrams Image.
The Rookie Index is an online search engine that lets users find clothing sizes, which are listed on the site based on their specific brand, retailer, category and size. It has a database of over 250 brands including stores like Urban Outfitters, Topshop and Forever 21. Ranging from sizes 4-20 it has become the first place many people go when looking for clothing sizes online.
In March 2013 Gevinson was featured on Snapchat during her preparation for her Saturday Night Live appearance on March 2 that month. The video was captioned "Tavi Gevinson for Rookie".
Sex Pistols is a British teen film Gevinson co-starred in with Millie Bobby Brown, Olivia Cooke, Sophie Jones and Serayah McNeill. It was released on DVD on April 29, 2014.
On January 18, 2015 "Rookie" launched a French newsstand edition that was published online only.
In 2009 Gevinson launched the website Teen Vogue to provide teenagers with fashion tips and advice as well as reviews on products. In December 2010 Teen Vogue sold its first copy of a physical print magazine in New York at Tower Records with the price equivalent to the original magazine's price when it first came out online.
Conclusion and Resolution
Fashion Revolution is a worldwide initiative that was created by Andrew Bolton, the British Vogue Curator of Fashion and Kate Fletcher, the Founder and Director of London College of Fashion. Their goal is to connect fashion with sustainable development. According to their official website, "That means demanding brands investigate the origins of all materials used in clothing production and making sure they have clear systems in place so we can know where products are made." Gevinson has been an active participant in this movement since 2013. Together with her friend Francie Schwarz, she started the #FastFashion series. This series was published from March 2013 to April 2014 on Rookie and aims to raise questions about how fast fashion affects the world around us.