032c: Magazine as Soft Power
August 26th, 2025 | kobi ansong
Jörg and Maria Koch by Luke Abby
Magazine publications are the ultimate soft power. Look at the roots of Emma and Jens Grede, the couple famous for being the business and operational minds of the Kardashian’s vast empire. In the early 2000s, the Grede’s established Industrie Magazine to be the ultimate fashion insider publication focused on the people who make things happen. The publication was a platform to interface with fashion and culture on a deep and authentic level, and it’s hard to not to draw a line between the couple’s editorial roots to their later business dominance.
Soft power is a fishing net that creates leverage and invites resources to swim in your direction. 032c executed this perfectly. 032c is both a Ready-to-Wear line, and a bi-annual culture/fashion magazine. The magazine came first. Founded by Joerg Koch, a 20 year-old stumbling around post-Soviet Berlin, in 2000, the publication covered fashion, design, and culture from an outsider, raver, Berlin perspective. Over the years, the magazine’s popularity exploded. For the audience, 032c possessed an insider’s mystique. It wasn’t trade-y like BoF or Vogue. It was a signifier of underground cool.
Jörg and Maria Koch by Christian Kain
In 2015, they began teasing merch drops and officially launched their Ready-to-Wear line in 2019. In six short years, the ready-to-wear business accounts for nearly 70% of 032c’s seven-figure revenue according to Vogue. But, how? “032c was set up as a brand that aspired to be much more than just a print magazine, but we never found the perfect avenue to do this,” Koch explained to WWD.
The biannual publication’s evolution into a thriving fashion business was not an accident. They established a globally coveted underground magazine that gave their taste serious merits within the fashion world. As a result, SSENSE recruited Koch and 032c to become editorial consultants to oversee their newly launched magazine. Soft power in action. One of the worlds largest online fashion retailers came knocking on 032c’s door when they needed to launch a credible fashion publication. After his short time at SSENSE, Koch had all the intel needed to compete as a fashion line.
032c Ready-to-Wear Spring/Summer 2025
Soft power requires authenticity and a certain level of finesse. It’s influence that isn’t created by domination, it’s slow and tasteful. Trust is required.
On 032c’s future: “It could also be about real estate development, or a renovation within a building. Or it could be a political campaign for something—it doesn’t have to be commercial all the time, of course. That’s the kind of scope of what’s possible with 032c, and that’s what we have always said, and it sounded completely crazy” (Tissue Magazine).
