Toning Down the Colors of Benetton
By CATHY HORYN

In the revamped Colors, the magazine owned by the Italian apparel company Benetton that arrives on newsstands today, emotion and mayhem charge through the bold photograph layouts just as before, when the iconoclastic publication rattled nerves with images of poverty and dying AIDS patients. But this time the subject is fan worship, with surprisingly little resonance to the political turmoil of the world.

"It seemed important to have a subject that wasn't too off-putting at first glance, said the new editorial director, Kurt Andersen, perhaps best known as a founder of the trouble-making Spy magazine.

Colors had become so confrontational under Oliviero Toscani, who started the magazine in 1991, that it seemed to defeat the original mission, which was to bring a sense of social responsibility to Benetton's $2 billion-a-year apparel line

"It has been very focused on misery and pain," said Mr. Andersen, promising that future issues would be a blend of old Life magazine and National Geographic.

Artículo completo en New York Times