DSCENE Magazine entered 2025 with a clear editorial position and followed it through with conviction. The year unfolded as a sequence of considered moves across print, digital, and physical space, each reinforcing the magazine’s commitment to authorship, cultural tension, and long-form thinking. Rather than chasing momentum, DSCENE built it deliberately, allowing projects to accumulate meaning over time.
The year opened in January with the release of the Wicked Wonderland issue, a publication that set the tone for everything that followed. Released on January 2, 2025, the issue framed creativity as an act of defiance and imagination as a serious cultural tool. At its center were stories that challenged fixed categories and easy narratives.
Greta Bellamacina appeared in Chanel for Whispers of the Heart, photographed by Brian Daly and styled by Rachel Bakewell. In an exclusive interview with Katarina Doric, she reflects on intimacy and inner life.
Patryk Lawry was photographed by Nikolai Kokanovic inside the Glass House, styled by Manda Javorina in BOSS Spring Summer 2025, grounding fashion within architectural restraint.
Gianna Coyne appears in the editorial Queen of the Swarm, photographed and directed by Nikolai Kokanovic, wearing a full Issey Miyake look.
Elsewhere, Harry Nuriev reflected on space and daily rituals, while artists, designers, and writers across the issue explored transformation, mysticism, digital bodies, gender, and fantasy. Wicked Wonderland functioned as a manifesto in print, marking the magazine’s refusal to soften its perspective at a moment of cultural unease.
Following the print release, DSCENE’s digital covers extended that energy into faster formats without sacrificing intent. A digital cover featuring Tommy Cash brought a disruptive edge early in the year, followed in March by actor Julian Kostov, widely recognized for his role in The White Lotus.
These covers emphasized presence and character over promotion, reinforcing DSCENE’s interest in figures who operate slightly out of sync with expectation.
In May, the magazine moved decisively beyond the page with the DSCENE x D’Puglia Art Residency in Castro, Puglia. Conceived as a site of production rather than presentation, the residency invited artists to work within the rhythms of place, focusing on process, research, and exchange. Puglia was treated as a working environment, not a decorative setting, reinforcing DSCENE’s broader interest in sustained engagement over visual shorthand.
June marked another editorial high point with the release of the Defiance issue, the most politically charged project of the year. The issue unfolded across five distinct covers, each addressing resistance from a different angle. Ai Weiwei fronts the Defiance issue with an exclusive art cover and interview, addressing resistance, authorship, and the role of the artist within systems of power.
Artist Awol Eriziku designed the second Defiance cover, presenting a visual language shaped by symbolism, identity, and cultural tension.
The third cover documents Serbian student protests through the lens of Milan-based photographer Riccardo Dubitante, capturing collective action as lived reality.
New York City Drag takes center stage on the fourth cover, photographed by Martin Gatti, foregrounding performance, visibility, and self-definition.
Actress Antonia Desplat appears on the fifth Defiance cover, photographed by Jack Chipper, presenting a portrait shaped by restraint, presence, and quiet intensity.
Running throughout the year, Doric Order by Katarina Doric emerged as one of DSCENE’s most precise editorial tools. Written as a column rooted in feminism, design, power, and everyday structures, it rejected soft commentary in favor of clear positions. Each text treated culture as something built, regulated, and contested, reinforcing DSCENE’s belief that criticism remains an essential part of publishing.
The year closed in December in Miami, where DSCENE x D’Puglia presented an event during Art Basel Miami Beach to mark the launch of Puglia, Unframed. The guide translated the residency’s thinking into a tangible editorial object, positioning artists’ perspectives alongside place, memory, and authorship. The event also introduced DSCENE’s first fragrance, created in collaboration with OSMO, extending the magazine’s sensibility into scent as another form of narrative.
To close the year, DSCENE turned its gaze forward. In the final week of December, the magazine unveiled the first cover of The New Disorder issue, scheduled for January 2026. Created by New York–based artist Trey Abdella, the cover signals a shift toward the next chapter, one shaped by instability, resistance, and new cultural formations already in motion.
By the end of 2025, DSCENE had articulated a coherent arc. From Wicked Wonderland to Defiance, from Puglia to Miami, from covers to columns, the magazine treated culture as something to be examined, challenged, and shaped. The year reads as a record of intention, one built on clarity, seriousness, and the refusal to dilute meaning for speed or scale.
