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Here is news: the newsprint has gone bling. More than 600 diamonds are studded on the masthead and 22-karat gold is melted to form the magazine’s name Kohl written with a flourish. The yellow metal streams down the words on the glossy cover that flaunts the photograph of actor Katrina Kaif. The four-issue-old, UAE-based magazine usually costs just five dirhams, but once the Damas jewellery group took a shine to the Kaif issue and bejewelled the jacket, it is valued at over $10,000, making it arguably the most expensive magazine.
The single gold edition certainly cannot be bought on the stands, it will be brought under the hammer at an auction in October, says Faarah Mehta, group editor of the Asian titles of ITP Group that launched the magazine in March. “It took more than 86 hours for the craftsmen to layer gold leaf on the special edition,” says the 20-something Mehta, who moved from her home in Mumbai to magazine business in the UAE three years ago. “While the auction will attract attention towards the magazine, we also hope to fulfil our social responsibility as the proceeds go to the Dubai-based Rashid Paediatric Therapy Centre,” she adds.
It is not just carats, there is content also, says Mehta, rifling through the gold issue. “There are fashion and beauty tips as well as human-interest stories. Even the celeb interviews are treated differently,” she says, pointing to Kaif commenting on domestic violence and financial independence rather than the movie circuit. Although Bollywood beauties — from Shilpa Shetty to Vidya Balan — have made it to the Kohl cover, Indian women will have to wait a while before the magazine makes it to newsstands here. “There are expansion plans and the publishing group will take a decision on when to launch in India,” says Mehta. For now, they are going for gold.
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