English-Italian editor, photographer and founder Elena Fazzino has built Garden Party Magazine from a private Instagram account into an independently published, community-led print publication that asks its readers to slow down and pay attention.
The name came first. Garden Party was a private Instagram account Elena Fazzino started around 2017, a name she chose as a metaphor for life as she wanted to experience it: “something expansive, layered, and to be enjoyed with care.” Years later, during lockdown, long walks and the photographs she took on them began to accumulate into something that felt like it needed a more permanent home.
“I remember thinking how naturally they would sit within a printed format,” she says, “something to live with rather than scroll past.”
What she thought might become a small zine became something considerably more intentional.
Garden Party Magazine is now two issues deep, with a third due in September 2026, each one structured around a specific theme and developed through a process that is, by Fazzino’s own description, largely self-taught and instinct-led. Issue 02 was produced with limited technical knowledge of print production, design software or distribution, relying instead on what she calls
“a strong editorial instinct for tone, pacing, and feeling.”
That instinct remains the publication’s centre of gravity. A defining early collaboration with Peter Appleton at Park Communications helped translate the vision into a refined physical object, and his guidance in print production gave the project a technical foundation to build from. But the editorial sensibility was already fully formed.
Open calls are structural to how the magazine works and how it remains alive. Each issue invites photographers and creatives to contribute to the themed edition, keeping the project open and responsive rather than fixed. Some of the most resonant contributions, Fazzino notes, have come from emerging artists with smaller followings, reinforcing the value of creating space beyond established visibility. The exchange between her editorial vision and those incoming perspectives is, she says, fundamental to how the magazine develops. It is a community as much as a publication.
Issue 03 expands the editorial scope further, integrating curated photography, film and creative writing alongside the open call. The theme is rituals and tradition: how they ground us, hold us and nurture us. Fazzino describes the magazine’s approach as building around “cries of interest,” following current obsession as a creative signal rather than a plan. Alongside a full-time job, and for a long period without external validation, she continued to invest in the project out of a belief in its longevity that, as she says, never shifted. That patience is visible in the object: Garden Party is built to endure.
Elena Fazzino is an English-Italian editor, photographer and founder of Garden Party Magazine, an independent publication focused on sensory storytelling, considered design and community-led publishing.
ARTIST LINKS
gardenpartymagazine.com
@gardenpartymagazine
gardenpartymagazine.com/shop
Garden Party Magazine, Issue 02, 2025. Photography: Joe Fazzino, Elisenda Viola Quistelli, Elena Fazzino. Issue 03 coming September 2026.
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