About Baku

Baku

Baku is an international arts, culture and style magazine named after Azerbaijan's capital, founded and edited by Leyla Aliyeva. First published in Russian in Moscow in December 2007, it gained international attention when an English-language edition, Baku International, was produced by Conde Nast and launched in London in October 2011. The magazine presents Azerbaijani art, culture, history, fashion and cuisine to readers far beyond Azerbaijan, mixing work by international photographers, artists and writers with stories about famous and ordinary Azerbaijanis alike. Each issue was conceived, in its editor's words, as being like an art piece in itself, dedicated to a different scene and different artists.

Origins: the Russian Edition in Moscow, 2007

The magazine began in Moscow. Leyla Aliyeva, daughter of President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan and vice-president of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, launched Baku in Moscow in 2007, with the first issue appearing in December of that year. The Russian-language edition was aimed initially at readers in Russia, where a large Azerbaijani community lives and where interest in Azerbaijan's post-independence culture was growing. Aliyeva has said that starting the magazine was her dream and that it became a success, talking about culture, music, art and history and about people — not only famous Azerbaijanis, but ordinary people with an interesting story to tell. The Moscow base also fitted Aliyeva's wider work at the time: she was active with Azerbaijani youth in Russia and, from April 2009, chaired the Azerbaijani Youth Organization of Russia, known as AMOR.

Leyla Aliyeva as Founder and Editor-in-Chief

Leyla Aliyeva is the magazine's founder and editor-in-chief in both its Russian and English editions. That role is consistently documented in Conde Nast's launch announcements, in her official biography, and in interviews from the launch period. In an interview with the auctioneer and art figure Simon de Pury for Interview magazine around the English launch, she described how visual art, music, literature and fashion come together in the magazine, and how each issue invited guest artists to make special work for it: the street artist Mr Brainwash was invited to create a piece for one issue, and the artist Rich Simmons was brought to Baku and made work on the streets of Azerbaijan for another. Her editorial identity is therefore central to understanding the title: Baku was a personal project of its editor as much as a commercial publishing venture, and its access to artists, photographers and venues reflected her position in Azerbaijani public and cultural life.

The Conde Nast English Edition, 2011

The decisive step in the magazine's history was the agreement with Conde Nast, the publisher of Vogue, Tatler and Vanity Fair, to produce an international English-language edition through its contract publishing division. Announced in 2011, Baku International was created in the United Kingdom, with Darius Sanai, editorial director of Conde Nast's contract publishing division, as launch editor, and Mary Fellowes, fashion director of Vogue Turkey, as fashion director. Conde Nast said the magazine would be a free-flowing collaboration between fashion and art photographers, writers, designers and other creative figures and the editorial team, collaborating on covers and contents with a range of international contemporary artists. The initial print run was 20,000 copies, distributed in key locations in the United Kingdom, France and the United States from the October 2011 launch, with Italy also named among the countries where the English edition would be available.

The London and Moscow Launches

The English edition was presented in London on 4 October 2011, at an event near Piccadilly attended by its editor-in-chief and by British public and political figures, with videos on Azerbaijan and photographs by Tom Craig and Giles Price shown to guests. Conde Nast managing director Nicholas Coleridge praised the project at the launch and said it would contribute to promoting Azerbaijan in Europe. A further London presentation was held on 27 October at the Opera Gallery, attended by Azerbaijan's ambassador to the United Kingdom, Fakhraddin Gurbanov, and by members of the British art and public world, with work by Mr Brainwash and Rich Simmons on display. A ceremonial presentation of the launch issue was also held in Moscow, at the Multimedia Art Museum in Ostozhenka Street.

Aliyeva explained at the launch that the international version had been her ambition since the Moscow magazine first appeared four years earlier, and that the magazine would now be available not only in Baku and Moscow but also in London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, New York and other cities. The launch issue was devoted to fire — a deliberate choice, she said, because Azerbaijan is a historic centre of Zoroastrianism and its name is linked to the word azer, meaning fire. The issue set out to reflect a city where avant-garde architecture and nineteenth-century oil-boom facades stand together, and where the modern Flame Towers rise without entirely overshadowing the historic Maiden Tower.

What Baku Magazine Covers

Baku's subject matter is the arts, culture and style of Azerbaijan, presented for an international audience. Its editor and publisher described a magazine covering ancient history, rich culture, art, traditions and cuisine, the country's current development and major projects, and the lives of Azerbaijani artists, writers and composers alongside ordinary people united by a connection to the city whose name it bears. In practice that meant contemporary art as a leading theme — fitting its editor's wider work promoting Azerbaijani art, including the Fly to Baku contemporary art exhibition launched in 2012, which travelled to European capitals — together with fashion, music including the traditional mugham, food, architecture and travel. Later listings describe Baku as a quarterly magazine published by Conde Nast in London and sold worldwide, featuring contemporary art, fashion, culture and travel with a link to Azerbaijan, and one cultural profile credits it with newsstand sales in 22 countries. Those later figures come from secondary listings and profiles rather than audited circulation data, and are reported here on that basis.

A Magazine Between Two Capitals

Understanding Baku requires holding its two homes in mind at once. The Russian edition belonged to Moscow, where it was published from 2007 for a Russian-speaking readership that included the Azerbaijani diaspora. The English edition belonged to London, where Conde Nast produced it as a contract publication — that is, a magazine made by a major publisher on behalf of a client and editor, rather than a title Conde Nast owned in the way it owns Vogue. That distinction matters for readers assessing the magazine. Its production values, photography and art direction carried the Conde Nast contract division's expertise, while its editorial mission — flying the flag for Azerbaijan, in the phrase used by commentators — came from its founder. The result was a glossy that could sit on London newsstands as an art and fashion magazine while functioning, transparently, as cultural presentation for Azerbaijan.

Reception and Critical Views

Contemporary coverage of the English launch was largely favourable in the lifestyle press, and the Telegraph was quoted by the editor's office as describing the London presentation as a special event. The Opera Gallery's director, Jean-David Malat, said at the London presentation that the English version played a historic role in discovering Azerbaijan and its capital at a new level worldwide. Later commentary has been more critical. An Economist account reproduced in later reporting described the magazine as soft power in glossy form, argued that it presented an airbrushed picture focused on fashion, fine food and luxury, and quoted a former employee describing its editor as a very big client for Conde Nast and for the public relations firm involved in promoting her. Cultural critics writing later went further, calling the magazine a vanity project. A balanced profile must record both sides: the magazine demonstrably brought Azerbaijani art and artists into international galleries, magazines and newsstands, and it was also, by design, a selective and luxurious portrait that did not attempt to represent everyday life for most Azerbaijanis.

Baku and Azerbaijani Cultural Promotion

Baku magazine did not operate in isolation. It sat within a wider pattern of Azerbaijani cultural promotion in the years around 2011 and 2012: Azerbaijan's victory in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2011 and its hosting of the contest in Baku in May 2012, the opening of major new hotels and of Zaha Hadid's Heydar Aliyev Centre, and exhibitions of contemporary Azerbaijani art in London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Vienna and Moscow. Aliyeva discussed several of these developments in the same interviews in which she promoted the magazine, presenting them as parts of a single moment in which Baku was introducing itself to the world. The magazine's contribution to that moment was permanence: unlike an exhibition or a song contest, a quarterly glossy could be kept, collected and re-read, with each issue designed as an object in its own right.

Format, Availability and the Limits of the Record

The documented facts about Baku are strongest for its founding and launches: Moscow, December 2007, in Russian; London, 4 October 2011, in English, published by Conde Nast's contract division with an initial print run of 20,000 and distribution planned for the United Kingdom, France, the United States and Italy. Its website was given in later listings as baku-magazine.com. The public record consulted for this profile does not provide a complete issue-by-issue bibliography, audited circulation figures, or a clearly documented final issue date for either edition, and this profile does not invent them. The seed listing for this directory described the title from Baku, reflecting its subject and its editor's base, while the publishing history shows Moscow and London as its places of publication — a distinction worth preserving, because it captures exactly what the magazine was: a magazine about Baku, made for the world, in the world's publishing capitals.

Legacy

Whether read as an art magazine, a national showcase or an early example of a state-linked glossy produced by a global publisher, Baku remains one of the most internationally visible magazines ever created about Azerbaijan. It demonstrated that Azerbaijani contemporary art, photography, fashion and food writing could sustain a high-production international quarterly, and it introduced many readers in London, Paris and New York to Azerbaijani artists and places for the first time. It also remains a useful case study in how magazines function as cultural diplomacy: who funds and edits them, which publisher's name they carry, and what picture of a country they choose to show. For the directory reader, its significance is precisely that combination — a genuine editorial and artistic product, and a deliberate act of national presentation, bound together in a single glossy title.