About Madame

Madame

Madame is a German monthly women's fashion magazine published from Munich. First published in 1952, it is one of Germany's oldest fashion titles, positioned in the premium segment with fashion, beauty, lifestyle and culture content for sophisticated readers. Per IVW figures for the first quarter of 2026, Madame sold 66,505 copies per issue with a spread circulation of 69,415, reaching around 0.25 million readers (2020). Since 1 January 2021 it has been published by the Looping Group, the content-marketing agency of Dominik Wichmann; editor-in-chief since January 2014 is Petra Winter.

Overview

Madame occupies the elegant end of the German women's press: a monthly fashion magazine with cultural ambitions, aimed at readers who value sophistication over sensation. Its 70-plus-year history spans the entire post-war arc of German fashion publishing — from the reconstruction era's hunger for elegance to the present-day premium niche — and its recent ownership history reads like a case study in the German magazine industry's transformation.

History

The magazine first appeared in 1952, in the early years of the Federal Republic, when fashion magazines were still luxuries and elegance a post-war aspiration — when German women, emerging from war and rubble, hungered for beauty as a form of normalcy. Madame offered it: high fashion, beautifully photographed, in a country still rationing fabrics in memory if not in fact. In 1969 the magazine Elegante Welt was acquired and merged with Madame; two years later Elegante Welt disappeared from the title, leaving Madame as the consolidated premium fashion brand — the elegant survivor of the post-war fashion press's consolidation.

The modern ownership odyssey began in January 2010, when Vision Media — part of the OZ Verlag, the Rheinfelden-based publisher of handicraft and women's titles — acquired the magazine from the Magazinpresse Verlag (part of the Medien Union, the Ludwigshafen-based media group). The OZ Verlag, known for craft magazines and the women's titles it had built around them, saw in Madame a premium brand to anchor its women's portfolio. On 1 January 2018 it was sold to the Bauer Media Group, which placed it in a rebuilt premium division under the "Bauer Premium" strategy — the Hamburg giant's attempt to build a luxury magazine business alongside its mass-market weeklies.

In March 2019 Bauer launched the spin-off Monsieur — the male counterpart to Madame, a semi-annual luxury magazine — extending the brand's premium aesthetic to men's fashion and acknowledging that the luxury audience the magazine served was no longer exclusively female. Then, on 1 January 2021, Bauer sold the fashion magazine to the Looping Group, the content-marketing agency founded by former Stern editor-in-chief Dominik Wichmann — a striking transaction in which a brand agency acquired a traditional magazine, betting that premium editorial content and brand communication belong together. Wichmann, who had led the Stern and founded Looping as a brand-publishing specialist, saw Madame as the perfect laboratory: a heritage fashion brand whose authority could be deployed across client publishing, events and digital platforms.

Petra Winter has been editor-in-chief since January 2014, providing editorial continuity through three ownership changes — a stability unusual in the turbulent German magazine market and a factor in the title's survival. Winter, who took over the editorship at the turn of 2013/2014, has steered Madame through the Vision Media years, the Bauer interlude and the Looping acquisition, maintaining the magazine's premium positioning while adapting its business to each new owner's strategy. In an industry where editors often last barely longer than fashion seasons, a decade-plus tenure is itself a statement: Madame's identity is stable even when its ownership is not.

Content and concept

Madame covers fashion, beauty, lifestyle and culture with a premium, sophisticated tone: high-end fashion editorials, beauty features, travel, arts and society — the world of the elegant, culturally engaged woman. The monthly format allows for elaborate productions and in-depth features; the positioning above the mass-market women's titles and alongside the international glossies gives it a distinct niche: German premium fashion journalism with cultural depth, for readers who find Vogue too international and the weeklies too trivial. The Monsieur spin-off (launched March 2019, semi-annual) extended the concept to luxury menswear — a recognition that the premium fashion audience includes men seeking the same sophistication Madame offers women, and that the brand's aesthetic translates across genders.

Coverage and audience

Madame's 0.25 million readers (2020) form a defined premium audience: sophisticated, culturally engaged, with purchasing power for the luxury goods the magazine's advertisers sell — fashion houses, jewelers, beauty brands, travel operators. The sold circulation of 66,505 (early 2026) — down 35.2 percent since 1998, a gentler decline than most women's titles — reflects the premium segment's relative resilience: luxury readers abandon print more slowly, and luxury advertisers still value the print environment, the paper quality, the unhurried attention that a monthly affords. The ISSN is 0024-936X, a number that has identified the magazine since the era when ISSNs were new.

Ownership

Since 1 January 2021 Madame has been published by the Looping Group in Munich, the content-marketing agency of Dominik Wichmann — the former Stern editor-in-chief who built Looping into one of Germany's leading brand-publishing agencies, with clients across the luxury and lifestyle sectors. The acquisition was a landmark: a content-marketing agency buying a traditional fashion magazine, on the thesis that premium journalism and brand storytelling are converging — that the future of fashion media lies not in the newsstand alone but in the integrated content business, where a magazine's authority powers everything from client magazines to events to digital campaigns. The magazine's ownership history — Magazinpresse/Medien Union, Vision Media/OZ Verlag (2010–2018), Bauer Media Group (2018–2021), Looping Group (since 2021) — charts the German magazine industry's last decade: from traditional publishers through consolidation to the new brand-publishing economy.

Digital presence

madame.de extends the magazine's premium fashion journalism online, where it competes with the digital editions of the international glossies and the luxury brands' own content operations. Under the Looping Group — a digital-native brand-publishing agency — the digital brand benefits from an owner that understands content marketing's mechanics: the website, social channels and the Monsieur spin-off form an integrated premium content ecosystem, where editorial authority and brand partnerships reinforce each other. The bet is that Madame's 70 years of fashion authority can be monetized across platforms, not just on the newsstand — through events, collaborations, and the kind of native premium content that a traditional publisher could never have produced. Whether a magazine can thrive as a brand agency's flagship is the experiment Madame is now conducting; the early years under Looping suggest the answer may be yes.

From 1952 to the Looping era: Madame has survived every transformation of the German fashion press by remaining what it has always been — the elegant monthly for women who take style seriously. Through Elegante Welt and Vision Media, through Bauer and Looping, the magazine's promise hasn't changed: sophistication, beautifully presented, for readers who know the difference. In a fashion media landscape of infinite images and instant opinions, Madame's seven decades of judgment remain its most valuable asset — and the reason it still sells 66,000 copies a month, every month, to readers who value authority over abundance, elegance over noise. The Looping Group's brand-publishing model gives Madame an owner built for the content-marketing era — a fitting home for a fashion title entering its eighth decade.