Velvet Magazine: The Monthly Lifestyle Title for Cambridge and West Suffolk
Velvet is a monthly lifestyle magazine for Cambridge and West Suffolk, covering the fashion, food, homes, beauty and local life of one of England's most distinctive corners — the university city of Cambridge, the racing town of Newmarket, the cathedral city of Bury St Edmunds and the market towns and villages between them. Glossy, locally focused and independent in spirit, it is published by Iliffe Media, the family-run regional publisher behind the Cambridge Independent newspaper, and edited from a base built on long experience of magazines in the Cambridge area.
The magazine's promise is the classic one of the quality regional lifestyle title: to cover its patch the way national magazines cover the country — with fashion shoots, restaurant reviews, interiors features, interviews and what's-on coverage all rooted in named local places, businesses and people a reader might actually visit, know or be.
Overview
Velvet is a monthly consumer lifestyle magazine. Its own description of its territory is consistent across its platforms: Cambridge and West Suffolk, an area taking in Cambridge itself, Newmarket, Bury St Edmunds, Saffron Walden, Haverhill and the surrounding towns and villages. Content spans fashion and beauty, food and drink, homes and gardens, health and wellbeing, books, travel and local events, with a strong emphasis on independent businesses — the boutiques, delis, salons, restaurants and makers that give the region its character.
The magazine operates a busy website in parallel with the print edition, publishing features daily under category headings such as Fashion and Beauty, and carrying competitions, event coverage and seasonal guides. Social media, particularly Instagram, is used to run reader-participation features such as its book club, whose members share reviews for publication in print.
History and the Iliffe Media Acquisition
Velvet was established in Newmarket, the Suffolk town famous worldwide as the home of horse racing, and built its name as a monthly consumer lifestyle magazine for Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. In 2017 its ownership changed in a deal that reshaped its future. Iliffe Media, the independent publisher that had recently launched the Cambridge Independent weekly newspaper, acquired Velvet and its sister business title IQ from Cubiqdesign Ltd for an undisclosed fee, in a transaction reported at the time by the regional press trade title HoldtheFrontPage.
The acquisition was described by Iliffe as a strategic fit: the company had just bought thirteen local newspapers in East Anglia and the East Midlands from Johnston Press and was building a regional group around the Cambridge Independent. Edward Iliffe, the company's chief executive, welcomed Velvet and IQ as well-respected and established local magazines, while John Treby, managing director of Cubiqdesign, said the sale allowed his design and marketing agency to focus on its core services, confident the magazines would be nurtured by their new owner. Responsibility for the titles within Iliffe passed to its managing director Ricky Allan.
Publisher and Ownership
Iliffe Media is an independent, family-run publisher with deep roots in regional media — the Iliffe name has been associated with newspaper publishing for well over a century. The company presents itself as a business with the community at its heart, and its Cambridge operation centres on the Cambridge Independent, the weekly newspaper launched to serve the city with, in its own words, a fresh and intelligent guide to life in the area. Velvet sits within that local portfolio as the monthly lifestyle flagship, sharing the group's commitment to print as well as digital publishing across the region.
Under Iliffe, Velvet's identity has remained recognisably itself — a magazine for Cambridge and West Suffolk rather than a generic county title — while gaining the backing of a group with newspapers, websites and apps across East Anglia and the East Midlands.
Editorial Leadership and Contributors
Velvet's senior editor is Alice Ryan, who joined Iliffe Media in 2017 from Trinity Mirror, where she had been head of magazines and features for the Cambridge News group. Ryan began her journalism career in news as a crime reporter before moving into magazines and features more than a decade ago, and her byline appears across the magazine's fashion, beauty and lifestyle coverage. Her profile of experience — regional news, then magazines for the same patch — reflects the magazine's model of senior journalists who know the area's businesses and institutions personally.
Around the editor, the magazine runs on regular expert contributors whose columns give each issue its rhythm. Resident style expert Nerys Copping writes the Style Story, covering seasonal dressing and local boutiques; Caroline S. Asante has written as the magazine's eco fashion, beauty and lifestyle columnist, including a Sustainable Diva column on botanical scents; wine coverage comes from columnist Giles Luckett, whose Wine o'Clock selections round up bottles for occasions such as the New Year; gardening is covered by Melanie Taylor; and family and parenting features have been written by Chris Howard. Local chefs, bakers and authors also contribute recipes and features, from star bakers' comfort-food recipes to plant-based cooking from published authors.
Editorial Content and Sections
Fashion and beauty form the magazine's most visible department. Seasonal fashion features are shot and written around local retail — independent boutiques in Bury St Edmunds and Saffron Walden, Cambridge pop-ups and preloved fashion events — while beauty coverage rounds up new releases and names annual favourites. The Velvet Beauty Awards, running by 2020, named the magazine's skincare heroes of the year, and fashion coverage extends to events: Velvet has acted as media partner for the Style Awards at Newmarket's July Festival, the race meeting whose Ladies' Day fashion is a fixture of the region's summer.
Food and drink is the second great pillar: restaurant reviews and chef interviews (including Cambridge's Michelin-starred chefs), recipes, bakery features, wine columns and coverage of food festivals and markets. Homes, gardens and interiors features showcase local properties and makers; travel pages range from the Norfolk Broads to further-flung holiday features; and books coverage is anchored by the Velvet Book Club, run with Heffers, the Cambridge bookshop trading on Trinity Street since 1876, which publishes readers' reviews in the magazine and awards a review of the month.
Audience and Circulation
Velvet's audience is the affluent, locally rooted readership of Cambridge and West Suffolk: professionals, business owners and families in a region with two famous centres — a world-leading university city and the headquarters of British horse racing — and a strong independent retail and food culture in its market towns. The magazine is written for readers who shop, eat and socialise locally and who recognise the places and people in its pages.
As a free-distribution and retail lifestyle monthly, its commercial model rests on local advertising from exactly the businesses it features editorially, a model common to the strongest British regional glossies and one that requires the title to be genuinely picked up and read — a discipline that shapes its cover appeal and its balance of service content, competitions and seasonal guides.
Print and Digital Editions
The print magazine appears monthly and has been distributed across Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, with digital page-turning editions made available through platforms such as Yumpu, where back issues from 2017 onwards can be read. The website, velvetmag.co.uk, extends the brand daily, with features organised by category, author pages for its writers, competition entries and event coverage that continues between print issues. The site's archive shows the magazine publishing steadily through the 2020s, with dated features running through 2025 and into 2026 — a continuity that itself distinguishes Velvet in a market where many local glossies have folded.
Reader participation crosses between the platforms: book club reviews are submitted by email and Instagram for print publication, photography features invite readers to send in their pictures of Cambridge for a chance to appear in print, and competitions — spa days, jewellery, hampers and breaks — are run jointly across the magazine and website.
Events, Awards and Partnerships
Velvet's role in its region extends beyond publishing. Its media partnership with Newmarket's July Festival Style Awards placed the magazine at the centre of one of the area's best-known social occasions, reporting the fashion action and introducing the winners. The Velvet Beauty Awards gave its beauty coverage an annual focal point, naming the skincare and beauty products its editors rated highest. Partnerships with local institutions such as Heffers bookshop, and competitions run with Suffolk spas, hotels and jewellers, embed the magazine in the commercial and social life of its patch — the characteristic strategy of a lifestyle title that aims to be an institution rather than merely a publication.
Velvet's Place in Regional Publishing
Velvet is a case study in how quality local lifestyle publishing survived the upheavals of the 2010s: an established independent title, sold by a design agency owner to a family regional publisher rebuilding around a new city weekly, and continuing as a monthly with a senior editor recruited from the city's established newspaper group. In an era when national lifestyle magazines have struggled, Velvet's formula — famous places, strong local retail, food and fashion, and journalists who live in the territory — has kept it a fixture of Cambridge and West Suffolk life, and the natural print companion to the Cambridge Independent within the Iliffe Media stable.
