Think print is dead? Take a look inside this Darlinghurst store and you’ll soon change your mind. It’s packed to the rafters with niche books and magazines – some that are familiar and some that are not – covering graphic design, fashion, food, architecture and lifestyle. There’s Monocle, the global affairs magazine founded by Tyler Brûlé, alongside quarterly food journal Lucky Peach, founded by Momofuku’s David Chang. There are newsstand faves Frankie and Smith Journal, as well as newbies giving them a run for their money, like Aussie title Womankind.
Beautiful Pages originally started as an online store in 2011; now the Oxford Street shop has grown to stock not only art and design related paper products but also gifts and titbits that are like candy/crack to a graphic design geek. There are neatly stacked mugs from Pantone Universe, obsessively arranged in a rainbow of colours. There are daily reminders to live your dreams in the form of inspirational posters by Holstee. And there are tongue-in-cheek hipster gifts, like a pizza cutter made in the shape of a fixie.
But it’s not just art and design lovers who can get their fix of fresh print at this shop. Botanists, illustrators, film lovers and anime nerds can take in a breath of newly pressed knowledge from indie reads like The Plant, Apartamento, Off Screen Magazine and Kinfolk. And typographers can go wild with smart and irreverent posters and stationery; there are vibrant city maps printed by Herb Lester, and there’s an extensive range of items from The School of Life – such as the popular Toolkit for Life, a box set of life advice books.
One of the best things about this store is that you can drop in for a late-night shop (they’re open till 9pm on Thursdays) or you can while away a Sunday afternoon lost in intelligent and humorous literature. Be sure to flick through the latest prints on the back shelf, or pick up an arthouse DVD on Ai Weiwei, Alice Neel or Hetti Perkins. But whatever you do, don’t leave empty handed. You’ll soon regret it; not every newsstand is this carefully curated or entertaining.