When we started thinking about this issue, Nicolas Ghesquière had just left his throne in Balenciaga, a brand with which he remained for 16 years as creative director. Because of this, we imagined the theme BREATHE to be perfect for our first 2013 issue, a year that has begun with people tense and apprehensive _for different reasons. From meteors falling down in Russia to inexplicable crimes and tensions and economic instabilities.

The issue 101 of U+MAG is dedicated to all those who desire to inspire change and expire some sort of revolution (internal, local or global). Those who inspire ideas and expire possibilities. Those who inspire new ways of seeing the world. That’s why we went in search of new names to compose this issue and profiled 5 talents in various areas, including the creations of designer Lea Peckre, winner of the 2011 Hyères Festival. We also invite new Brazilian fashion stylists to edit the NEO GEN spreads photographed by Adriano Damas. After all, new talents are the basis of this magazine and this particular issue is marked by several names that are contributing with us for the very first time.

This is also an issue of experimentation, with an editorial shot by Rogério Cavalcanti in partnership with stylist Heleno Manoel, the series of collages signed by Anton Budenko, the confrontational works of Juan Espada and the minimalism of a series photographed by Sanna Helena Berger with artist Emma Arvida Bystrom.

During the closure of this edition, a declaration of art director Mike Meire, quoting a phrase from artist Martin Kippenberger, left me very inspired and at the same time very intrigued to try to see the beauty of the opposite side in a raw, dirty, and why not, simplistic way.

“(There is only dirt and the beauty within) if every magazine or every building or every brand or everybody tries to look appealing somehow in the same idea of being modern, it becomes interesting to go the opposite. Because life has different kinds of beauty to present.”

We live in an plastic era, with grandiose images exhaustively manipulated. Because of this, as an exercise of renewal and breathe, you must escape the rule and try to see beyond, to go against the tide. After all, beauty is subjective, as (almost) everything in life.”

ROMEU SILVEIRA